Year A Palm Sunday Mathew 27: 11-54

Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

Thus ends our Gospel reading for this morning. What a strange Gospel for the day we always refer to as “Palm Sunday”. “Palm Sunday” brings to mind a joyous and ecstatic populace throwing their coats in the road in front of Jesus on the donkey, and waving palm branches in the air. A crowd joyfully shouting, “Hosannah”.

Why is it, then, that the Gospel speaks of crucifixion, and not of that triumphal entry into Jerusalem? The Church now also refers to Palm Sunday as Passion Sunday. We begin with Hosannah’s, but we end with the Passion, the suffering of our Lord.

Stop and think about it. On the first Palm Sunday, Jesus came into Jerusalem hailed by the people as the Son of David, the One who comes in the Name of the Lord. Five days later, that same crowd of people, folks just like us, is crying, “Crucify him!”

How horrifyingly fickle we humans are! We accept what we imagine our Lord to be, but reject what He really is. This is what it means to be “fallen”. Even Peter, Prince of the Apostles, reflects this same fallen nature. He had said to Jesus, “Even if others turn on you, I will never desert you.” Sadly, Jesus says to Peter, “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.”

We all deny Jesus in our lives. In our Baptism, we promise to reject Satan and his works and to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Yet we continually fall into sin, choosing our own will rather than God’s will for us. In every sin, we deny Jesus, and tragically, sin is a daily part of our lives.

How does Jesus respond to our faithlessness? In the garden, He first prays to God that we may be His, and that we not be lost. He then faces the reality of His impending death, praying that this cup of suffering may be taken away from Him. However, He remains totally committed to his Father’s will. “Not my will, but thine be done.” Even after His betrayal and torture, as He is crucified, He prays, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.”

And then comes the most extraordinary thing. Jesus takes upon Himself the sins of all people who have ever lived, or who will ever live in the future. He who has never known sin, who is perfect in every way, feels the slime and corruption of sin and selfishness, reaching every part of His soul, cutting Him off from the light of His Father and surrounding Him in darkness and death.

We know sin only too well. In fact, we have become accustomed to sin. For most of us, sin is so much a part of our lives that we don’t feel at all bad about “little” sins. But Jesus is not accustomed to sin. The enormity of all the sin of every soul in the universe is too horrible for us to even grasp. It is, then, no wonder, that as Jesus grasps the ugliness of sin, He cries out the words of the 22nd Psalm, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

What a terrible place to be, and in a small way we understand. In our own separation from God, we often feel forsaken. Yet, we are never alone. Jesus is always with us, even when the cost of sin is death.

St. Paul reminds us that the wages of sin is death. Jesus pays those wages for us. Having taken my sins and your sins into His own pure soul, having felt the separating effect of sin, He then pays its price, and dies on the cross.

Think for a moment: my sins, your sins, our sins – they nail Jesus to the cross. They caused the shedding of His innocent blood. They lead directly to His death. Jesus, truly the Son of God, dies on the cross to pay the price of my and your selfishness, of my sinfulness and yours.

How can we respond to this unbelievable outpouring of love and compassion? What can we say in the face of such a sacrifice? While human words are so inadequate at a time like this, the words of one verse of “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” come to mind:

In thy most bitter passion, my heart to share doth cry, With thee for my salvation upon the cross to die. Ah, keep my heart thus moved to stand thy cross beneath, to mourn thee, well Beloved, yet thank thee for thy death.

Interestingly, while the hymn, Hymn 127, is in our red hymnal, this verse, which appears in many hymnals, is not. The hymn is there, but not the verse. We shy away from standing beneath the cross and from the realization of what we have done.

And yet – in this verse is the real meaning of Palm Sunday; not the all-too-human triumphal entry, soon to be forgotten like a ticker tape parade for human heroes, but the entry of Jesus into our sinfulness, the greatest sacrifice ever offered. This can never be forgotten.

Yes, as we did this morning, we might have joined the crowd to shout, “Hosannah!” but we would also have joined the same crowd to scream, “Crucify him!” Let us pray that we can then join with the centurion in proclaiming, in awe and humility, and even joy, “Truly, this was [this is] the Son of God.”

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, keep our hearts thus moved to stand thy cross beneath, to mourn thee, well Beloved, yet thank thee for thy death. Amen.