Service 4/5/20

Sermon Notes:

Palm Sunday – April 5th

Glittering sadness. That is how one teacher describes Palm Sunday.

There is such a mix of beauty and pain in this day, a mix of unbridled joy and pure grief.

Jesus is called king, but ends up a prisoner and convict. He will accept the love and happiness of people who cheer as he rides in on a donkey, and with the same open arms will accept torture and execution at the hands of people he asks God to forgive.

He loves us. He loves us every step of the way and to the very end. 

Isaac Watts hymn When I Survey the Wondrous Cross says: See, from his head, his hands, his feet; sorrow and love flow mingled down…

Palm Sunday shows the sorrow and the love co-mingling in Jesus so we can see the sorrow and love co-mingling in our own lives. We experience the high of Jesus’ triumphal entry and yet we know where the path leads. We know the crowds will thin. The disciples will make promises they do not keep. An innocent person will be ridiculed, beaten, killed. A criminal will turn to love at the last moment.   

Palm Sunday shows us our own mortality and asks us to come to terms with the sorrow and love of our own lives. Can we rejoice in times of joy? Can we go to our knees and weep when we suffer? Can we go to our own crosses knowing we are not alone, knowing that Christ has walked this road? Can we live through times of pain and betrayal and hold onto a faith that tells death and loss cannot be the end of our stories because of who and whose we are?

Palm Sunday highlights the profound theology of our Christian faith: that betrayal can be overcome, that justice does prevail, that sacrifice can lead to redemption, that death can lead to resurrection.

Though we are apart in these days of social distancing, still we walk this road together.

See you online Sunday!

Jane