Palm Sunday Sermon - BMT - March 29, 2026

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 52:13—53:12;Psalm 31:10-18; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 27:11-26

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Part of the gospel of Jesus, part of the good news that is proclaimed, is that we were wrong about God. That we were wrong about Jesus. We were wrong about Christ. That's part of the good news. We were wrong because we were wrong about the problem we were in. The problem that we were in, that humanity was in, was actually much graver and more serious than we even knew. And essentially what the story of Jesus is, is that God comes and solves a problem that we didn't know existed or how bad it was, and then now, having solved the problem, we can look back and see what the problem was, but we look back and this doesn't generate despair, but actually assurance and confidence that the problem has been and is being solved, because a major part of the problem is that we were blind to the problem. So being able to see it is already evidence of something at work. But what is the problem that Messiah was expected to come and solve? That Jesus, the hopes that they had for Messiah. Well, to put it very broadly, it was the problem of good guys and bad guys. That God was a God who's going to come in and save the good guys and get rid of the bad guys. This is an ancient problem that is still very much alive today. Very much so. And we can see that if you lived in Jesus' time in first century Palestine under Roman rule, you would see why this seems like it would be the problem. Israel being the good guys and Rome being the bad guys, of course. You would not have wanted to live in first century Palestine as a Jewish person. Life was extremely challenging. You were under Roman rule, which meant that you couldn't do anything you wanted to do. Whatever you did was determined by Rome, who was in power. And the grip of Rome around Israel, the debt crisis in Palestine at the time of Jesus' ministry is astronomical. This is why there's so many hungry, poor people following Jesus around. It was extremely dire circumstances. And as the grip of Rome was tightening around Israel, what we see is that the grip of Israel's leaders begins to tighten around the people of Israel. And it begins squeezing so tight that even as we will see in the Gospels, this poor widow, all of her money, the last, the little bit that she had, gets squeezed out of her for the sake of the temple tax. To be in this time is to be living in this time is to experience political and spiritual suffocation. I mean, this is what it knows you know that feeling, just trying to keep our head above the water, trying to keep breathing, trying to keep going. But this was a dire circumstance that Jesus is coming to meet. And of course, Israel believed that if God could come in and solve the problem of Rome, right? The one who keeps dialing the pressure up on us all, then we could have the good life. This is uh the the good guys and bad guys narrative is fundamentally that the problem is out there somewhere, or it's with them or with her, with him. It's uh is what I call third person spirituality, you know, not first person. Third person is they need to change. He, she needs to change, I don't need to change. But this is born out of projection. Christ teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount that we become capable of seeing that little speck of sin in our sister or brother's eyes, and yet we're totally oblivious to the log in our own eye. Again, the problem's out there. This is for Israel, the problem was out there. And we feel often the same way. The problem, if this person wasn't in my family, I could have a good life, I could have the blessed life. If this person wasn't a part of my history, or if I didn't work with this person, if this person wasn't my boss, if these people didn't live in my neighborhood, if those people didn't vote in my elections, then I would have the good life. I would know what it means to be blessed by God. But these people out there are the obstacle to the blessings of God here. And so Jesus is coming into town in Jerusalem, and they're welcoming him with open arms and palm branches and shouts of praise, and they're hurling all these praises on Jesus because they're praising Jesus, because they believe he's a Messiah other than the Messiah that he really is. We do the same thing. We praise God for being the God other than the God that he really is. Praise to Christ, who's king of my heart, but not king over my money. Jesus is the savior of my soul, but he is not the savior of the way I treat my neighbor. The mingling of praise and lies. This is Palm Sunday. This is the initiation into Holy Week, where we praise Jesus for being the Messiah other than the Messiah that he really is. This Jesus did not come in to save the good guys and get rid of the bad guys, but this savior, this Messiah of Israel, will die for Israel and for Rome. For Pilate. Indeed, for the whole world. He's not just the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of Israel, but he's the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the whole world. And what happens when, right, the Jesus who was supposed to get rid of the bad guys and save the good guys, as you will see throughout Holy Week, the tables turn really quickly, right? The same lips and the same people that are hurling these praises onto Jesus will be the ones who, in just a matter of days, will literally, literally be begging to be done with Him. The tables turn. I mean, imagine you're throwing a party at your house. I don't know how many parties you throw at your house. Imagine you're throwing a party at your house, and the guest of honor arrives, you know, you're waiting for the guest of honor to arrive. This is why you're even throwing the party. And then the guest of honor comes and everybody is going wild. They're here, they come in the house, and they start ruining the party. This is Jesus in Jerusalem. They're hurling all these expectations on him for the Messiah that they think they need. And Jesus will refuse this. And his refusal, it will build resentment. Again, part of the good news is that we were wrong about Jesus. That as Jesus first comes to us, we don't take him to be the Messiah that we actually need. We choose instead Barabbas. It's interesting in the Bible, a lot of translations don't translate it, but it's really Jesus Barabbas. Do you want Jesus of Nazareth? Or do you want Jesus Barabbas? Do you want Jesus the King of Israel, the Christ? Or do you want uh Jesus Barabbas the insurrectionist? We want the insurrectionists. Give us that, Jesus. But as this Christ comes in and dies for the good guys and the bad guys, for Israel, for Rome, and for the world, he exposes that this whole narrative, good guys, bad guys, good, evil, light and dark, that that boundary is not traversed, it's not crossed at any one nation or border or gender or race or religion or political affiliation. But that line goes right down the center of our own heart. And the evidence of how this presents in us is that we have this great capacity, this overwhelming capacity to completely deny the preciousness of humanity before the eyes of God. We are blind, blinded, and refuse the loveliness and the unsurpassable worth of every single human being. When you have bad guys, especially divinely sanctioned bad guys, right, we're constantly trying to carve the boundary around love. And Jesus makes peace by the blood of his cross, by making peace between us and our enemies. The people that scare us, the people that we would like to be rid of, the people that annoy us, the people that we think my life would just simply be better if they weren't here. Jesus brings peace with God by bringing peace with one another. As Paul says in Ephesians, he broke down the dividing wall of hostility between Israel and the world, making a whole new humanity. Because there is no peace with God. There is no peace with God without peace among one another. There's no love of God and for God that is not at the same time love for our neighbor, love for our enemy. In the words of Dorothy Day, the person you love the least is how much you love God. And this Christ exposes this problem in us, illuminates this great capacity that we have to withhold love. And by withholding love from anybody, Jesus exposes how little we love God. This is not the God that we welcomed on the palm Sunday of the triumphal entry. But this is a God we quickly learned there's no good guys and bad guys in the gospel stories, it's just bad guys and a good God. We see that this is the God that we actually needed. Because if your God is a God who saves the good guys and gets rid of the bad guys, you better watch out. Because he'll leave you too. Because we'll always let him down. This, what we see on Palm Sunday, is though everyone is a liar, God is found to be true. Does our faithlessness, as Paul says in Romans, nullify the faithfulness of God? Absolutely not. On this Palm Sunday, we see how our truncated, projected praises onto God are often born out of our own failure to see the problem that we're actually in, and pushing that problem on other people, which is just a fancy way of talking about resisting transformation, resisting inner transformation, resisting repentance, resisting conversion. So long as the problem is out there, it's not here. And Jesus, as he comes humbly on a donkey, invites us into the humility necessary to see the salvation that this Messiah brings, not just to Israel, but to the whole world. May we continue to journey this holy week as we look forward to following Christ from Jerusalem, the temple to the cross, and finally to the resurrection. May we journey with Jesus and as we journey with him, may we be disabused of all the projections we put on to God. May we become disabused of all the excuses and lies that we make. May we be disabused of the idea that we need courage to hate people when in fact what it is is cowardice that's keeping us from love. May we follow him to his cross, may we know him in his suffering and share in his resurrection. Amen.