Palm Sunday: April 13, 2025
The Rev. Nat Johnson
Readings: Isaiah 50:4-9a | Philippians 2:5-11 | Luke 19:28-40 | Psalm 31:9-16
I have vivid childhood memories of sitting in Sunday School, watching the teacher use a felt board to tell the story of Jesus’ Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem. She built the scene, first by constructing a road – a tan-colored piece of felt that ran the length of the board; then grey pieces shaped like rocks placed along path. Next came palm trees clustered together at various points along the road, and then a piece of felt, shaped like a donkey and covered in cloaks. A group of disciples next to the donkey, and then Jesus placed atop the donkey. As the teacher told the story and moved the pieces along the road, she added the crowds of people – some waiving palm branches and others spreading their cloaks along the ground in front of Jesus. The story we were told every year was a story of celebration. Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem and the people were greeting him as their king.
As a child listening to this story, I was unaware of the nuances we pick up as we read the different gospel versions. I was also unaware of how subversive and political this act of street theatre was. Of course, all of us sitting in that Sunday School room knew that the tides would change for Jesus, that the crowds who today shouted praise to their king would soon shout “Crucify him” at Pilate’s gates. But the procession of Palm Sunday? I suspect most of us recognized this as an innocent, benign act – disconnected from the larger political landscape.
A number of years ago, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossin wrote a book called, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’ Last Days in Jerusalem. In the book, they suggest that Jesus’ triumphant entry wasn’t the only one that happened that day. On the opposite side of the city, another procession was taking place. Soldiers carrying imperial flags marched toward the city gates, leading a beautiful warhorse ridden by Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor. Like nearly hundreds of thousands of other folks, Pilate made this entry into the city every year. Unlike nearly hundreds of thousands of other folks, Pilate was not making a pilgrimage to a holy city. Rather, he came as a reminder to the people of Jerusalem that Rome was still in charge. It was ironic because the occasion for this visit was the yearly festival of Passover, the commemoration of Israel’s liberation from their oppressive Egyptian enslavement. Rome’s presence was meant to quash any stirrings of resistance against Roman occupation.
Read against this background, Jesus’ Triumphant Entry becomes a little less triumphant. A little more street theatre, a parody of imperial power, a subversive act meant to mock the rule of the occupation. Pilate rode into town on a warhorse; Jesus entered on a simple beast of burden. Pilate’s entourage carried banners of victory; Jesus’ entourage made banners of their cloaks. Pilate was surrounded by soldiers carrying weapons of war; Jesus was surrounded by simple disciples carrying nothing but the song of praise. In this act of street theatre, Jesus ridicules the powers and principalities of the Jerusalem and Roman elite and in doing so, declares that the reign of God he has been preaching, teaching, and embodying is and will be wholly other than the reign of Empire. Jesus is king, but his kingship will be wholly different than the forces of domination and power exercised by the Roman king.
In Luke’s version of this story, the Pharisees understand this. They recognize Jesus’ subversion, the political play he makes with his procession. They recognize that Jesus and his entourage are marching in protest, not victory. They try to get Jesus to quiet his disciples. They fear what might happen is Pilate gets word of this parade. They fear that the unrest of this march will bring heavy-handed retribution from imperial guards. “Teacher, order your disciples to stop!” they beg him. But Jesus knows that now is his time. He knows that the protest they bring in this moment groans even in the stones that line their path. There is no silencing this protest. Today is a day for shouting!
Welcome to Holy Week. On Palm Sunday, churches across the globe begin their services with a kind of reenactment of Jesus’ Triumphant Entry. We’re given palm branches to wave, sing songs of praise, and march into the church. It can be easy to slip back into childhood recollections of this story, to see this enactment as a docile act, as celebration and not protest. But today represents a call to stand against the power of empire, to make our profession of loyalty to Jesus and him alone.
And this day ushers us into a story we tell every year. It is a story of love, death, and resurrection. A story not just of some events that happened long ago, but that somehow transcends memory and is experienced here, now, in our own bodies. Palm Sunday invites us into this most holy week as pilgrims – we are bid to walk with Jesus, to enter Jerusalem amid the cheers, to experience the confusion, fear, and uncertainty of the disciples who sat with him at table, who were given bread broken and wine poured out, who experienced utter absence and defeat in the shadow of the cross.
This week is not just about our remembering – it is about our entering. Our entering a story that forms the crux of our identity as people, a story that lives on through our own stories. It echoes in our own experiences, telling of love, grief, fear, betrayal, pain. We cannot move from the shouts of Palm Sunday to the joy of resurrection without first traveling the way of the cross. It is a story that takes time, a story that requires us to listen as we sit around a shared table, as we eat, drink, and wash, as protest turns to death march, as hope is shattered, as we keep watch through the long night. It is a story we tell every year with Christians around the globe – and we tell it not only for what is remembered, but for what is experienced in its telling. And so, we are bid to walk this path with Jesus as participants and not simply observers.
Friends, Holy Week has begun. Let us enter it fully, feeling the dust on our feet from the journey, feeling the palm fronds in our hands. This week, I encourage you to slow down,
to disconnect from the hustle and bustle of your lives, to pray more, to sit with Jesus in contemplation, to feel the weight of all that God did in Christ to free us from the tyranny of this world and bring us into the fullness of life. Join in the liturgy of the Great Three Days to sing, pray, and hear the good news, to proclaim the story once more of a God who loves, who suffers with and for us, who transforms death into life. Together, let us experience the grace of God anew, to feel ourselves washed and fed and held by a God who answers our cries for salvation!
My prayer for us this week, dear People of St Peter’s, is that God will give us the grace and the perseverance to walk in the way of the Cross with our Lord so that we might also, by his resurrection, be brought into the newness of life that Jesus offers us. Amen.