The Week: Sermon for Palm Sunday 2019

Sermon Palm Sunday 2019

Text: Luke 19:28-40

         We’ve reached the beginning of the week.

         This is the week we’ve been moving towards for the 40 days of Lent, but it’s also the week we’ve been moving towards for 3 months since Advent and Christmas Eve. The child born for us, Immanuel, God with us, has reached the last week of his life, and the beginning of ours. We can celebrate the wonder of that silent night because the small infant swaddled in cloths, laying in a manger, ends up wrapped in linen and spices in an rock hewn tomb, a stone rolled in front of it, and then gloriously that tomb will empty.

         This is the week where Christ gives himself to us, where in the last supper he tells the disciples and us, here I am. This is me. When you eat the bread. When you drink the wine, I am here. I am with you in that moment. The separation of time and distance makes no difference, I will be present. To nourish, comfort and fill you.

This is the week that finishes. We finish the life of Jesus Christ, his entrance this day finalizes that his death will occur. By entering Jerusalem today in the way he did, events are set in motion that guarantee he will die. There is no avoiding it. He enters comparing himself to Caesar, palms branches strewn before him just as Caesar would have returning home in a grand victory march. Here Jesus enters declaring himself a different kind of Emperor. Instead of might and power, Christ enters into Jerusalem to what will seem to those in power as his defeat, his death, his brutal horrific death upon a cross. And yet, in that he wins.

This is indeed the week that ends. Jesus at the end will feel utterly alone. He is abandoned by his disciples. The eleven fall asleep in the Garden after the meal as Jesus prays for the events to come to be taken from him. He is betrayed by Judas, whom he had brought into his 12 closest disciples and friends. Betrayed by a kiss. A sign of love used as an implement of death. His disciples react with violence, cutting an ear off a soldier, and Jesus cries, No More of this! And heals the man. He goes with the soldiers in peace, not violence. And when all seems at the lowest, Peter denies him. Not once, but three times, and as the rooster crows, Jesus looks back at the one he called his rock, and sees sinking sand.

This is the week with no hope. Jesus goes through trial after trial. Before the Chief Priests and Scribes. Before Pilate. Before Herod. And finally, before Pilate again at the last. Each time lies, accusations, charges, blame, and hatred sent at him. No truth, but what they think. His life exchanged for the life of a murderer in Barabbas. No mercy, no cries of hosanna, but crucify him, crucify him. He is beaten, stripped, whipped and flogged. He carries his own cross, until in weakness he can’t and a man Simon of Cyrene has to carry it for him. And finally he is brought to a hill, a low barren hill of death, the skull. And there he is nailed to a cross, his right hand, his left, and his feet. And in agony, he hangs there. For hours. Until three in the afternoon, when he cries out, Father into your hands I commend my spirit, and breathes his last.

This is the week when Jesus dies. When his disciples and followers, the women from Galilee, see all hope gone. It is the week when Joseph of Arimathea takes Jesus body down from the cross, wraps it in linen cloth, and lays it in a rock-hewn tomb.

This is the week where all seems to end. …. But, then, into this seeming ending, God’s glorious power erupts. For this is the week that begins.

This is the week of Maundy Thursday, of Good Friday, of last suppers and betrayal and death. And this is the week of Easter.

And on Easter, it all begins. For the resurrection of Christ is the moment that changes the all of everything.

It is the moment Christ gains life. Where God wins, where death dies, love is victorious. It is the moment where we gain life. It is the moment of baptismal renewing. Of resurrection promises, of life everlasting, of glory, peace, forgiveness, grace, and mercy.

This, people of God, friends, is the week. We’ve been waiting for this week our whole lives, and it’s so glorious we celebrate it every year. This week of weeks, may God walk with you wherever you go, may you know that Christ has entered the darkest moments, and brought the light of life into all our days. May you be blessed, cared for, and restored in these days of days. Amen.