Sermons
April 13, 2025 (Palm Sunday)
Weeping Savior
Luke 19:28-48, 20:9-19
Did you know that the first ticker-tape parade was held in New York City in 1886, during the celebration of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty?
It was apparently a spontaneous thing that time, but it quickly became a tradition. As the parade wound through the financial district, so the New York Times reported, office boys began to unwind spools of ticker tape out the windows over the procession, until the older, dignified and respectable businessmen pushed them out of the way so they could get in on the fun.
After the First World War, the informal tradition became official as the city honored returning soldiers. By the late 1960s, the ticker machines were on their way out, but that hasn’t stopped ticker-tape parades—although around that same time, the mayor of New York noted that the practice had gotten out of hand and there were so many ticker-tape parades that they had lost most of their excitement. Nowadays, although there are way fewer of these parades than there used to be, people toss shredded office paper or confetti out the windows as parades wind down through what’s come to be called the “Canyon of Heroes.”
When you see photos of these parades, with paper streaming down all over the place, it’s just a glorious mess. It’s in people’s hair, under their feet, in their cars, just everywhere.[1]
For some reason, when I read the stories of the Gospels about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, it’s easy for me to picture a ticker-tape parade. I’m probably influenced by movie versions of the event, because the Gospels don’t really tell it that way. Matthew’s the only one who comes even close, but Matthew isn’t our focus today; Luke is. And Luke describes something lots different from the kind of grand parade we’ve seen in the movies and in pictures of, for instance, President and Mrs. Kennedy riding in an open car as ticker tape wafts down.
The first thing to notice in Luke’s account is that all the people involved in the parade were disciples. I think that’s important, because there has been a lot of ink spilled over the years trying to figure out why the crowd shouting “Hosanna!” on Palm Sunday supposedly became the crowd baying for Jesus’ crucifixion on Good Friday. The answer is actually very simple: we’re talking about two different groups of people.
There is a crowd present as Jesus rides that unbroken colt toward Jerusalem—but it’s only the disciples doing all the shouting. The crowd was likely just folks who happened to be there, but they were not participating in the spectacle. They weren’t cheering, weren’t throwing their garments in the road (Luke, alone among the Gospel writers, doesn’t say anything about palms or any other kind of branches); they were just there.
And what we see in this text is not so much a victory parade as a piece of street theater. They are acting out a messianic prophecy from Zechariah—which Matthew and John spell out in so many words, while Luke expects that his readers know the prophecy well enough to understand what’s happening even without him hitting them over the head with it. They’re doing it in such a way, furthermore, to call to mind a story from 2 Kings 9, in which Elisha secretly anoints Jehu son of Jehoshaphat to depose Joram, the last king of Ahab’s dynasty; after which Joram’s officers spread their garments in Jehu’s path as a demonstration of their allegiance to the new king.
There are Pharisees in the crowd—people who knew the Hebrew Bible backwards and forwards and devoted their lives to figuring out how to apply it to their current times—and they tell Jesus to order his disciples to stop all the shouting. Why?
Were Jesus’ disciples embarrassing them with an undignified public display of emotion? Did they—as at least one scholar I read this week claims—find what they were saying about Jesus to be blasphemous? Or were they concerned Roman authorities might overhear, and think this ragtag bunch of disciples hollering on a side street truly represented a threat to Roman order? Remember that they were coming into Jerusalem for Passover, and the Romans tended to have extra military forces in Jerusalem during that festival, because not only were there a lot of extra Jews in town that day, but it was also a festival that tended to inspire nationalistic feelings to run high. And if there was anything Romans wouldn’t put up with in their subject people, it was nationalistic feelings that could stir folks up against Roman rule.
I imagine all of the above—but most particularly the fear of Roman backlash—were behind what the Pharisees said. But Jesus said it was no use. It wasn’t that he couldn’t have actually quieted them down if he’d wanted to. But he says that even quieting the disciples down wouldn’t make any difference.
The disciples are telling the truth as they shout in praise of Jesus as “the king who comes in the name of the Lord.” No, he really didn’t look much like a king as he tried to ride an unbroken colt. No, he hadn’t spent any time raising and training an army to fight against the Romans and push them out of the Jewish homeland. In fact, his main claim to fame had up to that point been walking among the lowest of the low, the outcast, the sick, the poor, bringing them good news and healing. These are the “deeds of power” his disciples are praising as he takes a side street into town, riding on that young, untrained animal-and those deeds are hardly displays of the sort of power that ought to have been threatening to the Romans. Yet they call him king—clearly not the kind of king the world recognizes, but in Luke’s world everything is turned upside down.
And the Pharisees try to put a stop to it; but Jesus tells the Pharisees it would be futile to silence the disciples. Even if they were to stop shouting, creation itself—even the rocks!—would take up the chorus. Several of the psalms speak about creation praising God,[2] and Paul, writing a few decades after the events of Palm Sunday, says that because all creation suffered after the Fall, all creation eagerly longs for everything to be set right in Christ.[3]
God’s truth will not be stopped; it will march on, even if it can only be told by stones.
I think that’s one of the main messages of Palm Sunday. I don’t think the disciples comprehended the full meaning of what Jesus said here until much later: they couldn’t have understood that Jesus was saying the events of the following Friday wouldn’t be the final word. Not even a cross can truly stop God’s truth from marching on.
And if that’s the case, then what about all the things we worry might silence the Good News about God’s Reign and God’s grace and truth made flesh in Jesus Christ?
[1] The Alliance for Downtown New York has an interesting article about ticker-tape parades on their website: https://downtownny.com/ticker-tape-parades/. I’ve driven through areas where lumber is clear-cut to make paper, and as a result I’m not a big fan of paper raining down on parades only to be swept up and thrown away. (I also buy bamboo toilet paper, btw.)
[2] See, for instance, Psalms 19 and 148.
[3] Romans 8:18-23