Sunday of the Passion / Palm Sunday | 04.13.25 | Luke 19.28-40 | Carl A. Voges |

The Passage

And when he (Jesus) had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Beth’phage and Beth’any, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village opposite, where on entering you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat; untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ you shall say this, The Lord has need of it.”

So those who were sent went away and found it as he had told them. And as they were untying the colt, its owners said to them, “Why are you untying the colt?” And they said, “The Lord has need of it.” And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their garments on the colt they set Jesus upon it. And as he rode along, they spread their garments on the road.

As he was now drawing near, at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”  [Revised Standard Version, The New Oxford Annotated Bible; copyright 1973, 1977 by Oxford University Press]

“And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” [Philippians 2.8; RSV]

In the Name of Christ + Jesus our Lord

Today, the baptized people of the LORD God recognize how deeply grateful we are to be receiving and clutching the palm branches of this morning. The deep gratitude pours out on the first of eight holy days as his people have the Lord’s Great and Holy Week settle into and around their lives. In the span of these Eight Days we are reminded again of how the LORD God shatters yet re-builds his people. He actually shakes his people down to the destructive center of the world’s life and pulls them into his own so they can be saved and sustained by his Life! This is why there is a deep gratitude pouring from this Day; this is why we are receiving and clutching these branches!

For many other people, however, this day is just another one in early spring – the college basketball tournaments (women and men) have concluded, individuals are financially supporting the killer of a health executive, federal and state taxes are being processed, protesters think it legitimate to destroy property, and the Masters golf tournament is concluding today. Thus the true reality of this Day is being ignored or lost as the Lord’s baptized people make their way into the Church’s liturgies. That is tragic for the many people around us. We do not put them down for their understandings of this Day and this Week, but we recognize they are responsible for being so caught up in their lives. The baptized, on the other hand, are being plunged into the realities of this Day and this Week so we can better understand how the LORD God works his Life into this world and rescues those many people who are trapped by world’s life.

True reality of this Day and Week is exhilarating and exhausting as we move from Passion Sunday to Maundy Thursday to Good Friday to Holy Saturday to Easter Day. But the movement is also magnificent and strengthening as these eight holy Days wheel over, under and through our lives.

The holy days begin with Jesus making his entrance into Jerusalem after three years of ministry in his country. Having taught in Jericho, Jesus has traveled to Beth’phage and Beth’any on what would have been this past Friday (it is an uphill walk of about seventeen miles; Jerusalem’s altitude is 2,600 feet above sea level). [Beth’phage means a “house of unripe figs”; Beth’any means a “house of the poor and the afflicted.”]

Beth’phage and Beth’any are close to each other on the Mount of Olives east of Jerusalem. Beth’any will be the place of Jesus’ ascension in a couple of months. To reach Jerusalem one proceeds west down the Mount of Olives, through the Kidron Valley, and up the slope where Jewish people are buried so they can be the first ones to greet the coming Messiah (this reference is shadowed in Zechariah 14).

Why is there all this commotion over Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem? Because the crowds have heard about this man for nearly three years. They have seen him bringing a dead girl back to life; they have seen his teachings on the Sabbath leave the Jewish authorities speechless; they have seen him feeding huge crowds with small amounts of food; they have seen his associations with outsiders and sinners upset their Jewish leaders; they have seen him equipping his followers to carry on his proclamation of the Father’s Life; they have seen him call the Jewish leaders to repentance (a call met with resistance and contempt); they have seen him opening the eyes of a blind beggar.

In today’s Gospel, this Jerusalem entrance is marked by three things: the preparations for the entrance (verses 29-36); the response of the disciples (verses 37-38); the response of the Pharisees (verses 39-40).

When Jesus prepares for the entrance by giving instructions to his disciples, he knows where an unridden colt can be found, he knows that someone will question their untying of it, he knows that the owner of the colt will let it go when he is told the Master needs it. The colt is connected to Genesis 49.11 and Zechariah 9.9, Old Testament passages that describe the arrival of the Messiah, the Anointed One. The colt signals both royalty and humility of Jesus as that Messiah. The untying of the colt reminds us that Jesus’ entire ministry revolves around the world’s people being untied from the realities of sin, Satan and death. The non-resistance of the colt’s owner also reminds us that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Messiah.

As Jesus enters the city on this colt, the first response is from the crowds that have

gathered in the city for Passover. This crowd includes the twelve disciples, the seventy-

two sent out by Jesus and many others. Their shouts are not just reflecting how they feel about him, their shouts are imbedded in the Old Testament. The first shout, “Blessed is the coming One in the Lord’s Name!”, is verse 26 of Psalm 118, the same psalm that is sung on Easter Day! The second shout, “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heaven!”, echoes the angels’ hymn at Jesus’ birth, but with a striking difference. At Jesus’ birth, there is peace on earth; at his passion and resurrection, there is peace in heaven!

As Jesus enters the city on this colt, there is also a response from the Pharisees. They take exception to the shouts of the crowd and they let Jesus know how offended they are.

They are rejecting the reality that Jesus is the Messiah anticipated in the Old Testament.

Jesus replies that if he took their offense seriously and shut the crowd down, even the stones would pick up the shouts. This is a reference back to the ministry of John the Baptizer who spoke of stones becoming the children of Abraham. The stones point to the non-Jews who will become Jesus’ daughters and sons. Jesus is warning the Jewish authorities that if they continue to reject him and prevent others from receiving him, the LORD God will cause the world’s outsiders to gladly accept the mission of announcing his presence.

This is why we are receiving and clutching these palm branches, this is why a deep gratitude is pouring from this Day. Our Lord is about to step off into the deepest parts of our sin-soaked lives, taking them all into himself, letting those lives batter him until all the world’s life has been squeezed out of him and transforming those sin-soaked lives with his stunning resurrection in just eight days!

Recall those villages skirted by our Lord before he entered Jerusalem – Beth’phage and Beth’any. Our lives often resemble unripe figs, they are often poor and afflicted. Because we are born to look out only for ourselves, our lives get out of synch and generate all the chaos which runs loose in this world. They are afflicted, poor and resemble unripe figs because the unholy trio of sin, Satan and death are continually assaulting us with their destructive realities.

The unholy trio wants us to think that taking these branches and remembering them is ignorant and useless. They believe that the entrance of the Lord into our lives through the Sacrament of Baptism is not worth remembering and that it is much wiser and helpful to return to the date of our birth, the place from where we can live and focus on ourselves.

Gratefully, these eight Days will show Jesus stepping into our sorry-looking and sorry-acting lives by first crushing realities of the unholy trio and then flooding us with the realities of his unending Life! This is why we are so grateful this morning to be receiving and clutching these palm branches. Our lives can be selfish yet aggressive, smart yet confused, sick yet healthy, ignorant yet confident; our lives have been so emptied by the unholy trio we barely know where to turn. But then the mysterious workings of the Holy Trinity bring us up against their Baptism or their Scriptures or their Forgiveness or their Supper. From those holy places, we see the Lord continually turning to us, saving us, sustaining us!

That’s why we are so grateful to receive these branches this morning. As we clutch them and take them home for another year (tucked behind the crosses or pictures of the Son), we will recognize that the Lord’s crucified and resurrected Life has grabbed hold of us, re-birthing the lives that have been ground down and exhausted by unholy trio.

The Father, Son and Spirit are determined to rescue us from being turned in on ourselves and to give us a Life we had not known before, a Life that never deserts us! For the shattered yet restored people of the LORD God, this Day is beginning the greatest and holiest Week of the year! Yes, these Eight Days are exhilarating and exhausting, but, because of the Trinity’s holy activity, they are also magnificent and strengthening!

Now may the peace of the LORD God, which is beyond all understanding, keep our hearts and minds through Christ + Jesus Our Lord

Pr. Carl A. Voges, STS, Columbia, SC; carl.voges4@icloud.com