Palm Sunday, Yr C (2025) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield
Palm Sunday, Yr C (2025) The Rev. Karen C. Barfield
Liturgy of the Palms: Luke 19:28-40 St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
In the name of the one, holy, and loving God:
who was, and is, and is to come. Amen.
Today is Palm Sunday…
the first day of Holy Week.
Today we begin our journey to the cross with Jesus.
We started this morning, in procession, with branches of palm.
That is exactly what happened in Jesus’ day.
As Jesus rode upon the donkey,
people spread their cloaks on the road…
and branches of palm.
They were honoring the man, Jesus, as their King.
The whole multitude of his disciples were praising God joyfully with loud voices:
“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!”
They were celebrating all the deeds of power that they had seen through Jesus.
New life…
a new way of being…
had arrived.
They were celebrating Jesus’ life – except -
as we know,
this was the beginning of the end of Jesus’ earthly life.
But…they didn’t know.
They hadn’t heard him.
Or if they had heard him, they didn’t believe him (except for Mary).
What they were celebrating was that Jesus showed them a new way of being in the world:
the way of love.
And he was getting ready to enact that way of love as he was crucified.
This morning in our prayer of blessing over the palms, we prayed:
“It is right to praise you, Almighty God,
for the acts of love by which you have redeemed us
through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord….
“Let these branches be for us signs of his victory,
and grant that we who bear them in his name may ever hail him as our King,
and follow him in the way that leads to eternal life.”
So…today I invite you to take your palm branch home…
or maybe a palm cross.
Put it in a place that you will see it every day this week…
that it may remind you of Jesus’ way of love:
Jesus’ way of truth-telling
and forgiveness
and grace
and mercy
and deep, deep healing.
And each time you see the palm branch,
remember that Jesus offers this new life to you
and to everyone you meet,
through you.
As Jesus was riding on the donkey and the disciples were shouting in joy,
some of the Pharisees told Jesus to order his disciples to stop.
Jesus responded,
“I tell you, if these [disciples] were silent,
the stones would shout out.”
The stones would shout out!
The love and grace of God will not be silenced.
Not even through death.
Evil will not have the final say…
the Love of God will overcome.
This week…
as we walk with Jesus through the valley of the shadow of death,
let us remember that God loves us deeply, foolishly, extravagantly…
and that we are vessels of such love and Grace to everyone we meet.
Holy Week is the longest week of the year.
It is filled with unearned suffering
and a response of unrequited love.
Let us walk this road with Jesus,
knowing that Jesus is there… right beside us.
Amen.
