Sermon: "If We Ended it at Palm Sunday" Lent, April 13, 2025

Luke’s Gospel: Jesus and the Outsiders, Outcasts, and Outlaws

Scripture: Luke 19:28-40/Luke 23:1-49

Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka

Title: “If We Ended it at Palm Sunday” 
Here we are on Palm Sunday. Also called “Palm/Passion Sunday.” As you might have noticed we went from a joyous parade, waving palms at the beginning of the service, to things taking a major turn half-way through once the scripture was read. We’ve followed an ancient tradition of the church in having first what’s called the liturgy of the palms, and then the liturgy of the passion. All in the same service. What we heard was Luke the Evangelist’s version of the passion of Jesus—his trial, suffering, and death on the cross.

It seems a little early, doesn’t it? After all, Good Friday is on Friday. Yet, here the cross has kinda come at us, if not out of nowhere, at least suddenly. Maybe you’ve heard the definition of a “Puritan”? A puritan is someone who has the sneaking suspicion that somewhere someone is having fun. Is this a puritan thing? Like, can’t we rest in the joy of Palm Sunday? If even for a little bit, without all the gloom and doom?

Kidding aside, there’s a certain wisdom behind having these two events paired on the same day.

The Palm Sunday parade is very clearly a royal procession. Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem on a donkey. The palm branches we all waved are a symbol of royal victory. Herod the great, who was king of Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth had coins and other items inscribed with his image as well as Palm branches, underlining his power and legitimacy as a ruler. Not only that, but the people cry out “Hosanna to the son of David!” David is, of course, Israel’s greatest most famous king. So if there’s a parade where folks are waving fronds and calling Jesus the son of David, this must be a royal procession. It’s a royal victory march. It all must mean Jesus is a King.

Now, if we were to leave it there, what might we think about Jesus? Well, that the parade would eventually lead to gathering an army. It would eventually lead to crushing his enemies, throwing the Romans out. It would eventually lead to Jesus seated on a golden throne while all his adversaries bowed to him, great gifts in hand, pledging their undying love and loyalty. All fearing that if they didn’t, their heads would end up on a spear decorating the town square.

If it ended there, those who want to follow Jesus might think that to follow him, you might have to go and do likewise. To conquer the world for Christ, at the end of a spear. Which has been, and continues to be a temptation for Christians, for the church throughout history. To see the realm of politics and political power as the primary way that God governs history, and Christ establishes his kingdom. By any means necessary.

Or! Or we might think that the way to be faithful and good is to seek these things for ourselves. To seek after power, to seek after status, to seek after glory, fame, and success. To strive to be our own kings. To enthrone the self above all. Which really is what the world teaches us. That the purpose of life is to seek our own, good, our own status, our own fame, and our own desires. Above all else.

If we ended it at Palm Sunday this is how we might think of the Christian life or life in general. That life is a great exercise in what the church father Augustine of Hippo called the libido dominandi, the “desire to dominate.” Or, if you’d prefer someone more contemporary, the famed atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who called it the “will to power.” If we ended it at Palm Sunday we might think this is the kind of king Jesus is. And what life itself is all about.

But that’s not where we end it. In the liturgy Palm Sunday and the Passion of Jesus are held together, intertwined. If the Palm parade says that Jesus is royal, that he’s a king, then the passion short circuits our notion of what it means to be one. The Passion offers us a whole other definition.

Now, if you pay attention to the passion story, it’s covered in royal language.

Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor interrogates him. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus gives a cryptic answer: “you say so,” he replies.

King Herod—the actual king of Judea—then interrogates him, ends up mocking him, and he slaps an “elegant robe” on him. Which is probably an allusion to the purple robe that’s placed on Jesus in other gospels. Purple being the colour of royalty.

After his crucifixion it all continues. They nail a plaque reading “King of the Jews” to the cross he hangs from, hanging between two criminals. Then soldiers mock him, shouting “if you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Which is to say,  is he was a king, he never would have found himself on a cross in the first place. If he truly was a king, then he’d have the power to avoid it altogether. But there he is, beaten, broken. Eventually—dead.

I mean, all this happens as mockery. They don’t believe he’s a king. They are mocking Jesus. They think the whole weakness thing, the whole humiliation thing, the whole torture thing, the whole death thing is the clearest example that he is just another troublesome Jew getting put down as an example.

One person, though. One person sees the whole thing differently.

Remember, he’s hanging between two thieves. Could be garden variety criminals, could be bandits, which might mean they are political revolutionaries. One joins in the mocking. “Are you not the Messiah?” he jeers. “If you are, save yourself and us!”

When he does that, though, the other pipes in. Like, “don’t you think it’s ironic that you’re making fun of this guy when you’re under the same sentence? We deserve what we’ve done, but this guy is innocent. He’s done nothing wrong.”

And here’s the turning point. This guy, he turns to Jesus and says this: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus, remember me when you come in to your kingdom. Your kingdom. He’s not mocking Jesus. He’s 100 percent sincere.

Sincere, not only that Jesus is a king, that Jesus has a kingdom, but that he is coming into it. This man on the cross is about to reign. Like, where are the armies? Where’s the treasure? Where are the acts of brute strength? Where’re the golden throne?

This dying man, this convict can see what no one else can see. He sees that the Palm Sunday parade was indeed a victory parade. He sees that it’s a royal procession. But where others see this as his unfortunate, brutal ending, worthy of pity at best, this criminal hanging beside him sees his crucifixion as the gateway to Jesus’ victory. That the true King is the servant of all, laying his life down for his friends. For all this children. That the Palm Sunday parade runs right through the cross. That Jesus’ humiliation is his triumph, and that his throne is two pieces of rough timber.

And the most astounding thing about it is that he not only believes that the cross is Jesus’ triumph, but that, he too, can be a part of it. He’s a criminal, he’s a sinner, one who has been imprisoned, ashamed and executed for his crimes, dying alone and rejected. To which Jesus replies: “yes, indeed, today you will be with me in paradise.” This is someone who history will forget. But Jesus will remember him forever.

Perhaps you’re familiar with the late Russian dissident and politician Alexei Navalny.  Before his death last year in a penal colony, he was one of the most prominent critics of corruption and authoritarianism in Russia, and of its President, Vladimir Putin. Several attempts were made on his life, including a severe poisoning with a nerve agent in 2020. He was arrested on his arrival back in Russia in 2021, where he was imprisoned in ever more brutal and isolating conditions until his death. Including extended periods of solitary confinement, harassment, interrupted sleep, and denial of medical attention. To use the word “inhumane” would be an understatement.

This is all detailed in the book Patriot, which is half memoir and half prison diary. One reviewer said that his story is a “testament to resilience,” due to his attitude and courage throughout his brutal stay. I agree with that, but not without pointing out where his resilience came from. Which becomes crystal clear in the final chapter. The memoir ends with some advice he would give to others in his situation, details on how he remained so resilient in the face of such brutality. The first technique he gives is a form of meditation. The second, though, I believe the second was most important:

“The second technique,” he writes,” The second technique is so old you may roll your eyes heavenward when you hear it. It is religion. It is doable only for believers but does not demand zealous, fervent prayer by the prison barracks window three times a day (a very common phenomenon in prisons).

I have always thought, and said openly, that being a believer makes it easier to live your life and, to an even greater extent, engage in opposition politics. Faith makes life simpler.

The initial position for this exercise is the same as for the previous one. You lie in your bunk looking up at the one above and ask yourself whether you are a Christian in your heart of hearts. It is not essential for you to believe some old guys in the desert once lived to be eight hundred years old or that the sea was literally parted in front of someone. But are you a disciple of the religion whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the price for their sins? Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? If you can honestly answer yes, what is there left for you to worry about? Why, under your breath, would you mumble a hundred times something you read from a hefty tome you keep in your bedside table? Don't worry about the morrow, because the morrow is perfectly capable of taking care of itself.”

“My job,” he continues. “Is to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. They won't let me down and will sort out all my headaches. As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me.”[i]

The source of Navalny’s resilience wasn’t his own determination, but the God we meet in Jesus Christ. Though he wasn’t literally crucified, like the criminal who hung beside Jesus, he could see the true kingship of Christ. The victory of Jesus was his own victory, hidden in the pain, loneliness, and failure of a prison cell. A victory not won by might or human strength, but by divine self-giving love poured out for all. He knew that Palm Sunday and the Passion are inter-twined, that the Palm Parade led through the cross, where Jesus took his punches for him. That even if he were forgotten behind bars, Jesus would remember him, and was waiting for him in paradise on the other side.

Not only did this drive his ministry of truth-telling and self-sacrifice in life, it also helped him to endure. To not give in to hopelessness, but to face it all down, even death itself, with courage and with hope.

Here we have the heart of the Christian gospel, dear friends. That if Jesus is who the church says he is on Palm Sunday, that he is the Messiah, the King of Israel, God in the flesh, then the cross was not a colossal failure, but the moment of victory. That his death threw down the gates of hell, overcame all sin and evil, and he opened the gates to his kingdom. And that all are given entry through simple trust in him. It means that no failure, suffering, or humiliation in this life is the end. But that paradise—God’s new creation where everything is made new—awaits on the other side.

I offer this to you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[i] Alexei Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir (New York: Alfred A. Knopft, 2024), 478-479.