Palm Sunday's Sermon

Palm Sunday, April 5 2020
Penelope Bridges
Sermon preached after the Liturgy of the Palms, via Zoom


Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; Amen.


This is a strange Palm Sunday. It’s not the Palm Sunday that we are used to or that we were expecting just a few short weeks ago. When I left for my sabbatical month I anticipated that today would mark my triumphal re-entry to cathedral life, that our celebrations and processions today would also be a personal celebration as I was reunited with you all. But today isn’t like that at all. Instead of being with you in a church adorned with palm fronds and red hangings, I am alone in my study at home.


But there’s something strangely OK about this. It’s not OK that thousands are suffering from Covid-19. It’s not OK that our health care workers are short of essential equipment as they risk their lives for others. It’s not OK that we are unable to visit our frail loved ones in hospitals and assisted living facilities. It’s not OK that every tickle of the throat gives rise to a frisson of fear: am I next?


But it is OK to find ourselves beginning Holy Week in an unfamiliar place, a place of discomfort, a place of loneliness. It’s OK because Palm Sunday is a day of unmet expectations, of jarring juxtapositions, of emotional roller-coasters.


When Jesus and his followers descended upon Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday, a disorganized crowd of have-nots and malcontents filling the narrow streets and alarming the locals, the authorities were taken by surprise. During the Passover festival, Jerusalem was always crammed with pilgrims, tourists, and entrepreneurs: it must have been a bit like San Diego during Pride Week. Spontaneous street parties were probably quite common, and the military peacekeepers were quick to disperse the crowds and restore order.


This party, however, was a party on the move, headed by a man on a donkey, apparently offering a parody of Roman rule. His followers were singing songs and shouting slogans that named Jesus as Messiah, the one who would save Israel from her oppressors. And as they descended the steep slope from the Mount of Olives, the crowd grew and became more unruly. It must have been a huge relief to the civil authorities when the mob went directly into the Temple precincts without invading the city itself: this was something, they thought, that the Jews could deal with. Or not, as the next action Jesus took was to turn over the tables of the moneychangers and throw the lucrative sacrifice industry into chaos.


The triumphal entry of Jesus is an overt demonstration of power, and it sets up a confrontation between conflicting understandings of power. In these days when we are bowing to the power of our civil authorities to keep us at home, when we are terrorized by the lethal power of a microscopic virus, when we are watching the economic power of Wall Street turn to hysterical confusion, our notions of power may be turned inside out. Today is a good day to spend a few minutes thinking about the different kinds of power in our world, as they are illustrated in the story of Holy Week.


Most of the people who followed Jesus into Jerusalem that day probably thought they were witnessing the latest attempt at an uprising against the Roman occupiers. The symbolism of Jesus riding a donkey recalled the ancient kings of Israel; the symbolism of the chorus of Hosannas recalled a 200-year-old, successful reclamation of Jerusalem from her enemies. The crowds were looking for military power, for a successor to the Maccabeans, the Hammers of Judah. But Jesus wasn’t interested in that kind of power.


The Jewish authorities held onto power through their collusion with a brutal, corrupt regime. They were shrewd politicians who knew how to feather their own nests while presenting themselves as defenders of the faith. They were deeply invested in maintaining the status quo and their privileged position. But Jesus wasn’t interested in that kind of power either.


The Romans wielded power by brute force, with military parades, swift punishment of resistance, and public executions of the most gruesome kind. They were the world power and the Pax Romana depended on them both looking and acting like they were invincible. Jesus wasn’t interested in that kind of power either.


In his actions on Palm Sunday it seems that Jesus deliberately alienated all three of these groups: he declined to put up a fight against the authorities, he caused a riot in the Temple by overturning the moneychangers’ tables, and in his carefully staged entrance to the city he was instrumental in disturbing the peace.


And all because he embodied a different kind of power: the power of truth-telling, the power of self-giving for the sake of others, the power of connecting with the deep, eternal, human longing for community, for justice, for meaning. This is the power that Jesus personifies throughout his ministry and especially this week in his suffering, death, and resurrection.


It is a power that continues to confront other powers in this world today. And it is a power that holds our attention year after year, whether we spend Holy Week in the church, or in a hospital room, or sheltering in place in our own homes: it is a power that draws us back to Jerusalem, to the foot of the Cross, patiently awaiting the glory of the resurrection. It is the power of love. 

Amen