sermon at St Barnabas
Palm Sunday 2016
Palm Sunday 2016
After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusa
lem. When he had come near
Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Ol
ives, he sent two of the disciples,
saying,
Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you
will find tied there a colt that has
never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks yo
u,
Why are you untying it?
just say
this:
The Lord needs it.
So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told
them. As
they were untying the colt, its owners asked them,
Why are you untying the colt?
They said,
The
Lord needs it.
Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their clo
aks on the colt, they set
Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloa
ks on the road. As he was now
approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the w
hole multitude of the disciples began
to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds
of power that they had seen, saying,
Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace
in heaven, and glory in the highest
heaven!
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him,
Teacher, order your disciples to stop.
He
answered,
I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out
.
Luke 19:28-
40
I can tell you that Palm Sunday gives me mixed feelings. The sli
ghtly dodgy term
cross my palm
with silver
came to me earlier this week as I pondered on beginning another
Holy Week and as I
struggled to bring my thoughts together after a challenging
and often heart-wrenching journey
through Lent. Today, it seems more than any other Lenten journey
I have had to battle my way
through Lent. Yes I
ve had time out, I
ve reflected and pondered and changed, but it
s been a
struggle, mostly against myself I think. Maybe I always feel l
ike a punch-bag at this point; I must
re
-read this before I start next year
s Lent; insh
allah. Crossing my palm with silver seemed to
reflect more than just the words echoing from the Easter story;
the cross on which we hung him,
the silver which betrayed him and the palm of his hand throug
h which we drive the nails. Eve
n
more than this, the outstretched palm of Judas Eschariot
s hand as he received his bribe. And the
thoughts of the palms we flung in front of Jesus as we sho
uted Hosannah! Only to betray him a
few days later. It was all cemented when I realised that
cross my palm with silver
is associated
with fortune tellers, all confirming the dark thoughts
of me turning from being a celebrant of Jesus
on Palm Sunday, to a betrayer of Jesus in Pilot
s baying crowd on Thursday. I struggled to find a
way, struggled to find any honest way in understanding ho
w I should feel on Palm Sunday.
Waving our palm crosses on Palm Sunday as we re-enact what the cr
owds did before that first
Easter has always seemed like a play-act to me, or maybe that
s what it
s supposed to be. A pl
ay
-
act because I know that in five days I will be mourning his t
orture and crucifixion. Something
doesn
t feel quite right. In the reading we
ve just heard, Jesus
disciples
began to praise God
2
joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power th
at they had seen, saying,
Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
, so we can join that celebration perhaps. But this is a
celebration in the knowledge that in entering Jerusalem, Jesus of
Nazareth was entering the final
six days of his life. We should note, that it does not s
ay in our reading that the disciples are
praising that Jesus is going to die, there is no celebrator
y looking forward to the violence of
torture and death by crucifixion in this passage. The readi
ng actually has the disciples saying
Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!
So how are we to feel today? It may be that we would prefer to b
y-pass the events of what we call
Holy Week, to fast forward to next Sunday, to Easter Day and
the celebration of the wonderful
freedom of the Resurrection. Or just fast forward to Easter eggs
next weekend, or the end of your
giving up for lent, or just four days off work, or the
school Easter holidays, or as many church
leaders feel - just to get past Easter then so that I can relax
and take a break. I
ve got to say that I
m not sure any of these things are directly appropriate feeling
s for Palm Sunday.
It may be too easy to say that we celebrate today because we are fickl
e. It is easy to say that we
switch from being a good worshipper of Jesus today to a con
demner of Jesus on Friday, because
we are flawed and faulted human beings, I think Jesus expects mo
re from us than that. It is easy
for us to be in the crowd, harder to be a disciple. We are
called and this reading refers, to Jesus
disciples, not the crowd; it says
the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God
. If we
are to be followers of Jesus, then we are clearly called to stan
d out from the crowd.
The setting of our story is important. We
re on the Mount of Olives. This is right next to the old,
small, walled city of Jerusalem, I should tell you that when
it says
Mount
in scripture it doesn
t
mean mountain. The Mount of Olives is only 250 feet higher t
han Temple Mount in the old city, it
s like looking up to White Nancy from Bollington. The Mo
unt of Olives is steeped in Jewish
tradition, not least because it looks down on Temple Mount.
King David and Jesus both wept
there, it
s referred to by Ezekiel. King Solomon built altars to idols
there, Zechariah says that
Yahweh will stand on there and split the mountain in two.
It is a place of division still, with Jewish
graves going back at least 3000 years atop the hill and Musli
m graves on the lower slopes.
Zechariah, Absalom, Haggai and Malachi are all buried there. To Mess
ianic Jews, this is the place
where resurrection will begin when the Messiah comes. Jesus choos
es here, amongst the tombs of
the dead, amongst those waiting for resurrection, to begin h
is final descent into Jerusalem.
3
There is much more in this story than just a celebration of
Jesus entry into Jerusalem. As
mentioned, it is Jesus
disciples who are acclaiming him, there are numerous Old Testament
connections within the narrative
–
the colt, most likely previously un-ridden, has messianic
connections with Genesis and Zechariah, the disciples fetching
it, Jesus riding it with the disciples
cloaks placed over it. For followers of Jesus reading this st
ory there is a hall of memories, where
Jesus
entry becomes something much more than a pageant of celebration.
The quotation from
Psalm 118:26,
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord
. The scene continues with the
disciples shouting
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest
(19:38). Here we are transported back
to the hillside of Bethlehem and the shepherds who heard the
cry:
Glory to God in the highest and
on earth peace among people of his favour
(2:14). Jesus offered the way to peace. A healing of
division; He said
go to those with whom you quarrel and offer them your hand
s in peace
. Peace
hailed as heavenly is also peace made for earth. By recalling this
scene we hear the cries for
liberation among God
s favoured people, Israel, and all who belong to her. The s
tory brings
Christmas and Easter together in God
s Holy Son
1
.
Jesus continues down the path to Jerusalem, where blood has bee
n shed and will continue to be
shed, beyond his death. There are paths crossing the Western
face of the Mount of Olives now, as
you stand on Jerusalem
s walls you can see them, parallel paths crossing through
the tombs and
grave stones. One path has signs on it
the Jewish path
, others are walked on by Muslims entering
and leaving the Holy City from Silwan and East Jerusalem. The d
istances between these paths are
so small, at times only tens of feet. A road crosses the Mount
, with a line of coaches parked on it
in daytime bringing visitors to see the tombs and the graves.
One Jewish cemetery surrounded by
razor wire, clusters of graves outside it from fallen Israel
i volunteers who fought during the 19
67
war, damaged tomb stones, tipped up, broken, smashed maybe by sh
ellfire or maybe by hate. Two
great mausoleums which have survived a number of wars, their wa
lls peppered with shell and
bullet holes. And it the end of the paths, a military checkpoin
t. This is the Mount of Olives where
Jesus wept. Just out of sight of the checkpoint is Gethsemane,
where on Thursday Jesus was
tormented by the violence he was about to enter. So how are we to
feel today ?
1
N.T.Wright
4
In a passage preceeding the palm Sunday narrative in Luke, in chap
ter 23 verses 27 - 31, we hear
Jesus saying
Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for your
selves and for your
children
. That weeping has continued for two thousand years and mo
re.
The old city of Jerusalem is still a place of opposition
and a place of opposites. Which gate you
enter the Holy city by still defines who you are. Jewish and
Israeli tourists enter at the side of the
Western Wall, the Dung Gate, as Israeli
s will tell you wryly with typical Jewish humour. More
cosmapolitan Israeli
s enter mainly by the Jaffa Gate with its walkway connected to a mod
ern
shopping boulevard and to central west Jerusalem. Local poor Ar
abs from East Jerusalem enter by
the Damascus gate, the most imposing of Jerusalem
s gates and probably the one which Herod
would have ridden through. It is still a place of violence.
Some Israeli settlers also enter by
Damascus gate from East Jerusalem. There are other gates, the old Shu
shan gate which gave
direct access onto Temple Mount and which Jesus rode through
as the
Messiah
is now blocked
up. And the Lion
s gate which the present paths on the Mount of Olives lead t
o is entered manily
by local Arab Muslims from Silwan.
It is significant perhaps, that the gates to enter the city ar
e a sign of division, always have been and
maybe always will. So perhaps, if we take ourselves back two thous
and years, we are able to feel
the drama of the moment. As we ponder on Jesus
humble yet noisy entry on the colt, we can
recall another parade that frequently occurred on the other sid
e of Jerusalem, whenever Herod
rode into the city in full procession from his headquar
ters in Caesarea Philippi, he entered not on a
young donkey, but on a mighty mare, a warhorse. He came in the
name of Caesar, not in the name
of the Lord. He wasn
t surrounded by a ragtag crowd holding palm branches and wavi
ng their
coats. He was surrounded by chariots, accompanied by unifo
rmed soldiers with their swords and
spears and bows held high. Herod
s military procession was a show of force intended to inspi
re
orchestrated and fearful homage, compliance, not hope and joy.
2
2
Brian McLaren
5
And so the meaning of this day begins to become clear to us.
Caesar
s kingdom, the empire of
Rome, rules by fear with threats of violence, demanding subm
ission. God
s Kingdom, the eternal
Kingdom of Heaven, rules by faith with a promise of peace, wh
ich inspires Love and Joy. Jesus
tears are telling us something: he knows that our leaders aren
t going to listen to him. They
re
going to respond to Caesar
s violence with violence of their own, and that
s why Jesus made that
dire prediction that the temple and it
s bloodied walls would fall, and fall it did and fall it
always
will.
We should never let anybody tell us that there is no other w
ay; that there is no alternative to
division and violence. No alternative than the powers that b
e. There is an alternative, another
story, and that story is of Jesus, the prince of peace. Frid
ay may be five days away, but Sunday
s
coming!
lem. When he had come near
Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Ol
ives, he sent two of the disciples,
saying,
Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you
will find tied there a colt that has
never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks yo
u,
Why are you untying it?
just say
this:
The Lord needs it.
So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told
them. As
they were untying the colt, its owners asked them,
Why are you untying the colt?
They said,
The
Lord needs it.
Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their clo
aks on the colt, they set
Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloa
ks on the road. As he was now
approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the w
hole multitude of the disciples began
to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds
of power that they had seen, saying,
Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace
in heaven, and glory in the highest
heaven!
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him,
Teacher, order your disciples to stop.
He
answered,
I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out
.
Luke 19:28-
40
I can tell you that Palm Sunday gives me mixed feelings. The sli
ghtly dodgy term
cross my palm
with silver
came to me earlier this week as I pondered on beginning another
Holy Week and as I
struggled to bring my thoughts together after a challenging
and often heart-wrenching journey
through Lent. Today, it seems more than any other Lenten journey
I have had to battle my way
through Lent. Yes I
ve had time out, I
ve reflected and pondered and changed, but it
s been a
struggle, mostly against myself I think. Maybe I always feel l
ike a punch-bag at this point; I must
re
-read this before I start next year
s Lent; insh
allah. Crossing my palm with silver seemed to
reflect more than just the words echoing from the Easter story;
the cross on which we hung him,
the silver which betrayed him and the palm of his hand throug
h which we drive the nails. Eve
n
more than this, the outstretched palm of Judas Eschariot
s hand as he received his bribe. And the
thoughts of the palms we flung in front of Jesus as we sho
uted Hosannah! Only to betray him a
few days later. It was all cemented when I realised that
cross my palm with silver
is associated
with fortune tellers, all confirming the dark thoughts
of me turning from being a celebrant of Jesus
on Palm Sunday, to a betrayer of Jesus in Pilot
s baying crowd on Thursday. I struggled to find a
way, struggled to find any honest way in understanding ho
w I should feel on Palm Sunday.
Waving our palm crosses on Palm Sunday as we re-enact what the cr
owds did before that first
Easter has always seemed like a play-act to me, or maybe that
s what it
s supposed to be. A pl
ay
-
act because I know that in five days I will be mourning his t
orture and crucifixion. Something
doesn
t feel quite right. In the reading we
ve just heard, Jesus
disciples
began to praise God
2
joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power th
at they had seen, saying,
Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
, so we can join that celebration perhaps. But this is a
celebration in the knowledge that in entering Jerusalem, Jesus of
Nazareth was entering the final
six days of his life. We should note, that it does not s
ay in our reading that the disciples are
praising that Jesus is going to die, there is no celebrator
y looking forward to the violence of
torture and death by crucifixion in this passage. The readi
ng actually has the disciples saying
Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!
So how are we to feel today? It may be that we would prefer to b
y-pass the events of what we call
Holy Week, to fast forward to next Sunday, to Easter Day and
the celebration of the wonderful
freedom of the Resurrection. Or just fast forward to Easter eggs
next weekend, or the end of your
giving up for lent, or just four days off work, or the
school Easter holidays, or as many church
leaders feel - just to get past Easter then so that I can relax
and take a break. I
ve got to say that I
m not sure any of these things are directly appropriate feeling
s for Palm Sunday.
It may be too easy to say that we celebrate today because we are fickl
e. It is easy to say that we
switch from being a good worshipper of Jesus today to a con
demner of Jesus on Friday, because
we are flawed and faulted human beings, I think Jesus expects mo
re from us than that. It is easy
for us to be in the crowd, harder to be a disciple. We are
called and this reading refers, to Jesus
disciples, not the crowd; it says
the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God
. If we
are to be followers of Jesus, then we are clearly called to stan
d out from the crowd.
The setting of our story is important. We
re on the Mount of Olives. This is right next to the old,
small, walled city of Jerusalem, I should tell you that when
it says
Mount
in scripture it doesn
t
mean mountain. The Mount of Olives is only 250 feet higher t
han Temple Mount in the old city, it
s like looking up to White Nancy from Bollington. The Mo
unt of Olives is steeped in Jewish
tradition, not least because it looks down on Temple Mount.
King David and Jesus both wept
there, it
s referred to by Ezekiel. King Solomon built altars to idols
there, Zechariah says that
Yahweh will stand on there and split the mountain in two.
It is a place of division still, with Jewish
graves going back at least 3000 years atop the hill and Musli
m graves on the lower slopes.
Zechariah, Absalom, Haggai and Malachi are all buried there. To Mess
ianic Jews, this is the place
where resurrection will begin when the Messiah comes. Jesus choos
es here, amongst the tombs of
the dead, amongst those waiting for resurrection, to begin h
is final descent into Jerusalem.
3
There is much more in this story than just a celebration of
Jesus entry into Jerusalem. As
mentioned, it is Jesus
disciples who are acclaiming him, there are numerous Old Testament
connections within the narrative
–
the colt, most likely previously un-ridden, has messianic
connections with Genesis and Zechariah, the disciples fetching
it, Jesus riding it with the disciples
cloaks placed over it. For followers of Jesus reading this st
ory there is a hall of memories, where
Jesus
entry becomes something much more than a pageant of celebration.
The quotation from
Psalm 118:26,
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord
. The scene continues with the
disciples shouting
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest
(19:38). Here we are transported back
to the hillside of Bethlehem and the shepherds who heard the
cry:
Glory to God in the highest and
on earth peace among people of his favour
(2:14). Jesus offered the way to peace. A healing of
division; He said
go to those with whom you quarrel and offer them your hand
s in peace
. Peace
hailed as heavenly is also peace made for earth. By recalling this
scene we hear the cries for
liberation among God
s favoured people, Israel, and all who belong to her. The s
tory brings
Christmas and Easter together in God
s Holy Son
1
.
Jesus continues down the path to Jerusalem, where blood has bee
n shed and will continue to be
shed, beyond his death. There are paths crossing the Western
face of the Mount of Olives now, as
you stand on Jerusalem
s walls you can see them, parallel paths crossing through
the tombs and
grave stones. One path has signs on it
the Jewish path
, others are walked on by Muslims entering
and leaving the Holy City from Silwan and East Jerusalem. The d
istances between these paths are
so small, at times only tens of feet. A road crosses the Mount
, with a line of coaches parked on it
in daytime bringing visitors to see the tombs and the graves.
One Jewish cemetery surrounded by
razor wire, clusters of graves outside it from fallen Israel
i volunteers who fought during the 19
67
war, damaged tomb stones, tipped up, broken, smashed maybe by sh
ellfire or maybe by hate. Two
great mausoleums which have survived a number of wars, their wa
lls peppered with shell and
bullet holes. And it the end of the paths, a military checkpoin
t. This is the Mount of Olives where
Jesus wept. Just out of sight of the checkpoint is Gethsemane,
where on Thursday Jesus was
tormented by the violence he was about to enter. So how are we to
feel today ?
1
N.T.Wright
4
In a passage preceeding the palm Sunday narrative in Luke, in chap
ter 23 verses 27 - 31, we hear
Jesus saying
Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for your
selves and for your
children
. That weeping has continued for two thousand years and mo
re.
The old city of Jerusalem is still a place of opposition
and a place of opposites. Which gate you
enter the Holy city by still defines who you are. Jewish and
Israeli tourists enter at the side of the
Western Wall, the Dung Gate, as Israeli
s will tell you wryly with typical Jewish humour. More
cosmapolitan Israeli
s enter mainly by the Jaffa Gate with its walkway connected to a mod
ern
shopping boulevard and to central west Jerusalem. Local poor Ar
abs from East Jerusalem enter by
the Damascus gate, the most imposing of Jerusalem
s gates and probably the one which Herod
would have ridden through. It is still a place of violence.
Some Israeli settlers also enter by
Damascus gate from East Jerusalem. There are other gates, the old Shu
shan gate which gave
direct access onto Temple Mount and which Jesus rode through
as the
Messiah
is now blocked
up. And the Lion
s gate which the present paths on the Mount of Olives lead t
o is entered manily
by local Arab Muslims from Silwan.
It is significant perhaps, that the gates to enter the city ar
e a sign of division, always have been and
maybe always will. So perhaps, if we take ourselves back two thous
and years, we are able to feel
the drama of the moment. As we ponder on Jesus
humble yet noisy entry on the colt, we can
recall another parade that frequently occurred on the other sid
e of Jerusalem, whenever Herod
rode into the city in full procession from his headquar
ters in Caesarea Philippi, he entered not on a
young donkey, but on a mighty mare, a warhorse. He came in the
name of Caesar, not in the name
of the Lord. He wasn
t surrounded by a ragtag crowd holding palm branches and wavi
ng their
coats. He was surrounded by chariots, accompanied by unifo
rmed soldiers with their swords and
spears and bows held high. Herod
s military procession was a show of force intended to inspi
re
orchestrated and fearful homage, compliance, not hope and joy.
2
2
Brian McLaren
5
And so the meaning of this day begins to become clear to us.
Caesar
s kingdom, the empire of
Rome, rules by fear with threats of violence, demanding subm
ission. God
s Kingdom, the eternal
Kingdom of Heaven, rules by faith with a promise of peace, wh
ich inspires Love and Joy. Jesus
tears are telling us something: he knows that our leaders aren
t going to listen to him. They
re
going to respond to Caesar
s violence with violence of their own, and that
s why Jesus made that
dire prediction that the temple and it
s bloodied walls would fall, and fall it did and fall it
always
will.
We should never let anybody tell us that there is no other w
ay; that there is no alternative to
division and violence. No alternative than the powers that b
e. There is an alternative, another
story, and that story is of Jesus, the prince of peace. Frid
ay may be five days away, but Sunday
s
coming!