From Palms to Passion
From Palms to Passion by Rev. L. John Gable
April 2, 2023 Palm Sunday
How well do you think someone would know you if they were to follow you around for a week? Certainly they would know where you went and what you did, but what, if anything, would they know about your true character and the depth of your convictions? The quality of your friendships? Would they know the value of your faith? Famed Lutheran pastor Paul Scherer once said, “It is presumptuous of me to assume that someone, after following me around all day, will suddenly fall down on their knees, cross themselves and recite the Apostles’ Creed.” Of course I mean something more than that. I wonder though, what would an impartial observer say, or write, about you, or me for that matter, if we were to allow them free access for a week, not just to our public life, but to our private life as well; not just to those things we say and do, but also to those things we think and feel?
In our series of readings this morning we have effectively done just that. We have candidly observed a week in the life of Jesus of Nazareth as seen through the eyes of the Gospel writer Matthew. Some say this narrative is the earliest connected sequence of stories about Jesus on record. The rest of the Gospel stories were written around the core narrative of His passion and death.
Every year the preacher for the day is faced with a decision as this Sunday is given two designations on the Christian calendar. It is referred to as both Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. Most frequently we have tended toward the Palm Sunday celebration of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the waving of palms branches and the shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” But in making that choice it means we have chosen not to address the more difficult passages to put our heads and hearts around which tell of His passion and suffering and death. The problem with this is that the majority of worshipers, except those who attend the mid-week services of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, which of course I encourage you to do, move quickly, even naively, from the celebration of Palm Sunday to the glorious celebration of the Easter Day without sensing any of the drama that is played out between the two. If you will, they jump from mountain top to mountain top without ever experiencing the valley in between. They come to celebrate His resurrection without first having come to terms with His death, and as a result something vital is missing from their experience of this season of our faith. Yes, we are an Easter people, and everything we say and do must be shot through with the power and promise of the resurrection; but we are also a Good Friday people and we live in a Good Friday kind of world, and our faith speaks powerfully to those who experience what is commonly referred to as “the dark night of the soul.”
So this morning we have blended the two themes of the day, both the palms and the passion. Through Scripture readings, prayers, songs and the sacrament we experience something of a week in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, clearly the most important week in Jesus’ life and in the story of our faith. Consider this, given that Jesus had roughly a three year ministry each of the Gospel writers dedicate an inordinate portion of their books to the events of this week: Matthew and Luke 20%, Mark 30%, and John nearly 45%. Why? Because in their telling they want to remind us that Jesus was more than just a great teacher, prophet, healer or miracle worker. He came to be our Savior and Lord and that He became through the events of this week: His suffering, death and promised resurrection. Recall, the Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified”; not Him teaching, preaching, healing, not even Him resurrected, but Him crucified. The stories we’ve read today tell the essence of the story of our faith.
So, as we read these passion narratives, what can we learn about Jesus’ character and convictions? It is always striking to me to see how Jesus was able to view the events of this week, and in a larger sense of His entire life and ministry, as working in accordance with some master plan. It was not happenstance or blind fate that was moving Him along; rather it was His confidence in the hand of God orchestrating the plan of salvation laid out from the beginning of time. This truth touches on the deep mystery of the passion story, that God, in His sovereignty and providence, uses the evil actions of Jesus’ enemies and the faithless actions of His disciples, indicative of the sinful nature inherent in each of us, to accomplish the ultimate purpose of our salvation.
It is evident that Jesus knew, understood and accepted this for He remains remarkably passive as this drama is played out. As the events of this week begin to unfold, we can feel the drama building. In the background we witness betrayal and denial, midnight courtrooms and impotent leaders. We watch crowds shift allegiances from “Hosanna” to “Crucify Him” in a matter of days. But in the midst of that storm of activity and intrigue, chaos and calamity, there is a calm center: Jesus. I don’t have a red letter Bible, but considering the length of the narratives we’ve just read, Jesus is surprisingly silent. Though He was the focus of all of the attention, He is the “non-anxious presence” in the midst of it all. Even in His trial before Pilate the Governor was amazed that Jesus made no effort to explain or defend Himself. Perhaps John Calvin was right when he said, Jesus’ willingness to accept such insults and suffering on our behalf should move us to “secret meditations, not fancy words.”
Why didn’t He speak? Why didn’t He explain who He really was? Why didn’t He call down twelve legions of angels to protect Him as He said He could? Surely it was because He saw His part scripted against the backdrop of the larger drama of God’s plan of salvation. He saw His suffering and death, not as an end, but as the means to a grander and more glorious new beginning, for Himself and for us. He saw Himself as the “suffering servant of God” as referred to by the prophet Isaiah, and the Passover “Lamb of God” come to take on the sins of the world.
Jesus’ passiveness and silence were not an act of resignation (“I give up! Things are so out of control, there is nothing I can do about it!”), but of perfect submission and pure obedience to the will of the Father. So Jesus prays in the garden, “Not My will, but Your will be done.” Resignation is the response of defeat, but submission is borne of absolute confidence and faith.
Jesus here is not your typical hero in the classical sense: unflinching in torture, mystically blissful in suffering and pain. He is not the archetypal martyr who serves to inspire His followers with a parting soliloquy or act of bravery; rather we read this drama with a sense of humility and awe. Jesus is one, like any one of us, who in the midst of fear and anxiety is called upon to make a decision, and so chooses, despite all odds, to trust in God, choosing the way of obedience, choosing the way of faith. And because of this the author of the book of Hebrews writes, “Although He was a son, he learned obedience through suffering; and having been made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him” (5:8-9).
It is at this point that the Christian story has a great deal to say to any who have to endure the suffering and anguish of pain or disease or alienation or separation or grief or injustice. Without the experience of this week lived beneath the looming shadow of the cross it would be easy for some to say, “What does God know about what I have to endure?” Yet in Jesus Christ we see a God who knows our suffering, our pain, our weakness. Our God is a God who suffers with us and for us, so as Brother Lawrence pens so beautifully, “You need not cry very loud, He is nearer than you think.”
Jesus’ willingness to trust God’s plan and to experience God’s presence, even in the midst of the chaos and confusion of this His last week, arises out of the intimate fellowship He enjoyed and the deep confidence He had in God’s ability to work His purposes out. Friends, this kind of fellowship and this kind of faith are not intended for Jesus alone, but are available to you and to me today. We are invited not just to put our faith IN Jesus, but to actually have the faith OF Jesus. But this kind of faith is gained, not in a moment’s time, but over the course of a lifetime of prayer and meditation, of trusting in the promises of God even when the ways and means are uncertain, putting our faith in the sure faithfulness of God.
So, what would someone know of you or me if they were to follow us around for a week? Would they see in us evidence of an abiding trust in the presence of God, in the valleys as well as on the mountaintops? Would they see an unswerving confidence and a willing submission in us that God is working His purposes out in all of the events of our lives? Would they see evidence of an ever deepening faith and a growing intimacy in our fellowship with God, such that they would desire the same for themselves? This is what we see in Jesus, so we pray it might be what others see in us.
Rev. L. John Gable
Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
Indianapolis, IN