St Nicholas

Our Relieving Priest Fr Rogers Sermon for Plam Sunday Sunday 29th March:

 

After the first in this series, The King in Holy Week, someone asked, "What will you say on Palm Sunday?" We have come to the last of the series. We begin with Palm Sunday but there is a larger vision as the King rides to Victory.

 

There are moments in life, when you see something and wished you had a camera. Too late! The moment remains only in the memory.

 

Such a moment occurred for me on a pilgrmaige to the Holy Land. In Jerusalem we saw three teenagers holding branches of palm. Our guide told us it was a Muslim funeral procession. They were waiting at the busy road and then they were gone as suddenly as they had appeared.

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The palm branches in the church today remind us of the time people cut down branches of palm to hail Jesus. They thought he would save them from the Roman occupation. They cut olive branches; a symbol of peace. They sang “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna.”

 

Pilgrims from before the time of Jesus sang Psalms as they journeyed to Jerusalem. “Hosanna,” Save now! is a traditional shout from the Psalms. The Jewish people looked forward for the Messiah, the anointed of God, to save them from the oppression of foreign powers.

 

The palms, and the procession was a way to make alive in an imitative way, the journey of Jesus from Bethphage into Jerusalem. It is a religious action to enrich us. Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Lord’s anointed on the final part of his pilgrimage. The people who joyously welcomed him had no idea that Jesus may have had a premonition that he would die.

 

“It is a past that is present, maintained, monitored, heard and represented.” (A. Burg The Holocaust is over We Must Rise from its Ashes p.22). Those words, according to Avraham Burg in his book (give title) reflects the Jewish attitude about the Holocaust of the last century. Burg believes that Israel has to leave behind that horrific act of history for it celebrates death. They can’t move on while they continue to grieve. How different it is for us when we speak of the time of Jesus; “It is a past that is present, maintained, monitored, heard and represented.” Yet it is about a time and death that gave and gives life.

 

The Church, from early times, kept this week as Holy. She remembers it as God’s Week and recalls in different ways what it cost Jesus for our salvation. Everything we do this week in our liturgies, the readings, the Eucharist on Thursday evening, the recognition of the cross on Good Friday, is to help us recall the last week of Jesus, the Son of Man. Yet we would not do that if we did not believe he is victorious. He is alive; the living Son of God. Today he rode on his way to Victory.

 

Christians in the infant Church retold the Passion of Jesus time and again in the early years. By the time the evangelists wrote their gospels the story was the core of everything else they recorded. The Church has read the Passion of Jesus on Palm Sunday for centuries. None of it would be worth the papyri it was written on if it was only to proclaim death.

 

Palm branches in a funeral procession speak of a death. We might think the palms carried before and around Jesus to welcome him couls be for us like an omen of his death. When his burial occurred it was hurried and unfinished. We thought of that when the woman anointed Jesus a few days before his death. We now know that did not matter. We know, even as we begin our remembrance of Holy Week, Jesus was riding to his kingly victory.

 

Jesus was not riding on a great horse dressed in armour with a lance or sword. Jesus rode on a beast of burden; a donkey that is still common place in Israel. He came dressed in a seamless robe and probably the Rabbi's prayer shawl. He came with friends who, although they had listened to his teaching, almost certainly did not understand his kingship. Jesus was riding into Jerusalem in peace. The palms declared that peace and victory.

 

Christians like celebrations. Neither Palm Sunday nor Easter Day would be observed by Christians if it were not for the core of the gospel story. Good Friday recognizes the cross on which the Saviour of the world did hang. Although it seemed at the time like a defeat, we know that it is where Jesus had his victory.

 

Countless Christians have lived the pilgrimage of Christian life. Some died in joy for their faith in the victory of our king.

 

There is a hymn that was sung on saints’ days but helps us see the palms are also about victory.

 

Palms of glory, raiment bright,

Crowns that never fade away,

Gird and deck the Saints in light, Priests, and kings, and conquerors they.

 

Yet the conquerors bring their palms

To the Lamb amidst the throne,

And proclaim in joyful psalms

Victory through his Cross alone.

(James Montgomery 1771-1854 NEH 230)

 

For us the palm is a sign of victory. We received a palm cross, a symbol of pilgrimage, of death, of victory. Put it in a place to remind you to honour Jesus our victorious King.

 

Year A Lent 6 Palm Sunday 29.3.2026 St Nicholas, Mordialloc Revised address The King in Holy Week - The King Rides to Victory

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The Reverend A R Wood