Sermon for Palm Sunday

Read first: Matthew 21:1-11 and then Matthew 27:11-54

One of the wonders of nature is to see a murmuration of starlings. They can form clouds of many birds, the clouds constantly changing shape as the birds move this way and that. What makes them move in this way, massed together, rather than individual birds doing their own thing? Well that is part of the wonder of it all. It might well be something that evolved in order to give them greater safety from predators.

In these present troubled times, we have seen a similar human phenomenon, as we have flocked to the shops to buy toilet rolls. On the one hand it is understandable, if people are worried by a lock-in and the need to be well stocked for an uncertain future. Many of us have responsibilities as parents or carers. Yet there was a classic interview with a young man, clutching a large pack of toilet rolls. Why did you buy them? He replied that he did not really want them, but everyone else was buying them, so he felt he ought to too. There is a real human picture here of going with the flock. The downside of this, in recent days, has been the amount of rotting food that has had to be thrown away, as people have bought more than they can eat.

The almost irresistible draw of flock behaviour might well be what is at work in today’s Palm Sunday reading about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Word gets out that Jesus is coming, and the crowds react in a sense of group excitement and joy. “Hosanna to the King!”  Perhaps in a world in which life could be hard, as it was lived out under the yolk of a foreign occupying power, the entry into Jerusalem of a man who had promised a new kingdom was a moment of unbridled hope and expectancy. Yet, liturgically speaking, there are two Gospels for Palm Sunday. The first is the account of the Triumphant Entry, the second is the account of the Passion and the death of Jesus on the cross. Whatever had drawn out the crowds, to shout “Hosanna”, their cries soon turned to “Crucify!” Perhaps their momentary hope of a new kingdom rapidly turned to dust, as Jesus was arrested, tried and executed. In the end, it seemed, he did not deliver what they had hoped for, or hardly had dared to expect.

At a time when so much that we have taken for granted seems now to be questioned, and we wonder whether the world will ever be the same in the future, perhaps it is a time to weigh up our values and ask what is most important in our lives. What drives us? What fires our passions? What helps to make us the people we are? What is it that makes us most fully alive as human beings?

There may be many passions in our lives. One person’s passion may make them a leading expert in something, or someone who achieves great heights. We can be passionate about our family, or about some noble cause. Our passions shape us. The challenge of the Christian Gospel is to ask whether what drives us is simply of the present moment, or indeed something that time will eventually corrode and extinguish. Or can we dare to begin to see the things of the Kingdom that Jesus came to present to us, and for which he died? To enter that Kingdom we need to enthrone Jesus as King over our lives, for in doing so we surrender ourselves to the one who will shape us, mould us and lead us to find a renewed sense of identity as children of God.

We need to be among the crowd, who can hail Jesus and cry “Hosanna!” Yet if we believe that living for Christ makes all right with our lives, perhaps we have chosen the wrong kind of king. Jesus moved from a moment of glorification to the vulnerability of one, who would be cruelly put to death. And therein lies the uttermost core of the Gospel message. Our King is not one who rules over us as some kind of supreme protector, but the Servant King, who is prepared to give his life for us. The power of his kingship lies in his self-giving love. If we can see it, then our lives are transformed and we will have begun to live the life of the Kingdom. But such kingdom-living is not an endless round of palm-waving, as we greet Jesus as King. Rather, to be seduced, by the power of love that flows from the cross, is to be drawn into a way of living in which we too will find ourselves lost in self-giving for a broken world, and broken in standing alongside all who suffer.