Worship - 13 April 2025

Summary of this week's theme

We try to refrain from preaching on Palm Sunday – to let the words of the gospel speak for themselves, especially as they speak a challenging truth about how we relate to the apparently fickle move from palm-waving ‘Hosannas’ to ‘Crucify.’

Playing the part of the crowd in the Passion gospel forces us to consider our own role in recreating the crucifixion through our own attitudes and actions. Nevertheless, perhaps it merits saying that the role of the crowd can be seen in various ways. The gospel does not, for example, make it clear whether or not those who shouted “Hosanna!” were exactly the same as those who shouted “Crucify!” less than a week later. They could have been – which forces us to look at the fickle nature of crowd behaviour, and our own complicity in submitting to the rule of the majority, whether or not it looks like a mob from the outset.

So it can be helpful, if sometimes painful, to place ourselves in the scene as participants in the story. We may be part of the crowd, or we may be the denying Peter, we may be the weak Pilate, we may be the irreverent and disrespectful Herod, and so on – perhaps we need to put ourselves in the place of Jesus to see how that feels, and to ask where we need to repent.

But this year, how about focusing on someone else? For example, those who stood at a distance. This is a haunting detail in Luke's Gospel: how Jesus' friends and followers, including the women who have journeyed with him from Galilee, can do nothing but witness his suffering from afar. The sense of powerlessness they must feel, maybe even shame, is something that feels deeply relevant at the moment as we see things happening that we simply seem unable to influence let alone control.

But let’s hold on to this thought: The women who watch Jesus die will become the first to proclaim his resurrection. Their seeming powerlessness transforms into testimony. Their witness was to become a voice that lingers still.

Let’s hold on to that glimmer of hope that transcends the darkness of seeming hopelessness - and let it prevent us from falling into despair, when life seems so troubling. We do need to immerse ourselves in the question of how we participate in the dark events in one way or another. But that’s not the end of the story.