Year C

Luke 22:14-23:56

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

A Costly Grace

Today we enter what the Christian Church has regarded since the fourth century as Holy Week. It begins with Palm Sunday, and this beginning makes for a very compelling preview to the experience of Holy Week. This story is filled with all the preparations needed for what is ahead. If you and I are willing to be in the story of Palm Sunday, then we will be infinitely more prepared for the journey toward both the searing pain of the Passion and the glory of the Resurrection.

It was on a spring day in the beginning of the week of Passover, the most sacred week of the Jewish year, that Christ, the King of Kings enters into Jerusalem. But we do not get the leader we have anticipated. For instead of entering the holy city on a warhorse, this King comes deliberately on an ass’s colt. On a donkey, according to Scripture, befitting a King of humility whose rule is gentle and whose reign is peace. He is surrounded by joy, as the crowd wave palms. We crowd around our King and press forward into the holy city, waving our palms shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who come in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

 But He,–and we–know, that He is headed for the Cross. Palm Sunday carries with it a strong note of irony. On the surface, the story depicts the joyful welcome of Jesus into Jerusalem. Disciples and others who have witnessed his deeds and heard his teachings gladly somehow perceive that this is a momentous occasion, and they mark it as such. However, we who have been following the story from the beginning know that those who fear Jesus and plot against him have not disappeared. And the ones bearing the palms, cheering him, are the very same ones who a week later, will shout for him to be crucified. We are those people who bear the palms, and shout “Crucify Him!”

What must have been the sadness and even distress in his heart, as he rode into that city, that city He loved among all cities, and where He would spend His last week of life. Indeed, all of us crucified our Lord and God an innocent man.  We are the Jerusalemites, who cheer Him one day, and crucify Him the next. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, God “let God’s self be pushed out of the world onto the cross.” Palm Sunday is a bittersweet day indeed, but it is the first step on the path to freedom, the path of Holy Week. We have now entered into the moment of greatest depth, wonder, and solemnity in the Christian year.

If we decide to make this journey with Jesus, we will experience a very costly grace; we will experience anew God’s salvation as we stand at the foot of the cross and then at the empty tomb.  We are left in no doubt about the power of God working through the death of Christ. Therefore, we can proclaim to the world with conviction that at the foot of the cross we see the transforming power of God’s love for all. Now with people all over the world and with generations past, let us begin this journey of Holy Week with Jesus; a week of meditation, contemplation, and repentance.