A Homily for Palm Sunday

Pilate saith unto them, “Shall I crucify your King?”

—John 19:15

We have come up to Jerusalem! It is Palm Sunday (the Sunday of the Passion), and our Lenten journey has brought us to Jerusalem at last.

The twofold liturgy of Palm Sunday in a way summarizes our life as Christians in this world. The liturgy itself is a kind of homily, more profound than anything that will be read from this pulpit.

In the ancient liturgy, there is a Gospel lesson prescribed to be read at the blessing of the palms, and it is the same lesson that was read at Morning Prayer. We all know the story well. Jesus, coming into Jerusalem from Bethany, after raising Lazarus from the tomb, borrows a donkey and a donkey’s colt, and rides them into the city. This is the way it was prophesied of old that the rightful king of a united Israel, heir to King David (a thousand years dead), should enter the capital city.

A crowd gathered, and the people in the crowd spread their cloaks on the road and waved branches cut from palm trees. They cried out: “Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed be the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

This morning, having heard the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we in our turn bearing branches of palms, joined the procession and sang along with crowd that greeted Jesus on that first Palm Sunday, long ago:

All glory, laud, and honour, to thee Redeemer King,

to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.

Well do we acclaim his as our king, for so he his. Not the ruler of an earthly kingdom; not the expected heir to the throne of David in Jerusalem; but the king of eternal glory. Each of us, at our baptism, became a citizen of his kingdom and a soldier in his army, enlisted to fight manfully under his banner against the devil, the flesh, and the world. So we are right to wave our palm branches and to join in his parade.

And then, during the Liturgy of the Word, there was read another Gospel lesson: the Passion according to Saint Matthew. He who on Sunday rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, on Friday walked out again, carrying his cross. We have heard the whole story, the trial by the Sanhedrin on trumped up charges, the scourging and mockery by the Roman soldiers, the interrogation by Pontius Pilate, rejection in favor of the criminal Barabbas, the six hours’ agony on the cross, the giving up of the ghost.

And in this, too, we have taken our part, speaking the words of the Jewish crowd on the morning of Good Friday:

Let him be crucified! Let him be crucified!

His blood be on us and on our children.

Again we join our voices with that of the crowd, the fickle crowd that cried “Hosanna” to the king on Sunday, and by Friday was crying, “Crucify him!” If we were glad to join the crowd in their hosannas, we are reluctant to join in their condemnation, and yet we do well to do so, because it was our sins that crucified him. No one should waste time debating whether the Jewish Sanhedrin or the Roman military government was responsible for Jesus’s death: in truth, we are responsible. Pilate had a sign made and fastened to the cross above Jesus’s head, and the sign said: “Jesus the King.” By our sins, we crucify Jesus, we crucify our king, and we do not need that sign up there to tell us that we have done it.

In this our Palm Sunday liturgy we have the paradox and mystery of our Christian lives. We welcome Jesus and we proclaim him our King, and yet, before the echo dies away, we crucify him anew. In the Passion according to Saint John, Pontius Pilate asks the people of Jerusalem, “Shall I crucify your king?” The people answered, “We have no king by Caesar.” And what of us? Shall we crucify our king? What is our answer? Is it that, when it comes down to it, we have no king but money, or power, or popularity, or pleasure? Or, if Jesus is our king, why do we not live like citizens of his kingdom.

In his letter to the Philippians, Saint Paul tells us how to live like citizens of Jesus’s kingdom. We must think like Jesus. Our cares and concerns, our comfort and happiness, seem so very important to us. But how does Jesus think? Jesus is God the Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity, the very Word of God who was with God in the beginning. Important? Why Jesus is the equal of the Father himself.

But he humbled himself, he made himself of no reputation, he took on the form of a slave. The Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us, and, like all of us, he became subject to pain and death. For our sake he became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And that is what Saint Paul means when he tells us to think like Jesus.

And so we have come up to Jerusalem with Jesus, and we have seen accomplished all that he told his disciples would be accomplished: he has been delivered to the Gentiles, he has been mocked, and spit upon, and spitefully treated, and scourged, and put to death. And the good news is that on the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures. And he has ascended into heaven to sit upon the throne, and is become, indeed, our King. And if, by his grace, we learn to think like Jesus, we can live forever in his kingdom.

Church of Saint Mary Magdalene

Orange, California

20 March 2005

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