The ceremonies are stripped away - Palm Sunday 2020

Today begins Holy Week, the most important time in the Christian calendar, the time when we are asked to walk with Jesus to the cross before joining in with the celebrations of Easter Day.

It’s an emotional week if we follow it properly and this year the emotions are even a little higher as we miss seeing and touching loved ones and we miss the chance to gather as a church family.

Palm Sunday is always a special day in church as we’re presented with our Palm Crosses. Often it seems to be a chaotic mess as we attempt processions with people travelling at different speeds and sometimes even in different directions. We often gather for the first part of the service outside the church building offering a wonderful witness to people who are walking past that something particularly important is happening.

Today, as I said, is different, but I wonder perhaps if it doesn’t give us the chance to understand the mind of Jesus in this week a little bit more.

The gospel reading (Matthew 21:1-11) is Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The scene we attempt to recreate each year must have been far more chaotic than ours with crowds cheering along small roads, with people spreading their cloaks on the roads and waving their branches as they greeted Jesus into Jerusalem.

The hopes of a passionate crowd were pinned on Jesus, but I’m not sure they even understood what those hopes might be. And that seems to have been true of the disciples too as the events of the week unfold and it becomes clear that even they hadn’t quite grasped what Jesus had told them about coming to die... But for Jesus he knew where he was going and he knew the purpose.

He was going to accept betrayal, arrest, torture and death and you can imagine that, for him that day, as he entered Jerusalem, the cheering of the crowds and the waving of the branches must have all seemed to be pretty hollow.

And the last verse of that gospel reading points us to something else as well. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, a city in turmoil, some people asked ‘Who is this ?’ and the reply of the crowds was, ‘This is the Prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.’

The crowds didn’t even know who it was they were cheering for – they didn’t understand that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah who had come to offer hope and peace and new life into broken lives. They didn’t understand what Jesus was coming for and his journey to the cross certainly wouldn’t encourage them to follow but for now, they’d join together and make some noise !  

Some years ago Helen and I were at a restaurant and there was a very large gathering of young people there having a meal celebrating a birthday and amidst the celebrations one person was heard to say, ‘Whose birthday is it anyway ?’

It’s easy to be drawn into an emotional response to a situation. It’s easy to be taken in by the crowds and it’s easy to be wrapped up in the ceremonies and the procession in church, but this year it’s different.

All those things are stripped away and the cheers, just as they were for Jesus on that first Palm Sunday, are hollow. And this challenges us to think what it all means to us.

Without the ceremony, without the procession, without the singing of hymns together, without our church building, what is left ? Is it the Prophet Jesus from Nazareth riding into Jerusalem on a donkey or is it the Saviour of the world, our Saviour, who has changed and is continuing to change our lives day by day.

We may not have the chance to be together in the church building this year for Palm Sunday but that does give us a different opportunity to reflect on where we put Jesus in our lives.

For the crowds on that first Palm Sunday they were ready to cheer. Some may have been the same people who less than a week later were out again shouting, only this time it was to save Barabbas rather than Jesus from execution.

If we don’t know Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, then he can’t sustain us and strengthen us through the darkest times in our lives. If we don’t know Jesus then our shouts will be as fickle as the early crowds gathered in Jerusalem. If we don’t know Jesus, then, like most of the disciples, faced with trouble, we will turn away and hide. If we don’t have the building we love and the ceremonies and the processions and the hymns then we might as well go shopping on a Sunday when the shops eventually open…

But I hope that we know that Palm Sunday was just the beginning of Holy Week. There was so much more to come and the journey wouldn’t be easy. Things would get a lot worse before they got better. We’ll all have heard that over the last few days as we’re called to cling on to faith, to know that things will get better. How true those words were on that first Palm Sunday when from the cheering and the waving of branches the journey would lead to the Last Supper in the Upper Room, to the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot, the mockery of a trial and the decision that he should be crucified…

And if we don’t know Jesus as our Lord and Saviour then that is the end of the story. Another prophet who said some good things and showed a good deal of love and compassion to others was put to death by a powerful regime, whether we see that as the Roman authorities or the Jewish religious leaders of that time.

But that isn’t the end of the story and Jesus knew that all along. Yes, he accepted the very real pain, both emotional and physical, and he did that because he loves us just as he loved the people that did it to him. But he knew that new life was coming, that death would be conquered once and for all and that there would be nothing in earthly life or death that could ever separate us from him and his love for us.

Palm Sunday is the beginning of the journey through Holy Week. This year, I’ll say it again, it’s different, but this year we are to strip back the ceremonies, the procession, the crowds of people and think about our own response to Jesus and his love for us and to think about the love that he showed and continues to show to us day by day.

Life will contain many ups and downs and for many, this period of isolation, will be a big down, but let’s always be comforted and inspired by the fact that Holy Week, with some of the darkest days in history, ends in joy. Holy Week ends with resurrection and new life.

Holy Week ends with the turning point of history. Humbly Jesus entered Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday riding on a donkey and he rides on still as the Risen King of Glory destroying any darkness that we can ever face and promising new life, fulfilled life, eternal life. 

When the ceremonies and processions and buildings are stripped away, we're left with Jesus, and he's more than enough. AMEN