Palm Sunday Meditations
“Palm Sunday Meditations” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Meditation 1 Matthew 21:1-11
Palm Sunday is a wonderful Sunday of the church year, one which I look forward to for the corporate worship experience of waving palms—and especially of seeing children waving psalms—and for the personal joy of hearing a roomful of people sing or shout, “Hosanna!” Although it’s pretty close to the sound of my name, Hosanna is not a title, it’s a prayer, or a plea. It’s adapted from the Hebrew hoshiah na,which means ‘save us!’ ‘deliver us!’ or ‘save, I pray.’ It is rooted in the psalms, specifically in Psalm 118:25 which says Please, Lord, please save us. Please, Lord, please give us success.
Some of you are familiar with the writing of American author Anne LaMotte. She has written a book about the three essential prayers which she calls, Please Thanks Wow! Hosanna is definitely a Please prayer—please, Lord, save us. But like any prayer of that variety, it can shade into: Give me/or Give us what we want! That is what happened that Sunday morning in Jerusalem when Jesus came riding in on a donkey. The crowd, as crowds do, got worked into a frenzy, because there were indeed things which they wanted, and they had the hope that Jesus of Nazareth could deliver. Because he wasn’t just a new political leader, he was Jesus the Christ, the Messiah who had been promised and prophesied as the one to save the people of Israel.
Palm Sunday was a political protest—and political protest, and the violence which often follows—has both a very long history and very recent iterations: the American Civil Rights movement; the Tiananmen Square uprising in China in 1989, Arab Spring 2011 in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen; Syrian protests, and the Iranian uprising of 2025. Not every response is violent, not every cause is just, but typically governments which have power are reluctant to relinquish it without a fight. This was certainly the case with the Roman Empire, the world military leader which was not about to let the rabble in Jerusalem break off to follow some wild-eyed religious zealot from a backwater town.
What makes Palm Sunday compelling, and why Christians continue to observe it—in addition to the palm fronds and the children—is that is a reminder that we can be both right and very, very wrong at the same time. Jesus was (and is) the Messiah, God’s Anointed. Jesus did (and does) come to save the people. But Jesus did not overthrow the Roman Empire as the people prayed for, expected, and demanded. It isn’t because the people didn’t pray hard enough or weren’t willing to take up arms or weren’t fervent in their desire to get out from under Roman oppression. It’s because God had prepared another way. A way which was more subtle and more costly and more miraculous than anyone—including Jesus’ closest followers—could imagine.
We who seek to follow Jesus nearly two thousand years later must continue to ask what God requires of us. We cannot, or should not, observe Palm Sunday without remembering what happened later in the week. We cannot wave palms and sing Hosanna and watch the parade without remembering that the people who did so were misguided. They thought they knew how their salvation was going to come about: through insurrection and political revolt. Sure, people would die—that’s the cost of political change—but that’s what it takes to bring regime change. And right now, we are all about this guy on the donkey, who is unconventional but definitely a talented preacher and healer. In a few days, when it’s clear he’s not The Guy, we’ll call for him to get thrown under the wheels of the Roman Empire and be crucified.
It takes a special kind of courage, not to mention a special kind of faith, to be open to change which happens differently that you expected. Instead of a better alternative to the Roman Empire, Jesus came to bring us to the kingdom of God, and kingdom which s both greater and more humble than any kingdom or power the world knows.
Meditation 2 Isaiah 50:4-9a
This Old Testament text from the prophet Isaiah takes on an eerie resonance when we consider the New Testament events of Holy Week. Isaiah 50, which Jan read for us, is one of four passages in Isaiah which are known as the Four Servant Songs, or Songs of the Suffering Servant: they are found in Isaiah chapter 42, 49, this one from Isaiah 50, and then an extended passage in Isaiah 52 and 53. Every since the death of Jesus these passages have been read by Christians as a foreshadowing of the suffering and death that Christ would face. These Servant Songs do not narrate the death of Jesus; you can find the record of those events in each of the four gospels, and at Creekside’s Good ‘Friday’ service (this Thursday evening) you will hear that story from Matthew’s gospel.
What the Servant Songs tell us is about the character of Christ. If the folks lining the streets of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday had been more familiar with, or had been thinking about these passages from Isaiah, they would have had a different perspective on the savior they were pleading for. Of course, this is relevant for us today as we grapple with a society and world which can feel like its coming apart: familiar cultural norms fraying, political division and unrest, violence and terrorism, wars and rumors of wars. These things, sadly, are not new; neither is our longing for peace and salvation and wholeness. Even when our assumptions are flawed or misguided, we can look to Christ for salvation. And here is what we will see:
God’s servant who was obedient to his death—even death on a cross. Isaiah 50 tells us how he listened for and was attentive to God’s teaching, how he was struck, beaten, insulted and spit upon. But the Lord God gave him strength to not turn back or give up. Being insulted was not a disgrace, not being obedient to God or giving up before the task was over would have been a disgrace. If we are obedient to God, no one can declare us guilty because God will vindicate us.
This is a terribly difficult teaching. Only Jesus, God’s Son, who was closer to his Father than any other person ever has been or will be, could fulfill this prophecy. Despite our resolve or our best intentions, we would rather avoid the humiliation and suffering part of this story and get right to the joy and exaltation of Easter and resurrection. Easter is coming, but we have to reckon with crucifixion and death first, not just Jesus’ death, but the things in us which have to die—bitterness, the need for revenge, shame, our need to impress other people, the list goes on and –-the things which need to die for us to experience new life. We have to put to death the things which block us from experiencing God’s love and grace before we can accept that love and grace. The salvation we experience because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is miraculous because Jesus’ path was so congruent with God’s purpose that he was obedient even though it meant suffering and death. We are not magically saved by Jesus’ death: it demands our own obedience and sacrifice.
This is why we share this story every Holy Week, and many weeks in between. Jesus’ faithfulness to his Father’s purpose and the invitation to follow Him is the foundation of our faith, it is the heart of discipleship, it is the hope for the world. It is the story we must know and tell to others. If you are not able to join us Thursday evening, I suggest that you read Matthew’s account of the crucifixion in chapters 26 and 27 in preparation for Easter Sunday. We are going to end by singing 259 in you Blue hymnal, When I survey the wondrous cross. Sir Isaac Watts wrote the text of this hymn in 1707 (!) I don’t think anyone has written a better description of our response to Jesus’ death on the cross: Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.