Palm Sunday: Walking with Christ in Weakness and Hope

In this Palm Sunday sermon, Daniel McInnes reflects on the lessons of Great Lent as we enter Holy Week. Drawing on the figures of Lazarus, Martha, Mary, and Judas, he explores what it means to walk with Christ honestly — acknowledging our weakness, resisting despair, and trusting in the resurrection.

Transcript

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

We're celebrating today — celebrating two things, really. Of course, it's Palm Sunday: the entry of our Lord into Jerusalem, six days before the Passion. We are entering Jerusalem with him in celebration. But we're also celebrating the end of something that has passed. We've spent the last five or six weeks fasting, and that period and the period now coming are actually two different fasts. We have the Lenten fast, and then we have the fast of Holy Week.

So we've come to the end of something. I always think of St. Zosimus at this time — the monk who went out into the desert and found St. Mary of Egypt. Their monastery had a custom: they would leave on Forgiveness Sunday, go out into the desert, and whatever they did there was between them and God. When they came back, they returned on Palm Sunday, ready to begin the celebrations of Holy Week.

We've been through that period. It's a time of hiddenness. Nothing flamboyant. We're told when we fast not to make our faces look like we're fasting, not to be ostentatious. So we've spent a time that has been hidden. That hiddenness has hopefully brought us to this point — to Palm Sunday — where we can begin Holy Week knowing a few important things.

One of them is that we are not God. Through the weakness we feel during Great Lent, we're reminded of this truth. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that our life is our own, that we have the power to do whatever we want. But there is nothing we can do apart from God. So we come to this point knowing we are weak. And hopefully through this past period of fasting, we've also come to understand that not only are we weak and in need of God, but that God is always beside us. At least once during this time, you may have had the experience of knowing: yes, I'm weak, but I know for certain that God is actually beside me.

That's important, because this week we're going to walk with Christ. And as we walk with him, we need to remember that we are not him. We don't have the strength he has. He goes to the cross voluntarily. He walks that path voluntarily. His human will and his divine will are so completely aligned that there is no turning in him. That's not true for us. Because of our weakness, we can always turn away.

Even on a day like today, as we celebrate, we know that many of those who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem with palms and branches were, only a few days later, asking Pilate to crucify him. How quickly people can turn. It doesn't take much. So even as we celebrate, we need to be aware that we are not God. We can turn away.

We're given a number of figures in today's Gospel. There is Lazarus, who was raised from the dead — that's why so many people were excited. But Lazarus was a sign, not the thing itself. He was a sign of what was to come. As we heard in one of the hymns today: "By raising Lazarus from the dead before your Passion, you confirmed the resurrection, O Christ God." It was a sign that the bodily resurrection is real — something we should be looking forward to.

Then there is Martha, who is serving. There is Mary, who anointed Christ's feet — she didn't fully understand what she was doing, but she was anointing him for burial. And there is Judas.

Judas is the one we always think of as the bad guy. And in a sense, he is. He betrayed Christ. He was a thief. He knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. He thought Jesus could probably bring about the expulsion of the Romans from Jerusalem. But essentially, Judas is someone who is unable to see the good.

St. Paul, writing to the Philippians, says: "Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable — if there is anything excellent, anything worthy of praise, think about these things." What does Judas say when he sees Mary anointing Jesus's feet with expensive perfume? "What are you doing? This could have been sold." Not because he cares for the poor, as the Gospel explains, but because he wants to steal the money. He is unable to look at what is true, what is pure, what is good.

Compare that to St. Paul. What does St. Paul do? He empties himself. His whole life is an emptying of himself in service to God — through hunger, beatings, all kinds of hardship. He empties himself. And that is what we are also asked to do.

But Judas doesn't do that. Judas betrays God. And lest we think we are somehow different from Judas — every single one of us has betrayed God at some point in our lives, probably continuously. We do it all the time. We might not even recognise it. So what is the difference between our failures and his? Judas despaired. Judas despaired of ever being reconciled with Christ. Because of that despair, he couldn't see that there was a way back.

For us, that's not true. There is always a way back.

This week, as we walk with Christ, we should put ourselves in the shoes of the people around him. We have Judas; we have the wise and foolish virgins. At any given moment, we could be any of them. We need to reflect honestly on what we actually are, who we actually are. God doesn't mind that we are weak and that we fail — that is not the problem, because God can heal us. Our weakness and our failure are not the problem. The problem is failing to come back to him and be reconciled with him, as Judas did.

So we can be honest about who we are. As we go through this week, we will hear all the things that people did and said around Jesus. At every point, we can ask ourselves: where am I? Where is my heart? Am I going with Christ — to be crucified with him? Or am I going somewhere else? Do I want something else? And if I find that I am going somewhere else, I can be honest: "God, this is where I'm at. Heal me. Help me."

We begin this week, hopefully, with a sense of joy — because we know the outcome. We know that the resurrection is true. We know that Christ rises from the dead. We know that victory comes through that death. And along the way, there is great benefit in walking with Christ, knowing where he is going, knowing the strength that gives us, knowing the power he has to raise us up with him.

Even when we fail — even when we recognise how weak we truly are, with all the failures we carry — we can still be honest about it. We can still come to Christ in the resurrection and be raised up with him.

So hopefully this fast has given us the strength to look at ourselves honestly this week, and to walk with him knowing that whatever is happening in our lives, whatever weaknesses we have, Christ is there with us and will raise us up with him. Amen.