Palm/Passion Sunday
Texts: Luke 19:28-40;
Phil 2:5-11; Luke 22–23
YouTube: https://youtu.be/RKdlgqiuYvg
Sermon Take-Home Notes
TWO PARADES
This week is about the contrast in powers that we just read about, from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. That in our world of governance those in power really grasp after god-like power and try to become demi-gods themselves. I think we’re familiar with that. Contrasted with the power of God’s reign, which comes even letting itself succumb to the kind of death that our regimes generally dish out. And, in doing so, unleashing the power of God’s grace into this world. From beginning to end, this week is about that contrast in power. Our regimes which begin with an emphasis on dealing death to our adversaries, and then finally in the end meet death themselves in regime-ending destruction — the fate of all empires in history that have risen then fallen. As opposed to God’s reign, which begins with a death on the cross and then issues forth in the life which we celebrate next week.
It means, first of all, the defeat of death, that wondrous reality which helps us to deal with death when it intrudes on our personal lives, the death of loved ones and our deaths — knowing that God has defeated death. But then this is the more challenging part: knowing that we, in a sense, already died and risen with Christ and can already count on resurrection and so we put up resistance to the powers of death in this world, speaking and living into God’s power of life.
I’d like to offer a couple of brief meditations that are in your Sermon Notes. The first is from Brian Zahnd. It’s based on tradition, and some historical evidence, that Pilate would have, at some point, come down to Jerusalem from his nice Mediterranean headquarters. He would ride in before the Passover, because the Passover could present problems. There’s a tradition that Pilate was riding into Jerusalem from one direction, on that Palm Sunday that Jesus rode in. I read:
What we see on Palm Sunday are two parades. One from the west and one from the east. One where Caesar’s Prefect of Judea rides a warhorse and one where God’s anointed Messiah rides a donkey. One is a military parade projecting the power of empire — the Roman Empire. The other is a prophetic parade announcing the arrival of an alternative empire — the kingdom of God. One parade derives its power from a willingness to crucify its enemies. The other derives its power by embracing the cross and forgiving its enemies. One is a perpetuation of the domination systems of empire. The other is the only hope the world has for true liberation.
The question is, which parade will we march in? The parade that celebrates empire and militarism and trusts in war to shape the world? Or the parade that celebrates the Prince of Peace and trusts in God to heal the world?1
As we read and ponder the story that is the center of our lives, the story of our Lord’s passion, keep in mind that that story is at the heart of what we do every week. As we gather around the Lord’s Table, we remember that he took some bread and some wine and said, “This is my body broken for you. This is my blood shed for you.” We are being fed to live lives of resistance to the powers of death in this world, and to stand for the power of life.
One of my favorite places on the Internet is place by Steve Garnaas-Holmes called “unfolding light,” where he Monday through Friday offers a poem of sorts, a meditation. I read one for this week, titled “The Resistance”:
The Emperor does not like us
gathering with others he also resents,
at this table beyond his comprehension.
His is the kingdom of fear,
his honor enforced, dissidents crucified.
His only power is death, and the fear of death.
But this is the table of life,
the table of the Loving One
who healed in the face of the Empire
and its machines of cruelty and greed.
We are the followers of this loving rebel against evil,
who resisted the powers of domination,
and so was arrested, detained, tortured,
executed by the State—
the very one who was also raised from the dead.
We gather, all of us sinners, broken and powerless,
and he breaks the bread of his life for us.
We drink his love, we feast on his energy,
and we become one body—his Body.
We are his resurrection.
We are the Resistance.
O Uncontainable One,
we are the flesh of your love and mercy,
alive by your Spirit, not our strength,
one body, all over the world,
strengthened to subvert the Empire of fear,
to resist injustice, to bring life,
to stand with the outcast and the condemned—
for we too are condemned,
enemies of the structures of evil.
But nothing can stop us,
for we have been crucified and raised already.
Beloved, guide us, protect us, and empower us
with your radical love
that troubles evil, that shakes the Empire,
that mends the world.2
Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, April 13, 2025
YouTube: https://youtu.be/RKdlgqiuYvg
Sermon Take-Home Notes
Notes
1. Brian Zahnd, Postcards from Babylon: The Church in American Exile (Spello Press, 2019), 92-93.
2. Steven Garnaas-Holmes, “The Resistance,” https://unfoldinglight.net/2025/04/09/the-resistance/
