Palm Sunday 2025

Good morning, friends, and welcome.

We do this twice a year, so it's a little different today, starting in the hallway.

We'll do that on Sunday morning at 6 30 a.m.

if you're here as well.

But we're going to start with our Liturgy of the Palms, which is in our boat.

And then please follow the cross in.

The choir is going to come last.

So don't wait for the choir.

Blessed is the key for the Lord.

Let us pray.

Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts whereby you've given us life and immortality.

Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

With you, let us pray.

It is right to praise you, Almighty God, for the acts of love by which you've redeemed us through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

On this day he entered the holy city of Jerusalem in triumph, it was proclaimed as king.

Spread their garments and branches of palm along his way.

For this reigns the glory with you in the Holy Spirit now and forever.

Amen.

Jesus Christ, according to Matthew, glory to you, Lord Christ.

Now they had come near Jerusalem and reached that stage on the Mount of Olives.

Then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, Go into the village before you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her.

If anyone says anything to you, just say this.

The Son of Woman needs them, and they will send them immediately.

This took place to fulfill what had been spoken to the prophet, saying, Tell the daughter of Zion, look, your sovereign is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, and on the colt, the foal of a donkey.

The disciples went and did just as Jesus had instructed them.

They brought the donkey and the colt and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.

A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

The crowds that were going before him and the one following were shouting, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Holy One, Hosanna and the highest.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was shook, asking, Who is this?

The crowds were saying, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth and Galilee.

The gospel of the Lord.

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

Let us pray.

Almighty and ever living God, and your tender love for the human race, you send your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility.

Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering and also share in his resurrection.

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever.

Amen.

Or I could just sit here by myself.

Oh, yay, my daughter will save me.

Count on my daughter.

Anybody else?

Are she coming or is she hiding?

Over here.

Have y'all ever been to a parade?

Have you ever been to a parade before?

So I want you to imagine that you get to lead a parade.

And on top of that, you get to ride any animal you want leading the parade, fictitious or real.

You get to lead the parade of thousands of people.

You get to be at the front.

What animal are you picking?

Go.

What's that?

Panda.

Yes, a panda.

That would be so great.

A tiger.

Yes.

Or a liger, even, which is pretty much the coolest animal.

A unicorn, yes, I love unicorns.

What would you pick?

A corky?

A corgi?

That would be pretty cool.

We will saddle a corgi.

A German shepherd?

I don't know.

That'd be great.

That's awesome.

So in our story today, there's kind of a parade happening-ish.

Hey, but you make um there's a parade happening-ish, kind of a procession, maybe a protest, all different kinds of ways to describe what was going on.

But either way, Jesus was riding an animal leading somehow.

He was the main focus of the procession.

And guess what?

Animal he was riding.

Yeah, I'm amazed not if you pick donkey.

And why, right?

Although I do love donkeys, I will tell you that I've had some favorite donkeys.

Any of you have any favorite donkeys throughout history?

Yes.

The one from Shrek.

Now, everybody over here probably wouldn't say that.

Growing up with the Winnie the Pooh people, you would say, who's the most famous donkey?

Eeyore, of course.

Always losing his tail.

Eey.

But yeah, donkeys are cool.

And what's interesting is the donkey was really important.

It was really, really important.

In fact, it was part of a Jewish prophecy that the Messiah was going to come in riding a donkey.

And in some gospels, it says a donkey that had never been written before.

And that meant that it was a sacred donkey that held like a sacred role.

And it meant peace.

So the donkey meant that Jesus was coming to bring peace.

He wasn't coming to bring war.

He wasn't coming to bring violence.

He was coming to bring peace.

In fact, there was another parade on the other side, and the guy was actually riding a big war horse.

We'll talk about that later on.

But Jesus was saying, I come in peace.

And you know what's interesting is that that was the animal that was picked, right?

Of all the animals, there was the panda, right?

It was the tiger, it wasn't a corgi.

It was just sort of the animal that was constantly working in the background for people.

And maybe it was a small animal.

It actually says it was a colt, a younger donkey.

It was like a kid donkey, in fact.

And I wonder sometimes if it doesn't feel like as kids that we're not contributing much to the story.

But I think this story says that regardless of how young you are, and you contributed a really important piece to the work God is doing.

And I might make the case that this is the most famous donkey in history.

I am honored in the sight of the Holy One of the Lord, and my God is my strength.

God says, It is too like a thing that you should be my slave, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, the lion of Rebecca, and to restore the survivors of Israel.

I will give you as a light to the nation, for it will be, and my salvation reaches to the end of the earth.

Thus says the faithful one, the Redeemer of Israel, the God's holy one, to one despise by the nations, the slave of the rulers.

The queen and kings shall see and arise, the prince and princesses, and they too shall prostrate themselves, on account of the fire of Sinai, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.

Thus says the light God, in a favorable time have I answered you, on a day of salvation have I helped you, I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people to establish the land, to a portion of the desolate portions, saying to the prisoners, Go free to those who in darkness, let yourselves be saved, and along their paths they shall pasture, and upon all their heights shall be their pasture, and they shall not hunger, nor shall they thirst, neither shall he nor son strike them down, for the one whom the mother loves shall lead them, and by the springs of the water shall guide them.

And I turn all my mountains into a pathway, and my highways shall be raised up, and look, these shall come from far away, and sink these from the north and from the sea to the west, and these from the sad land of Sidon, which sing for joy in the heavens and exalt on earth, let the mountains break forth into singing, for the tender loving one has comforted God's people, and the mother love God suffering.

But as I have said, the everlasting God has forsaken me, my sovereign has forgotten me.

Can a woman forget her personal child?

Can a mother love for the child of a woman?

Even these may forget that I know I would not forget you.

See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands, that your walls are continually before me, the word of the Lord.

The Psalm today and Psalm 22.

Please respond at that verse.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Yet you are holy.

To you they cried and were free.

But I am wrong and not human.

All who see me mock me.

Commit yourself to the saving one.

Let God rescue.

Yet it was you who drew me from the world.

Upon you was I cast proof.

Be not far from me.

For truly nearly guarding the law, and there was an orcture, so that we might be justified.

We are no longer subject to an instructor, for in Christ Jesus you are all daughters and sons of God through faith.

So as many of you as were baptized into Christ, are lived in Christ, there is no Jew or Greater, there is no slave or free, there is no male or female.

For all of you are in Christ Jesus.

And if you are the Christ, if you are Abraham, is also heirs according to the Christmas.

They were made and regarders and trustees and overtimes and for us while we were minors, we were a slave by the greatest of the world.

So that we might receive an adoption of my children.

God has sent the Spirit of God to your son into our hearts crying, I am a Father.

So you are no longer a slave but a child.

An infant child that also near through God.

The word of the Lord.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Redeemer.

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, good morning, everybody.

It's kind of odd not having the scripture reading right before the sermon, isn't it?

So one of the things that I do as my own personal piety and practice is that if I find that I need it in my soul, I ask myself, how would this be different if I remembered that I was made in the image of God?

If I remembered I was made beautifully and wonderfully in the image of God, or how would this situation or conversation be different if I remembered other people were beautifully and wonderfully made in the image of God?

This imago day, this image of God belief seems to be really critical for us Christians, for us trying to follow this way of Jesus.

Remembering that in ourselves and other people and thinking about that.

And so I was thinking about like what does that mean this week as I was prepping for the sermon, and it dawned on me that perhaps what it means to be made in the image of God is that humans have this amazing ability to time travel.

Thank you.

I really did think that though.

Like, as far as I can tell, like I don't, I mean, like, I'm not a scientist like many of you, but as far as I can tell, with the technology that we have, like, we're the only mammals that have this amazing ability to time travel in our head.

Like, I mean, if you read a book, you can go off to a different universe and be immersed.

I can tell you that I can fabricate ten different stories in my head at any given time about any situation, and all of them seem real.

I can go back and I can remember things that did or didn't happen, but my experience of them is that they're absolutely real.

Like, we have this ability to create, imagine, remember.

It seems to be an intricate part of what it means to be a human being.

It's part and parcel of the human experience.

Like, what would we be without that ability?

Right, to imagine in the future or to remember what came in the past.

And so I think that the wisdom people, the religious people that have come before us have said that this is such an important piece of humanity that we have to engage it like in a holy way.

Like holy remembering and holy imagination.

So when I first say the word like remember, what's the antonym that comes to mind for most of you?

If I say, what's the antonym?

What's the opposite of remember?

Forget.

Yeah.

And so when I go to my wife Becky and I say, Oh, Becky, what happened?

What was the year that we went to Philadelphia?

I know it was somewhere in COVID and I can't remember anything about COVID.

But what year did we drive to Philadelphia if we took that trip as a family?

She said 2021.

Oh, yeah, I had forgotten that that was the year that we had done that.

It was an event, it was a thing.

That's a type of remembering.

But then there's also this other remembering that has a different hint in them.

Are you ready for it?

It's dismember.

So this is a remembering that is the opposite of dismembering.

Now, before you get too gruesome, I don't want, you know, you artists out there to start thinking of horror movies, so I want to back you away from that right now, all your imagination.

I just want you to stick with the metaphor that there seems to be a way in our life that we get pulled apart.

That we get pulled apart, that we, in fact, get disintegrated.

All of the stresses, the pains, and the hurts, and the problems of life, like we leave here, and it seems like we're just being dismembered.

We don't know where we came from, we don't know who we are, we don't know what pieces to trust, and there seems to be this is a reality that I've experienced in myself and in my pastoring with people.

And so if you're experiencing that reality in any way, welcome to humanity.

And so the gift of that is remembering.

The gift of that disintegration is integration, which means to make whole, integrare.

We put ourselves back together again.

And there's a holy ritualistic way that we do that.

And we didn't invent it, like Christians didn't invent it, St.

Thomas didn't invent it.

This seems to be something that religious people have been doing for a very long time.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters, they have a name for it.

I've forgotten it, Mike.

Zarat.

Mike, Zahar, Mike Newin.

But Noah's a Zakar.

Zakhar.

And so when they would tell their great stories about when God delivered them out of Egypt, they would say, remember in a way as if you were there.

Put yourself in the story.

Use that beautiful memory and imagination and go back and walk with your brothers and your sisters.

And in doing so, you are going to put yourself back together in a new and holy and beautiful way.

And so, coming from that, Christians took that wisdom.

And this, my friends, is part of what we do every single Sunday here.

On the night before he died for us, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread when he gave thanks, he gave it to them, right?

And said, Do this in remembrance of me.

Then he took the cup of wine when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and said, Drink this, all of you, and do this in remembrance of me.

We're not just simply remembering something that we could have forgotten.

Oh, yeah, Jesus did that.

I forgot about that.

It's been a busy week.

No.

We are coming here and we are joining Jesus at that table.

We are remembering in a way that invites us to participate in a holy and beautiful way, a way that transcends time and space and everything that we seem to know about physics.

And we go back and we're there.

There's a holy futuring, and that's called prolepsis.

That's where we join the angels and the archangels and all the company in heaven and saying, holy, holy, holy Lord, we remember that this is going somewhere.

Future remembering.

But every Sunday we come here and we bring our disintegrated self and we say, God, can you help put me back together?

Am I the only one that has that experience?

You come here, you don't listen to a word me or Mike says, because you don't have to, but we still love you.

God loves you.

You don't have to listen to anything that we say.

But then you come to this table and you participate, and you're like, I don't understand.

But I just feel like I've been put back together again.

Like something happens in our souls.

I can't be the only one.

So the wisdom of the tradition is it doesn't just happen on Sundays.

Like, in fact, we are asked to do this remembering in a very special way one week a year.

And we call that holy week.

So the faithful that have come before us have said that if we take our focus, and boy, is focus the hot commodity, isn't it?

I mean, there's a trillion-dollar market that has monetized our focus, hasn't it?

And so we willfully take this super valuable commodity, our focus, and we turn it to a week, not a day, not a moment.

And we look at the week starting today, we call this holy week, all the way through to Easter.

We don't skip from Palm Sunday to Easter.

That's not good.

That's called the prosperity gospel.

More on that at another time.

But if we take our focus and we focus on Palm Sunday, and then we walk, if you want, through the stations of the cross or the labyrinth, and then you come on Wednesday, and we read and we talk about Judas, and Judas both being the feeling, the betrayed, and the acting, the betrayer.

And then we get to Palm Sunday and we hear Jesus say, or not Palm Sunday, no, May Thursday, where Jesus says, I came to serve.

We say, No, we don't want that.

I came to serve.

And then he talks about the betrayal and how people are going to abandon him, and then he goes, and there's the prayerful garden.

And will you stay with me for just one hour?

Can you sit as Jesus is bleeding sweat because he's so anxious and doesn't want to do what God has asked him to do?

Can we come alongside that and be with Jesus in some way?

And then it ends on Good Friday, where we scream, crucify him.

And then we see the despair of Black Friday.

We see the despair of the day I say that Jesus or God became an atheist.

And then we sit in Saturday and we wait.

And the hope is that Sunday cometh.

And the promise is that if we focus on this week, the new thing cometh.

I don't know what that looks like for you or me or anybody else, but I do know that God will be faithful as we walk this.

And the invitation is if we walk this walk, there will be a change.

We will be put back together in some way.

We will be remembered as we remember this story.

That is what the ancestors have told us, the faithful that have come before us, that's what this week is about.

Is finding yourself in the story?

If you follow Jesuit spirituality, they're really big into this, this holy imagination of finding yourself in the scripture readings.

Who are you?

What character are you?

Are you a bystander?

Are you Judas?

Are you Jesus?

Are you a Roman soldier?

Are you the one who is betrayed?

Are you simply the cook?

I don't know.

Who are you in this story that you allow yourself to immerse yourself in the story to see what happens?

So that's my invitation for this week.

And now I want to take a minute and invite you into something today.

So Palm Sunday.

It's interesting, right?

Waving these palms saying, save us, Jesus Hosanna.

Save us, Jesus Hosanna.

Now, Mike earlier this week said, you know, Sean, it wasn't a pointy foam finger.

I just think that's really funny.

They weren't waving pointy foamed fingers saying, woo-hoo, you're the most amazing.

That's not what it was.

It was actually a response to what was happening on the other side of Jerusalem.

You see, Jesus was coming from the east side, and he was coming down through, and he asked the disciples to go get a donkey for him, and that was a really important animal because he was going to process in to fulfill the scriptures.

He was going to come in through the golden gate.

That's what the scripture said the Messiah would do.

Now on the other side, the west side, Pontius Pilate, who represented the violent Pax Romana, Pontius Pilate, the one who was wielding the sword, the sword that said, peace at all costs.

Peace or death, the Pax Romana was a little nervous about these upstart Jewish people and their insurrectionist sort of tendencies.

They had done this before.

So he was coming in on a giant war horse.

Military procession.

Think Kim Jong-un.

Think the videos of Nazi Germany.

In our own way, we've all done this.

This military procession that has happened throughout human history.

Coming in, showing the might and the power of violence that leads to control, that makes everybody feel safe, and boy, there's peace.

Not everybody benefits from the peace, only the people at the top.

But boy, is there peace.

Peace through violence, control through violence.

We're going to warn these Jews.

And so on this side, here you have Jesus coming in on a donkey.

A donkey that was meant to represent peace.

See, kings rode into cities on donkeys to declare peace, not war.

To declare peaceful intentions.

And we see this throughout the story of Jesus, throughout the entire story of Holy Week, through the crucifixion, as he's promising peace and forgiveness.

So here Jesus is coming in on the donkey.

And do you think all the people waving palm branches thought, yeah, this is going to be great and peaceful, and he's going to die, and it's going to be wonderful?

No.

See, the irony is as we wave these palm branches because the palm branches were actually signs of violent insurrection.

Isn't that interesting?

You see the Maccabees revolt that happened, you know, a couple hundred centuries before, not a hundred centuries, a hundred years before, they overthrew the power.

And this was a reminder that violence can overthrow.

We are powerful.

You are the Messiah that has been promised.

Every single one of them was being faithful.

All of their teachers, well, not all, most of their teachers told them that this is what the Messiah was going to look like.

They were expecting a military leader that was going to overthrow through violence, through insurrection, the yoke of Rome and re-establish Israel.

And so they were screaming, save us.

The palm branches meant you are going to be the military victor.

You're going to be the one that did it.

But they were doing it faithfully, and this is really important.

They were all out there trying to live consistent with their faith and what the scriptures told them as they understood it and what their teachers told them.

And Jesus, here he is on this donkey.

I can't help but be thinking, I just don't get it.

This is why I think he weeps later on.

Don't understand.

And they didn't.

This is why I think Judas betrayed him.

Because he thought, man, you've betrayed us.

You're supposed to be this other guy.

This is why Peter took out a sword and cut off the ear of the slave, the slave servant.

Because he thought, we're here to fight.

We're here for violence.

And over and over again, Jesus was saying, I know you are proclaiming me as the Messiah.

I know you're doing the best that you can.

I know that you are faithfully trying to live into this story, but you got it wrong.

And what happens when Jesus disappoints every single one of them?

What do they do?

They flee him or they tell him to kill him.

They flee him and then they say crucify him.

Because we want the violent God.

The one who shows might and power and is in control.

So the same voices that wave save us are the ones that say, crucify him.

The same voices that say we will never abandon you, flee and can't sleep for an hour, or can't pray for an hour.

This is the beginning of the story, friends.

I mean, this is why when the Christian tradition merged with the Holy Roman Empire, which some historians will say that was the moment.

That was the moment where we uh everything changed.

We gave in to what the entire story was trying to push back against.

And so the invitation, like, I wish I could wrap up this sermon in like a really cute, fun, good way and give you some like conciliation or something at the end.

I can't because this is the beginning of the story.

And the beginning of the story is me inviting you into your faithfulness.

You are here, you are waving palms, you are saying I believe, you are saying save me, you are saying, Jesus, I'm doing my best to proclaim you as Messiah and follow you, and you're doing that faithfully, just like me.

I'm doing it too.

And I'm finding myself in this story knowing that at some point that same God is going to disappoint me, and I'm gonna have a choice of how I respond.

This is how we remember.

We don't rush.

We don't rush to Thursday, Friday.

We walk the whole week together.

And today I want to hold up the highest hopes of faithfulness in God that we have.

We think we're doing the best that we can, and that's a good thing.

I want to hold that up as a good thing.

That's part of the story.

And then I also want to remind you that Friday cometh.

God will disappoint us.

We will abandon, we will betray, we will crucify.

Mike pointed out, that's why so many of us have learned to take these palms and make them into crosses.

Who's done that?

Has anybody done that?

You got one, you could do that.

To remind us, this isn't like a rally of foam finger.

This is a recognition that the same voices that say that also say crucify and go to the cross.

And we live in that tension.

So, my friends, I invite you into this.

I invite you into this week.

I invite you to find yourself in the story.

I invite you to walk it slowly, whatever that means to you.

It might mean showing up to all the services, it just might mean taking an hour or 15 minutes every single night and finding where we are and walking this path and doing it together, knowing that if we do, then we will be put back together.

We will be remembered by God.

We will experience a newness and a wholeness come Sunday.

I don't know what that looks like, but I know that's the promise, and that's the encouragement.

Amen.