Palm Sunday

Matthew Hoxsie Mead
Sermon 5: Palm Sunday
Expository Preaching
R. Wilson, D. Bartlett, A. Nagy-Benson

Palm Sunday: Blessed is the coming kingdom!

“Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!"

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Today we celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We began the celebration this morning by meeting in the parking lot, blessing palms, and singing hymns in procession as we walked around the block with palms in our hands. Palm Sunday starts as one of the most jubilant Sundays of the year as we read about Jesus triumphantly riding a donkey into Jerusalem, fulfilling the prophesy made by the prophet Zachariah hundreds of years earlier. It is a day that acts as a prelude to the celebration of Easter, a day when we get to take in some fresh air, sing some great psalms and make little figurines and crosses out of our palms. Its a lot of fun and in many ways we experience a joy that probably was not unlike the joy that the crowds around Jesus experienced.

Yet, even as we have just begun to celebrate Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we take part in the reading of his passion and death on the cross. There is a clear tension between the two events. One the one hand, the entry into Jerusalem is a wonderful, moving moment when the guy we’ve been rooting for all along finally seems to get his due. He makes his move, rides into the city, and the crowds go wild! On the other hand, we are reminded immediately that this moment of earthly glory will not last very long. Holy Week has begun and the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus has moved to the forefront of our minds this day.

Our liturgy today helps to bring out this start contrast even more. As the service progresses we move away from palms and towards the passion itself: beginning with a procession, reading the passion narrative, celebrating the Eucharist and leaving in silence. Traditionally, the service itself bears two names, Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. As Christians with 20/20 hindsight, we know that Jesus’ triumph will be completed in his death and resurrection on the cross and for this reason we really don’t have a huge problem with that tension, with that shift from celebration to ominous waiting for the last hours of Jesus.

Those who were with him as he entered Jerusalem probably did not expect that Jesus would be condemned to death and killed only a few days later, but that doesn’t mean that they did the wrong thing by making his entry a moment of triumph and joy. They cried out: Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!" Hosanna is one of those Hebrew words that is kind of hard to translate but it basically means “save us”. The people were literally crying out for a savior and in Jesus they recognized that they had found one. They recognized that there was something special in Jesus.

Their cry brings to mind Jesus’ own words as he opened his ministry. The Evangelist Mark tells us that Jesus began his ministry by proclaiming that the time has come and the kingdom of heaven is near. The crowds with Jesus likewise call out, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David.” With Jesus death and resurrection the kingdom truly has come, but that moment is still a few days off.

Like the crowd with Jesus, our own worldly perspectives try to name that kingdom so that we know exactly what we are all talking about; we try to make sure we totally understand what’s going on. In a sense, we try to put that kingdom in an enveloper with a nice, neat, clean label on it. Every year after I do my taxes I make copies of all of my documents and I seal everything up in a yellow envelope and label it: “Taxes, 2002”. We like order and we like to know what we have in front of us. Its a very helpful thing to know exactly what is in an envelope so that I don’t have to think about it, or shuffle through the documents inside to see what I’m dealing with. Similarly, although Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom was near, the crowds proclaimed that the kingdom of David was near.

Again, we see another contrast, more tension between the words of Jesus and the words of the crowd. Jesus proclaimed a heavenly kingdom but the crowds were expecting an earthly kingdom. They wanted something but they wouldn’t get it. What they would get would be far greater than they could possibly imagine. There is a wonderful song by the Rolling Stones that came out in 1969 called, You Can’t Always Get What You Want. The chorus of the song explains that you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you get what you need. You get what you need. Well, what did they need? What do we all need?

The answer to that lies in the word Hosanna. Like the crowds with Jesus we need to be saved. We might want that to be an earthly salvation where everyone gets exactly what he or she wants. I want a new car, a big house, peace on earth, good food for every meal and no more worries ever again. We can all think of things that we think would make us perfectly happy forever. Yet, the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed was one that could only be brought about by his death. By dying and rising, Jesus gives us eternal life, a kingdom we cannot imagine in our own worldly terms, a kingdom we cannot name or label quite as easily as we might like, a kingdom that we need. Jesus death and resurrection brings eternal life to those who believe in him. Not just eternal life in heaven, but eternal life that begins here and now.

As people who have heard the story before, seen it on TV, or even seen it in the movies or in plays, we know that Jesus must die. We know this and every year we follow him through that entire process, from its triumphal beginning at the gates of Jerusalem all the way to his resurrection in glory on Easter. It is a long and difficult process to go through. Every Holy Week we participate in the last supper on Maundy Thursday, the waiting and struggle in the garden Thursday night, the gruesome crucifixion on Good Friday, and at long last Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on Easter. Today we begin that process.

As we go through Holy Week together this year, remember that the true triumph is the cross. Without the cross we only have fleeting images of earthly kingdoms that are neither perfect nor what we really need. Without the cross we do not have eternal life. Palm Sunday is a somber occasion because we know the details of the passion that is going to be played out this week. Yet, it is also a joyous occasion because we know that at the end of it all Jesus will be redeemed and he will redeem us. He will rise from the dead and usher in a new kingdom of eternal life.

For this reason we cry out together, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!" Say it one more time with me: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!" Thanks be to God, Amen.