Scripture: Psalm 118:1-2; Psalm 118:19-29; Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 14:32-38 Series: Lent
A Palm/Passion Sunday sermon that dwells on the irony of crowds who cheer ‘Hosanna’ and soon cry ‘Crucify him.’ Pruitt highlights Jesus’ oddly specific instructions about the donkey and colt to argue that God often asks us to do strange things we cannot explain in the moment, with grace seen only in retrospect; the call is to ‘come and see,’ not ‘wait and see.’ Moving into the passion, he reads Mark 14’s Gethsemane prayer (‘not what I want but what you want’) and notes Christ’s most surprising words are the ones he never said (I quit, I’m going home). The service incorporates the Stations of the Cross (Westminster Cathedral design, with a QR-linked online version) and a reflective musical moment. The closing exhortation: like the disciples Christ asked only to stay awake, we are invited simply to be with him this Holy Week, as Christ desires to be with us.
Illustrations: irony-english-class, andrew-of-crete-homily, westminster-cathedral-stations, jerusalem-via-dolorosa-pilgrims, qr-code-stations-page, rich-young-man-sell-all
March 29, 2026
Palm Sunday
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 Matthew 21:1-11
Waving from the Sideline
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever! Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.” Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it. I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he has given us light. Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God, I will extol you. O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.
Matthew 21:1-11
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Palm Sunday has always been a day of great irony. Because of that, it has been a hard day for the church to really process theologically. We lift up Hosannas and so often cheer with the crowds. “Yay Jesus. Save us, now. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Irony is one of those words that they talk about in high school and college English, that is difficult to define precisely. So irony becomes this term for English majors that people like will “well, actually” each other over and over again. Irony, at its core, is a disconnect between what we see and what is really there.
We see the crowd cheering and we know what is going to happen. It’s not going to be cheerful. We see people laying blankets down and branches down as if the king is entering the town and we know what they’re going to shout in a few days or a few weeks time. “Crucify him. Crucify him.” The church puts Palm Sunday the week before Easter, but Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was probably not just a week before Easter. It was probably a few weeks or a months before. During that time, Jesus did ministry in Jerusalem. Our proximity in celebrating Palm Sunday days before Good Friday accentuates this contrast.
There are many things we could talk about Palm Sunday, but I just think Jesus’s requests are really weird. Like, they’re very odd. I’m just gonna read this again slowly.
“Go into the village over there. As soon as you enter it, you will find tied up there a colt that no one has ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ say, ‘Its master needs it, and he will send it back right away.’”
Jesus has some painfully specific requests to make of the disciples before he enters Jerusalem. He’s usually not that detail oriented. This is one of those things about the teachings of Jesus. There actually isn’t a ton of detail to follow. When he is asked what the greatest commandment is, he focuses on two very general ones. When the young man comes to Jesus and asks to follow him, Jesus tells him to sell every everything he has. It’s not a very detailed kinda thing: sell it all. Not very detailed. It is not, sell your bad stuff or sell 10%. It’s just, sell everything.
As we reflect on the palms, as we think about the irony of this day, about the people cheering, Hosanna, hosanna, and then the same people yelling, crucify him, I want to hold onto this one notion that maybe sometimes God is asking us to do things that in the moment seem really odd, that you cannot explain why you are here.
You cannot explain what has happened, but God is going to reveal it. We see grace of God retrospectively. We come back to it.
If we look in the moment, it is hard to see the movement of grace. And yet, when we look backwards, we see God’s amazing movement in that time. I want us to take a moment now to reflect on God’s movement in our lives. On some of the strange things that have been asked of us, the strange circumstances we find ourselves. Maybe God has not spoken to us, but we find ourselves in circumstances we cannot explain.
We don’t know how we got here. We don’t know what is going to happen next. There is a “wait and see” temptation to all of this. We don’t know what will happen so we better wait for more information. That may work in a lot of life, it doesn’t really work with God. Jesus never says wait and see. He does say, taste and see. He does say, come and see.
“Let us go together to meet Christ on the Mount of Olives. Today he returns from Bethany and proceeds of his own free will toward his holy and blessed passion, to consummate the mystery of our salvation.”
Even when the instructions are strange, we must go to him. We must come and see, not wait and see.
“Let us run to accompany him as he hastens toward his passion, and imitate those who met him then, not by covering his path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing all we can to prostrate ourselves before him by being humble and by trying to live as he would wish. Then we shall be able to receive the Word at his coming, and God, whom no limits can contain, will be within us.”
Christ has strange instructions for his disciples. The strangest has nothing to do with donkeys or palms. The strangest is that he wants you. You are worthy. You are loved. You are forgiven. You can lay your life down as he goes by. You can stand up and follow him as he walks from dark Gethsemane towards his death.
Passion Sunday
Today is not just Palm Sunday. It is Passion Sunday. It is the beginning of Holy Week and the passion of Christ. One way to understand the passion of Christ is the suffering of Christ: his great suffering for us. What God has done for us. We begin retelling this story today. We begin reliving this story today. So often, Palm Sunday ends on a note of cheers with a gentle nod to the jeers. Today, we’re also going to do the passion part. I’m gonna bring us to Mark 14 in the garden of Gethsemene. This reading takes place after the last supper, but before the arrest of Jesus.
“Jesus and his disciples came to a place called Gethsemane. Jesus said to them, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James, and John along with him. He began to feel despair and was anxious. He said to them, “I’m very sad. It’s as if I’m dying. Stay here and keep alert.” Then he went a short distance farther and fell to the ground. He prayed that, if possible, he might be spared the time of suffering. He said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible. Take this cup of suffering away from me. However—not what I want but what you want.” He came and found them sleeping. He said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Couldn’t you stay alert for one hour? Stay alert and pray so that you won’t give in to temptation. The spirit is eager, but the flesh is weak.”” Mark 14:32-38 CEB
Jesus was praying. Jesus felt alone. The weight of his actions, the weight of his life hung heavy on him: his experiences, nervousness, anxiety. He wishes the disciples to stay with him, but they fall asleep. Jesus knows what is going to happen to him. Just like we know, reading back, what is going to happen to him. In this way, we have the mind of Jesus. We can see as he sees and we can see the distance between his thoughts and those of his disciples. W can see how clueless they were to the realities that Jesus was facing. We have with this knowledge. We read in this passage an amazing prayer of Jesus. Abba, Father, for you all things are possible. Take this cup of suffering away from me. However—not what I want but what you want
Or in the older translations, not my will but your will. If you are in a place of pain and hurt, may you pray this prayer. If you are not in that place, this Holy Week, may you see that Jesus walked that road for you. May you give thanks to God.
Christ’s most surprising words are the ones he didn’t say. He didn’t say I quit. He didn’t say, they are not worth it. He didn’t say, I’m going home. His friends fell asleep. Another friend betrayed him, but Christ held close to father’s will, and so can we.
Stations of the Cross
Around the sanctuary we have a display of the Stations of the Cross, as designed for the Westminster Cathedral, not the famous Abbey, but the Catholic Cathedral. This is an ancient practice of the church. In the Holy Land, there’s almost always groups of pilgrims doing the stations in Jerusalem, reflecting on the last moments of Christ’s life. If you are ever in Jerusalem and you see Roman numerals on the wall in the old city,
If you follow the QR code in the hand out, it will take you to our website and to a page that goes through the stations so that if you are mobility challenge, you’ll still be able to pray and reflect on these moments in Christ’s life. The deeper we enter into Christ’s passion this week, the greater we will experience the rising of Christ next week. May the experience of Christ’s passion help you reflect on your own life, what God is doing for you, and how you can respond.
Reflextive Moment
Steve is going to play a little music in the background. You can start with the first station or really any spot around the sanctuary. These will be up all week
Closing
I encourage you, my friends, to try to stay awake. Jesus is here for you. He didn’t stay in Bethany, He entered Jerusalem, knowing what that meant. He didn’t go to sleep on the mount of olives, but waited to be betrayed.
You don’t have to move mountains. You don’t have to be a superhero. All he asked at the end was for his friends to stay awake and be with him. In his last moments, Christ desired to be with his friends. Right now, Christ desires to be with you.
As we enter this Holy Week, when the dissonance between the world and the church is so stark, may we remember that Christ, the word through whom all things were made, desires to be with us. May we desire the same.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.