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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. Amen.
Our text for this morning is the Gospel Lesson, the Palm Sunday story from John chapter 12. You may be seated.
I’m confused. Now, to some of you who know me, that may not come as much of a surprise. The absent-minded professor act isn’t always an act. But I’m confused about this day, this Palm Sunday. What is it all about? And I’m not the only one who’s confused.
If you would indulge me for a moment and open your hymnals to the very beginning of the hymnal, the first few pages that are numbered with small lowercase Roman numerals on the bottom. And if you flip to, oh, say Roman numeral 18, X, V, I, I in the front of your hymnal, you will see the lectionary, all the scripture readings laid out for the entire church year. Usually, this is pretty straightforward, but if you scan your eyes down through Lent, you’ll see Lent 5 and then today, Palm Sunday procession and the Sunday of the Passion. Look how many choices we have for gospel readings. The first reading, John 12, 12 through 19-ish, the Palm Sunday procession, the one we used this morning, but it’s also acceptable to read the gospel readings for the passion of Christ from Luke or John.
This Sunday is sometimes called Passion Sunday, sometimes Palm Sunday. Some churches will celebrate Passion Sunday on the fifth Sunday of Lent. Some will celebrate it today. Some will do Palm Sunday, the first part of the service, and Passion Sunday, the second part of the service; it’s all a big mess. When I talked to Max Schumann this morning, he said, “You’re right, Pastor, I didn’t know what lessons to put in the lesson book for this morning.”
Well, whatever the liturgically correct thing may be to do, Palm Sunday is probably one of the most confusing Sundays of the church year, at least for me. Should we celebrate Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, or should we be sorrowful about what’s going to happen on Good Friday? We see a glimpse of that confusion even in our gospel reading for this morning. On the one hand, the crowds are cheering, “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” On the other hand, the Pharisees are angry and annoyed with him. “Look, you’ve gained nothing. The whole world is going after him.” Two competing opinions.
Good Friday is a mere five days from now when the apparent joy of Palm Sunday seems to vanish. As the hymnist writes, “Sometimes they strew his way and his sweet praises sing resounding all the day. Hosannas to their king, then crucify is all their breath and for his death they thirst and cry.” On Palm Sunday they give their clothes for Jesus to sit upon and to ride upon; on Friday they would steal his clothes and gamble for them. On Sunday they cut off palm branches to praise him, and on Friday they would nail him to a tree to kill him.
What are we supposed to think today? Jesus comes riding on, riding on in majesty, but we know that in lowly pomp he rides on to die. I think this confusion stems from a more fundamental problem. The confusion in Jesus’ day was they didn’t know what kind of Messiah, what kind of Savior they really needed. After all, they yell “Hosanna,” which means “save us.” They knew they needed saving, and this guy Jesus seemed to be the one to do the saving.
In Matthew’s account of Palm Sunday, we hear these words: “And when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, ‘Who is this?’ And the crowd said, ‘This is the Prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.'” Earlier, when he fed the 5,000, people thought he was there to save them from their hunger. When he healed the sick and made the lame walk, they assumed that Jesus was there to save them from suffering in this life. As he rides on into Jerusalem, no doubt many of them thought he was there to save them from the Romans, but those things didn’t happen.
So what exactly was Jesus saving them from? It’s the same sort of questions we have today. What kind of God do we have? What good is this Jesus guy anyway? If you listen to some, they might tell you that, oh, God is just waiting for the right prayers or your positive attitude, and then he’ll give you whatever you want. Or perhaps some think that if I just come to church on Sunday morning, that makes God happy, and then I can sort of do whatever I want the rest of the time. Or perhaps you’re undergoing some sort of difficulty or struggle in your life, some kind of suffering, and asking yourself, does God really care?
Who is this Jesus? Will he save me? In our text, Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem on a fairly humble animal, a donkey, not exactly a king’s mount. The wealthy are not there to greet him with fine robes and purple garments, but ordinary people throw their cloaks on the road in front of him. There are no loud trumpets to proclaim his entry, but little children singing praises as we just experienced.
If this is the entrance of a king, he certainly comes as a lowly king, seemingly without an army, without the backing of powerful influential people of the day. But we know that he is a king, a king that possesses all power, a king that commands legions of angels. The people proclaim he is the prophet from Nazareth. They’re right. A prophet speaks God’s Word, but this is no ordinary prophet. This is the Word of God in the flesh.
And though he had been heard preaching and teaching in the synagogues, the priests, those who should know God’s Word, seem to hate him. The Pharisees are infuriated by their inability to trick Jesus with their little theological trick questions. “Who is this?” The Jesus we encounter on Palm Sunday, it’s the same Jesus of Good Friday, it’s the same Jesus of Easter morning. He comes as our King, though his kingship is hidden. It’s hidden in humility, in meekness, in mercy. He comes to save his people, but not from the Romans. He doesn’t come to save us from our government or from the drudgeries of work, but from our own weakness, from our sin, from death, from our enemy Satan.
He comes not to give us whatever our hearts desire, but to satisfy our real need for mercy and forgiveness and love. He comes not to claim an earthly throne, but to be nailed to his throne, the cross. He who created the world comes to find his creation wracked with sin and evil, and he comes to destroy that which is evil. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. He comes bearing God’s name, comes as God himself, not to display his power and glory as this world might expect, but to show forth his might through kindness and sacrifice.
He does come as a conquering king, and he is victorious over sin and death and the devil. The Palm Sunday crowd is right, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. Right to sing his praises. Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel.
What does that mean for us? In one sense, I think it causes us to re-evaluate our own ideas about strength and weakness, pride and humility, power and service. In the movie Schindler’s List, which is set during World War II in Germany, a particularly brutal concentration camp commander, Amon Goth, is approached by the hero of the movie, Oskar Schindler. Now, Goth is known for his monstrous behavior, his arbitrarily killing people that he dislikes or disagrees with, and Schindler convinces him that real power is shown by those who show mercy.
Goth is intrigued by this idea, so he tries this new approach for a while, hoping to feed his ego and feel even more powerful by showing mercy. But it doesn’t work. He just feels weak and stupid and goes back to his preferred method of control, murdering those who displease him. True power is found in Jesus, whose entire being is one of mercy toward us. Christ does not show mercy to gain power, but he is merciful because he is all-powerful and all-knowing and all-loving.
His mercy toward us is reflected in the mercy we show one another. Jesus tells us he came not to be served but to serve. He came not showing off his perfect strength, knowledge, and power, but in humility he associated with the lowly. He associated with the despised of society, healing them, loving them, forgiving them. He came not to throw us sinners into the hell we deserve, but weakly he allowed himself, a king, the king, to be killed to make sacrifice and payment for our sin.
As St. Paul writes in our Epistle reading this morning, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
So I suppose I shouldn’t be so confused about Palm Sunday after all. It’s the day we celebrate. We celebrate the entry of our God, of Christ Jesus, our King into Jerusalem, into our world, into our own lives by virtue of our baptism. A king who conquers our most dreaded enemies, Satan, sin, and death. Enemies that on our own we are powerless against. And though he wins this victory in a way that our power-hungry world would not expect, he defeats sin by being sinless. He defeats the power and pride of Satan with humility and love. And he defeats death by dying and rising again, all this because of his great love toward us and our great need for a Savior.
We no longer need to ask who is this, but instead praise him with the words of Palm Sunday, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel. Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
