Sermon for Palm Sunday—The Sunday of the Passion (March 29, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and edited for clarity.
May only truth be spoken here, and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Please be seated.
This Sunday reminds us that life can turn on a dime.
From the parish hall, where we were all shouting “Hosanna!” and all the boisterousness—you remember, if you grew up in church, getting to wave palms and hit people with them and how much fun it is—we come here, and we all take a deep breath and experience that profound silence in heaven and on earth as Jesus breathes his last.
And we watch as the stone is sealed over the tomb, and as hope is buried. That happened very quickly. It happened too quickly.
I talked to someone yesterday about how the world seems to be changing so very quickly.
I remember when I began preparing and discerning for ordained ministry. I thought that maybe in my lifetime we would be facing crises like we are facing now: crisis of climate, crisis of civil society, crisis of hatred and violence and dehumanization and deepening war.
And I honestly thought that that would all wait until I was at least 65 and finally had it all figured out.
Life happens really quickly, and the world can change so quickly. And that is what Palm Sunday teaches us to be ready for.
Now this year, I think especially about this move from the joyful welcome and proclamation of the king to the deep sorrow at the tomb.
I think about how long it takes to read the Passion Gospel. I think about how hard it is to hear it.
I spent many years—and I still do—just blanking out. There are things I don’t want to hear. There is suffering I don’t want to imagine.
Why are we all here in church to hear 20 minutes of suffering and humiliation that leads to death? Have you noticed that it is a beautiful day? Why don’t we get up and leave?
This is hard.
Jesus says to the disciples in the garden, “Stay here with me. Stay here with me. Remain with me. Watch and pray.”
And we do.
We are like those women who, after he breathes his last, are still standing there looking at the cross—who did not look away, who didn’t look away from the suffering, didn’t look away from the truth about who human beings can be.
We stay. We remain. And we do because it is practice.
It is practice for life. It is practice for being a disciple of Jesus Christ.
Now, in your life, in a time like this, it is practice for staying with Jesus.
Because as we sit and we listen and we watch and we pray through this Passion Gospel, we learn how to be people who can sit with a loved one who is dying.
We learn how to be people who can say goodbye to the people and the places and the things that matter the very most to us without walking away, even when it would be easier.
And we learn how to be people—people who stay with Jesus and are aware of staying with Jesus—who said to all of us, “Whenever you do it, whatever you do, to the least of these, my brothers and my sisters, my family and yours, whatever you do, you do it to me.”
And so we learn and we practice to be people who will not abandon the sick, the weak, the fearful, the ones in need of mercy, the ones who are left on the outside and on the edges, the ones who are persecuted and oppressed.
We learn to say to all of our siblings: we will stay with you. We won’t abandon you, for the sake of Jesus Christ.
We learn, through this practice of sitting through the Passion, what it means to be people of integrity—disciples, people who will do the right thing and embody what is good and right and true and loving, no matter what.
In such a time as this—the book that many of us read together during the season of Lent, For Such a Time as This, which I commend to you—there’s a question that I’ve been carrying with me that is at the very beginning of that book. And the question is this:
What would you keep doing even if there was no hope of success?
What would you keep doing even if there was no hope of success?
Or, as our bishop, Matt Hyde, has translated it for us: Who are you? What are you going to do no matter what?
This is the integrity of being a disciple. This is the integrity that Jesus shows on the cross, when no matter what we do to him, he never stops loving us.
No matter what happens to him, we can’t make him hate us or judge us. No matter what. That is integrity.
That is Christian integrity. That is why we pray for our enemies. That is why we lay down our swords. That is why we practice that call to love one another, no matter what.
We stay with Jesus, who loves no matter what—who stays with the least of these and identifies with them, no matter what.
And as we enter into this Holy Week, I want you to carry this question with you:
What would I keep doing even if there was no hope of success?
That is your calling. That is who you truly are in Jesus Christ—your real identity—whoever it is that you would be, no matter what.
And Holy Week—walking with Christ and staying with him and watching and praying—is a season to discover your own calling, your integrity.
What would I keep doing no matter what?
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.