A Homily for Palm
Sunday
Blessed is he that
cometh in the Name of
the Lord. . . . Let
him be crucified.
—Saint Matthew, 21:9
and 27:21
“When the great crowd that had come
to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to
Palm Sunday’s is, except for the
Easter Vigil, the most dramatic liturgy of the Church year. Today we, like the multitudes in
But that is not the whole of the
drama. That is not where our role playing
ended. For multitudes
are fickle and crowds may be swayed any which way.
We have played our role as the crowd that
escorted Jesus into
“The chief priests and the elders
persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas,
and to
destroy Jesus. The governor said to
them, ‘Which of the two do you want me to release to you?’ They
answered, ‘Barabbas!’ Pilate
said to them, ‘Then what shall I do with Jesus called Messiah?’ They
all said,
‘Let him be crucified!” “Pilate said
to
them in reply, ‘Then what do you want me to do with the man you call
the king
of the Jews?’ They shouted again,
‘Crucify him.’ Pilate said to them,
‘Why? What evil has he done?’ They only shouted the louder, ‘Crucify
him.’” “Pilate . . . washed his hands in
the sight of the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man's blood.
Look to it
yourselves.’ And the whole people said
in reply, ‘His blood be upon us and upon
our children.’”
Oh, yes. We played the crowd again. We who a few minutes earlier had said,
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” cried out, “Let him
be
crucified,” and, “His blood be on us and on our children.”
Which is to be then? Which crowd
are we?
We know which crowd we want to be
part of. If we try to imagine ourselves
not re-enacting the Scriptural scene here at Saint Mary Magdalene’s
church,
but, rather, as part of a crowd in first century Jerusalem, it is much
easier
and much more pleasant to imagine ourselves among that crowd on the
road from
Bethany, waving palms and chanting, “Hosanna,” than among the crowd on
the
Jerusalem pavement hooting, “Crucify, crucify!”
And are we ever called, in all the Christian year, to say
anything quite
so chilling as, “His blood be on us and on our children”?
In fact, however, we are part of
both crowds. We hail Jesus as our Lord
and King, for so he is. And we would not
be here this morning if we did not know and love him as our Lord and
King. And because we know, and love, and
worship
him as our King, we belong among the crowd that greeted him with palms
and
hosannas.
And yet in our everyday lives we
show ourselves also to be part of that other crowd, the crowd that
demanded his
crucifixion, the crowd that was willing to have his blood on its hands
and on
its head. That is because it is our sins
that crucified Jesus Christ, who was himself without spot of sin.
He is despised and rejected of men; a
man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief:
and we hid as it were our faces from him;
he was despised,
and we esteemed him not.
Surely he hath borne our griefs,
and carried our sorrows:
yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten
of God, and
afflicted.
But he was wounded
for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities:
the chastisement of our peace was upon
him;
and with his stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we
have turned every
one to his own way;
and the LORD hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all. . . .
He was cut off out of the land of the
living: for the
transgression of my people was he stricken.
And he made his grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death;
because he had done no violence, neither was
any deceit in his
mouth.
Yet it pleased the Lord
to bruise him;
he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make
his soul an offering for sin
He was crucified for our sins, and,
therefore, whenever we are dishonest, whenever we are angry without
cause,
whenever we are unkind, whenever we betray a trust, whenever we covet
those
things which are our neighbour’s, we make
ourselves
part of that crowd that answered Pilate, “Let him be crucified.” Whenever we do those things which we ought
not to do or leave undone those things which we ought to do, we are
saying,
“Let him be crucified.” Whenever we put things in place of God in our lives, we
are crying out, “Let him be crucified.”
“Christ Jesus: who, being in the
form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God[,
instead] made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a
servant
and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a
man, he
humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the
cross.” And we, by our sinfulness, by our
pride, by
our love of self, say again and again, “His blood be
on us and on our children.”
“God proves his love for us in that
while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
. . . while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through
the death
of his Son.” This is the mystery of the
incarnation; this is the mystery of the atonement.
Jesus Christ did not argue with Pilate, he
did not try to prove his innocence, he did not offer an alibi. “When he was accused of the chief priests and
elders, he answered nothing. Then said Pilate unto him, ‘Hearest
thou not how many things they witness against thee?’ And he answered
him to
never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled
greatly.” “He was oppressed, and he was
afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep
before her shearers is mute, so he opened not his mouth.”
When he entered
And we may imagine yet another
crowd, a crowd that had followed from the judgment hall, along the Via
Dolorosa, and now is milling about on
“And when they were come to the
place, which is called
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