Palm Sunday - Lynn Campbell

Mt 21:1-11, Philippians 2:5-11, Mt 27: 11-54

Today, Palm Sunday, we begin again. Whatever your Lent has been, this is now Holy Week, the most sacred week of the Christian year. We are invited to make the choice to enter more deeply into the journey of Jesus to Jerusalem and ultimately to the cross. We are called to let go of our fears and our false loves and to instead walk with Jesus in his suffering.

Offering any reflection on Holy Week, especially after the reading of the Passion narrative, is a daunting task. How can words ever adequately reflect the mystery of Jesus’ death on the cross? For me this is a time in which words fail to satisfy. I think our Church, in her wisdom, also knows this to be true. So, on this Holy day and during this Holy week, we are offered other ways – a liturgical path – on which to enter into the great Mystery of our faith.

We are embodied people and we need external signs to help us take in the importance of this Sunday and the importance of this truly Holy Week.

As you walked into the sanctuary this morning, you knew something was different. The altar hangings have changed from the purple of Lent to this beautiful deep red, we were given palms to hold, and we have palms rather than flowers on the high altar. The liturgy even started in a way that is different from any others.

And the scriptures, the stories for this day. We don’t just hear them. We experience them. We move quickly from the passionate and hopeful shouts of “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” to the condemning shouts of “Let him be crucified!” Palm Sunday always gives me the feeling of emotional and spiritual whiplash. I can never seem to make sense of the shift from Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem to his death on the cross. But in my confusion, I can imagine how extraordinarily difficult it was for Jesus -- how painful, how horrible -- to reconcile that his journey had come to this.

We don’t just think about this journey in our minds or our words. We come to know this reality with our bodies. The Church offers us ways to enter more fully into this Mystery of Jesus passion and death. We do this later in the week with the liturgies of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. In the powerful liturgy of Maundy Thursday we remember the Last Supper shared with Jesus and his disciples. And as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, we will wash one another’s feet as a symbolic act of love and service to our sisters and brothers.

On Good Friday, through Scripture, prayer, and music, we will meditate on the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus. We will sit still, grieving, scared, with Jesus who, in the words from today’s letter of Paul to the Philippians, “emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.”

Holy Week is not like every other week. Life is different this week. We intentionally journey with Jesus, in our prayer and in our actions, to the darkness of the grave. Perhaps you will do this through attending the Holy Week liturgies this week or maybe through your own prayer and meditation with Scripture. Whatever path you choose, please choose one. Allow your heart to be transformed by the humility and obedience of Jesus to the will of God. Empty yourself of those things that keep you from walking with Jesus. Open yourself to become a new creation.

As Christians we know that death does not have the last word. We know that love overcomes fear and the life is victorious over death. But we cannot experience this new life and love without journeying with Jesus to the cross. May God be with us on the journey.