A Sermon for Palm Sunday

            If we could go back in time to the first Palm Sunday, what would we think as we witnessed Jesus coming in triumphant procession into Jerusalem? It must have been very loud! Very exciting! And we would wonder what people were thinking as they shouted Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. They were all holding palm and olive branches. They were all cheering wildly! What could have hyped them up? What were they thinking?

            In order to understand what the crowd was thinking we must consider who the Jews were. In origin they were a nomadic people who tended sheep and lived on the fringes of Mesopotamian society. Abraham had made a covenant with his God and his descendents eventually wound up in Egypt, first as friends, then as enslaved. The Jews did not mix well with other peoples because they were monotheists, that is, they believed in one God. As their bitterness in Egypt dragged on, their one God, Yahweh, raised up Moses to free his people. This historical event was called the Exodus and it was the formative moment for the Jewish people.

             Through Moses God told the Hebrews that they were his special people and he gave them a set of rules which was called the Law. The Jews wandered in the desert and conquered the holy land. They had periods of faithfulness and periods of faithlessness. They saw days of glory under David and Solomon and days of bitterness with conquest by the Assyrians the Babylonians. They were hauled off in captivity to Babylon but allowed to return to Jerusalem by Cyrus the Persian. Then came a series of conquerors ending with the Romans. The Jews yearned for the glory days of David and Solomon. They wanted to be free. And on Palm Sunday they thought that God was at last sending them a deliverer.

             So they waved palm branches which were the symbol of victory. They shouted hosanna--which was Greek for the Hebrew, “Save, us, we beseech thee” They were literally asking God to save them from the Romans. And when they shouted “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” they were cheering Jesus as the Messiah or deliverer. Ironically, Jesus was the deliverer. Jesus came to save them from themselves. They did not understand that to be the strongest kingdom and beat up other peoples was not deliverance, it was death. Jesus came to save them from their sins, not from a foreign conqueror. The crowd did not understand that God’s religion was about relationships rooted in the essence of God or love. To cry for revenge was to cry for suicide.

             So the crowd was thinking that the day of vengeance was near. They were going to do to the Romans what the Romans and every conqueror had done to them--and they thought they had found their man!  Does such reasoning remind us of any newspaper headlines we see on a regular basis?  This leader or that self proclaimed prophet in the name of God and decency orders his followers to kill innocent people in order for this group or that country to be free!  People bombing train stations because their great grandfathers were killed by “so-in-so” back in the old country!  People crying for revenge because they feel they are the “have-nots”--and that the “haves” must pay! The truth is that what the Palm Sunday crowd was thinking mirrors our own society.

             The crowd didn’t get!  And Jesus knew they wouldn’t. But he went on to perform the great works of his priesthood.  He took their sins, your sins, my sins, the world’s sins and suffered terribly and died on the Friday called Good.  He made atonement for their sins and ours!  He made it possible for us to talk to God!  On the night before he suffered, he instituted a memorial, the sacrament of his body and blood, till he comes again.  He promised that whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood will have eternal life.  And on Easter morning he burst forth from the grave and destroyed death.  All this he did because he loved the crowd as much as he loves you and me.  It is sobering to remember that the same crowd, the crowd who shouted Hosanna to the Son of David, also shouted for Pilate to kill Jesus on Good Friday.  The crowd still didn’t get it.  But Jesus from the cross forgave them.  He knew in the mystery of Divine Providence that all this must come to pass.

             This morning we had our own Palm Sunday Procession. We re-enacted the triumphal Palm Sunday March of long ago.  Do we understand the symbolism?  The march represents the course of our lives and the palms the victory God has promised. When we gathered at the door of the Church we were gathering at the grave--our graves, because the grave is the gate of Heaven. We knocked on the doors--they opened and we died--and we marched in triumph into heaven.  We acted out Christ’s triumph over death.  And the root of that triumph is found in dying to the slavery of this world.  At the Last Supper Jesus told his disciples that they must love one another as he loved them.  When one gender claims it is superior; when one people think they are better; when love and forgiveness are swallowed up in hatred and malice, then people still don’t get it.  So the question this morning is not whether or not the crowd understood, the question is do we get it?  Will we live as slaves of mammon and this world--that is, in death--or will we die to that slavery and triumph forever?