Hi everyone,
Welcome to worship for this Palm/Passion Sunday, which lands on April 13, 2025!
The bulletin for this service can be found here. You can use it to follow along with the service, or just use the words that appear on your screen. The sermon can be found on both the bulletin and this page under the worship video.
For an enhanced online worship experience, you can have a physical candle in your space, lit at the beginning of the service and extinguished near the end at the same time the altar candles are extinguished after the sending hymn. You are also welcome to participate in communion if you are comfortable, by having something small to eat and drink ready for the appropriate time. Further instruction will be given then.
May God’s unending love and grace bless you on this end of the season of Lent and moving in Holy Week and beyond!
Eternal God, humble us in the sight of your love, that as we seek the mind of Christ we might follow you in the ways of righteousness and service, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
You know, the church calendar has a lot of stuff going on over its 50ish weeks. The different seasons are cool of course, but each season would have a big festival day or two that are set apart from the rest of the regular days. The obvious ones of course would be Christmas, Easter, and maybe Pentecost, but there are others like Reformation Sunday, Ash Wednesday, and Mother’s Day for some reason. Not Father’s Day, mind you, just Mother’s Day (not that I’m complaining or anything).
Anyway, throughout my just over 16 years here at Grace, I’ve either missed or didn’t have to preach on each of those festival days at least once… all but one. Anyone want to guess which big festival Sunday I’ve never missed? That’s right, this one. Palm/Passion Sunday.
According to my super complicated and sophisticated math, that would mean that this would be my 17th Palm/Passion Sunday sermon here at Grace, which might not sound like a lot considering how many sermons I write just in general over the year, but my lanta does it ever feel like a lot of talking about the same exact thing.
I know, you all probably don’t even remember what I talked about in years past, but still it isn’t exactly a day that I look forward to or get too excited about, which makes it even more strange that I’ve never missed one in all my time here. I don’t know, I’ve just never really been a fan of this day. It is just a day that has so much going against it, that it’s almost confusing, especially in my preparation for it. I mean, it’s like a task and a half to source out the greenery for us to wave around and figure out how to decorate the space up here. It’s a huge struggle to decide what colour to wear for today and just be happy with the decision, because the liturgy calls for a colour that we just don’t have, and I’m not really wanting to buy a whole set just for this one day of the year. One day that I never miss, apparently, but one day nonetheless. And of course, the whole mashing two very contrasting themes together into one day is something that I don’t know if I will ever get used to.
I mean, it just makes the day awkward.
I know, I know, I’m one to talk as I’m pretty awkward myself. But you know what I mean, don’t you? I’ve talked about this before, but it’s awkward to have the joyous Palm Sunday on the same day as the solemn and somber Sunday of the Passion. It’s awkward to hear the somewhat pleading and faith-filled shouts of “Hosanna” morph into the twisted and anger-filled cries of “crucify him”. It’s awkward to navigate this dichotomy of two very different people groups that hold very strongly to opposing world views and paradigms. And if we’re honest, in the backdrop and landscape of our world today, this dichotomy just hits different.
Like, there are no shortage of walls that divide us these days, are there. There are plenty of lines, barriers, and chasms that split us apart. Almost everywhere we look, there is a reason to disagree, dislike, and even hate on the other.
And the problem with this is that, as of late, it seems like these walls are getting taller and thicker. It seems easier now to clump whole people groups together and label them all as wrong. The whole “if you’re not for us, you’re against us” mentality seems to be more prevalent than ever.
And today just seems to exasperate that.
I mean, like I said there are clearly two groups of people here in these two main stories we get for today, am I right? There is the group of the faithful of Triumphal Entry story and then the group of the hateful of the Passion narrative. There are those who are with us and recognise the Messiah and those that are against us and only see a traitor. There are those like us that believe that Jesus saves and those who aren’t and want Jesus to die.
They have to be different groups, right?
There’s no way they can be the same. There’s no way that they could change their mind about someone that quickly. There’s no way that they could be so… hypocritical.
And that’s the thing. They likely are the same group of people, give or take a couple disciples and Pharisees or so. They likely did change their mind or at least moved the goal posts of what is right and wrong to fit in with their predetermined paradigms. They likely are that surprisingly hypocritical… just like we are.
Because if we’re honest, while we might not go from “Hosanna” to “crucify him” over the course of week, we do go from “amen” to “who me” when it comes to God’s calling for our lives. We do go from accepting God’s love for us to thinking that there’s no way that God loves the others. We do go from confessing Jesus with our lips but then go out and deny him with our lives.
This isn’t to say that you are all awful people, because I’m including myself in this and I’m pretty awesome. But this is to say that this is human nature, this is just what we do and how we are, this is the sin that permeates our lives whether we recognise it or not. I mean, we can totally recognise in others of course, but the nature of this Palm/Passion Sunday calls and leads us to recognise it in ourselves.
In fact, all of the season of Lent that we’re finishing up today with this festival is about that.
We can say that we’re not perfect, but the discipline and practice of Lent shows us just how much and in what practical ways that is true. We can say that we draw lines between us and them, but this day of Palm Sunday combined with the Sunday of the Passion reveals to us how deep and almost unpassable those lines can be for us. We can say that we’re sinners in need of a Saviour, but throughout the lessons, seasons, and festival days, God shows us just how much we actually do get that Saviour.
But it is important to note that it isn’t because of our sin or recognition of it that God chooses to open for us the doors of salvation. It isn’t our shouts and pleas of Hosanna that makes us worthy of being welcomed and included in God’s plan of mercy and redemption. It isn’t even the act of unjustly convicting and condemning Jesus to die on a cross that saves us.
Rather, it is God who decides to save us in spite of all of that. It by God’s grace that our imperfection, hypocrisy, and sin don’t exclude us. It is because God, who is all love, chooses to extend that love to all people no matter their background, no matter their world paradigms, and no matter what side of that humanly created line they land on, and saves us.
See while this day marries Palm Sunday and the Sunday of the Passion together in this awkward dichotomy, it brings to light the awkward dichotomy that we have in ourselves of law and gospel, saint and sinner, light and darkness. While this season of Lent highlights all the ways that we don’t deserve what we get, it also reminds us that we get it anyway in abundance. While our faith reminds us of who we are as humans fully fallen and separated from God, we are also assured that God pushes aside those lines, breaks down those walls, and bridges those gaps into our hearts and declares us as beloved, welcomed, and saved children of God, brought into the unending arms of grace and love along with all the saints who are just as sinful but forgiven as we are.
So as we move from this season of Lent into this holiest of weeks that will culminate in the glorious resurrection of Christ, may we always recognise and see the lines that God erases, the walls that God passes through, and the dichotomies that God crosses, not to bring upon us guilt and shame, but to lift up just how big and wide God’s love and grace are. Thanks be to God. Amen.