Introduction to Palm Sunday

There is no sermon on Palm Sunday, as we have the full reading of the Passion from St Matthew’s Gospel. What follows is the short introduction to the service:

Today is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. It begins a journey, starting with this triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the Death Star of the Gospel; it begins with the cheers and celebration of the crowds; cheers that will soon turn to jeers.

Normally we would process from the Pleasance to Church. Today we have processed, more impressively, from Yorkshire to Putney. And we will move through this week to the upper room, like where we celebrate the Eucharist today, where the disciples gather for the last time; to the garden of tears at Gethsemane; then arrest, trial, execution on a lonely hill outside the city; and then a week today we will celebrate his final triumph over death in Easter resurrection.

This is not a Disney last minute turn around. This isn’t the joyful discovery that Baloo was not dead; the recount that snatches victory from the jaws of defeat; Harry Potter falling off his broom but swallowing the golden snitch.

The resurrection does not undo the crucifixion. The bread that we share is broken, the crucified body is a broken body. The church now more than ever is a broken body, separated in our communion from one another. We meet as the first disciples met, anxious, many afraid.

But we meet with trust in Jesus who has shown us the way. We meet in the hope of the resurrection that is to come. That does not undo our suffering, does not prevent illness, injury and the death of the body; but in faith gives us hope that the love we bear witness to this week is a love that will never die; that lives eternally, as Christ does, with our father in heaven.

So in anticipation of that joyful feast let us raise our palm crosses, if we have them, and simply our hands and our hearts if we don’t, praying for God’s blessing.