A sermon delivered by the Rev. Dr. Patrick H. Wrisley. March 24, 2024, Palm Sunday, Year B

                  Today, we are attending a parade and just like NBC before the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, we are going to first take a backstage look at what is going on before we get to the parade itself. Parades don’t happen in a vacuum and we need to know why our parade this morning was going on in the first place.

                  To refresh our memories, we need to slide back to John 11 and recall what happened there. Jesus was down by the river Jordan with his disciples, and he got word from Mary and Martha that his best friend Lazarus was near death. By the time Jesus made the journey up to Bethany where Lazarus lived, Lazarus had already died and had been buried for four days. Jesus gets chided by sisters Mary and Martha for not getting there sooner to heal their brother and he insists on seeing where they buried him. Jesus comes to the tomb, tells people to remove the stone, and then calls out to Lazarus to come out. Sure enough, Lazarus comes shuffling out of the tomb all bound up with burial clothes. When the crowds saw this, they went nuts. The Mainline religious officials were none-too-pleased about it. We read in John 11:47 that the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and groused, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” It was at this point, that both Jesus and Lazarus had a bounty placed on their head; Jesus because of what he did and Lazarus because he happened to be the recipient of Jesus’ grace.

                  Lest we forget, all this happened leading up to the festival of Passover which required all able-bodied men in Israel to attend in person. Jerusalem and its environs were teeming with all sorts of people and animals. Bethany was just a few miles away from the city and the night before the parade, Jesus and the disciples were having dinner at Lazarus’ home. This is the dinner where Mary washed and anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive oil and was summarily chewed out by Judas Iscariot for spending too much money on the ointment being used. Tensions were beginning to rise both on the inside of the fellowship as well as with the religious and political authorities.

                  The next day, there was no intentional effort to throw Jesus a parade; it kind of spontaneously happened. By this time, people in Jerusalem had heard about Lazarus coming out of his tomb and were thronging from Jerusalem to Bethany to see what really happened. You had the people from Bethany who actually saw Lazarus emerge from the tomb heading to Jerusalem with Jesus. Then, you had the religious pilgrims filing into Jerusalem as well. All these crowds merged into one joyous throng headed to Jerusalem. Amid the crowds were the grumpy religious leaders looking for a way to nip this in the bud.  Let’s pick up in John’s Story with verse 12:12 and following. This morning, I am reading from the J.B. Phillips translation. Listen to the Word of the Lord!

John 12:12-16

                  12-13 The next day, the great crowd who had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming into Jerusalem and went to meet him with palm branches in their hands, shouting (lines from Psalm 118), “God save him! ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’, God bless the king of Israel!”

                  14-15 For Jesus had found a young ass and was seated upon it, just as the scripture foretold (in Zechariah 9) — ‘Fear not, daughter of Zion: behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt’.

                  16 (The disciples did not realize the significance of what was happening at the time, but when Jesus was glorified, then they recollected that these things had been written about him and that they had carried them out for him.)¹

                  This isn’t the first occasion palm branches were waived in honor of a king in Jerusalem. About 160 years earlier, Simon Maccabaeus and his brothers led a resistance fight against one of Alexander the Great’s successors, the Seleucid king, Antiochus. It was recorded that,

On the twenty-third day of the second month, in the one hundred seventy-first year, the Jews entered (Jerusalem) with praise and palm branches, and with harps and cymbals and stringed instruments, and with hymns and songs, because a great enemy had been crushed and removed from Israel.²

                  Friends, it’s important to remember that when the crowds were surrounding Jesus and the multitudes of people were sweeping him into Jerusalem, they were celebrating Jesus as the new king who was going to reclaim Jerusalem and oust the Roman occupiers. We forget that Palm Sunday was an in-your-face sociopolitical statement in the eyes of those gathered. From the Roman point of view, this parade was an insurrection against their power. The established religious officials were upset that Jesus, along with this raucous throng, would throw the city into violent turmoil as people commemorated the Jewish release from Egyptian bondage. The irony is just too rich!

                  Palm Sunday is more than a parade we have made it out to be; on the contrary, for those ushering Jesus into Jerusalem, Palm Sunday was a dissenting protest march on the capital city. Rome and the established religious establishment were worried about armed rebellion. Perhaps even some of the people in the crowd were thinking that, too. But Jesus wasn’t. He was coming as the new King but as a king who conquers hate and fear with love and hope. The only person that week who would feel the violence of the Empire was Jesus himself. His was a kingship of humility, of sacrifice, and one of big surprises.

                  There was quite a panoply of people that day in Jerusalem. There was Jesus who was taking it all in but realized how blissfully clueless everyone was about the reign he was inaugurating.

                  There were people who had witnessed Lazarus emerge from the tomb as well as those who wanted to see if what they heard about Lazarus was true; what did he look like? Smell like? Act like?

                  There were some who were all caught up in the excitement and hope that maybe, just maybe, this Jesus was the promised Messiah who would displace the Romans and retake Israel; they had absolutely no idea what that really meant or looked like, but they wanted to be on the side of a winner.  

                  Who else was there? Roman officials trying to calculate the risk of violence with this incredibly large mob. There were the religious officials who were standing back in gross disgust and disdain that this country-bumpkin Rabbi from Nazareth was about to topple the status quo and with it their social influence and power.

                  And then there were those like the disciples themselves. John indicates they were clueless about what was going on and that only in retrospect did they fully “get it.” What were they thinking as they watched Jesus fetch the colt and sit upon it? They were wondering how all the weird things Jesus was saying about death and eternal life aligned with what they were watching. This movement had become so much larger than they ever thought it would. I can see them furtively looking back over their shoulders to make sure things were still ok. All of these disparate groups watching this parade/protest and were forming all sorts of opinions in their minds about what was going on.

                  So, the question for you and me is this: Where do we see ourselves that day of the Palm Sunday parade? Where are we today? What do you and I think is going on? As we once again commemorate Jesus humbly riding in to establish his reign among us, what are we thinking about the rabbi from Nazareth? Are watching him ride into Jerusalem from a distance? Are we worried he is going to upset the status quo of our routines and lives? Are we threatened by him? Confused by him? Anxious about him?

                  These are the things we are asked to ponder as we enter into Holy Week. What is our relationship with the one who has come to liberate us to set us free and make us whole? Gratefully, we are given food for the journey to help us on our way.  We are invited to come to the Lord’s Table and be served by his hand and be fed his body and have our slaked souls refreshed with his blood. As you come forward for communion, let’s reflect upon why we came to the parade. In the Name of the One who is, who was, and who is yet to come. Amen.

© 2024 Patrick H. Wrisley, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls, 8 West Notre Dame Street, Glens Falls, NY 12801.  Sermon manuscripts are available for the edification of members and friends of First Presbyterian Church and may not be altered, re-purposed, published, or preached without permission. All rights reserved.

¹ JB Phillips New Testament (Phillips) The New Testament in Modern English by J.B. Phillips copyright @1960, 1972 J.B. Phillips. Administered by the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. Used by permission.

² 1 Maccabees 13:51-52.