The King of kings, the Lord of lords is come!

Palm Sunday March 29,2026

Texts for this service are Matthew 21:7-11, Matthew 26:14-16, Matthew 27:31,46,50

The disciples brought the donkey and put their cloaks on it, and Jesus sat it. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of Jesus and that followed were shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, "Who is this?" The crowds were saying, "This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee."

Jubilation

He broke upon the static horizon drenched with the water of the Jordon; refined from forty days in the wilderness.

He sent demons scurrying back to where they came from. His words stirred a warm, sure sense of rightness. And from his hand, cool relief expelled pain and doubt.

Men left their livelihoods to follow him. Women pushed forward with their babies. Desperate women touched his hem. And children scurried to his lap

Throngs journeyed into the wilderness to hear his words and beg his touch. Priests feared him; scribes reviled him; Rome watched him.

For three years there were miracles to report, healings to recount, and parables to ponder in the night. There were tests of wit and hard sayings sparked with glimpses of a New Kingdom.

And now the One with power over demons, wind and water, healing in touch and speech, teachings of irrefutable truth, and compassion of deepest knowing; The Holy Begotten of God enters the Holy City.

He comes through the gate not with sword or legions but on the back of a donkey and in slow clopping cadence.

The city erupts with shouts of joy and acclamation. The air swirls with waving cloaks and the cobbled street is decked with patches of red, blue, orange and green. The wind pulses with palms and fronds and song not heard since the fall of Jericho echoes high to the Temple parapets

The King of kings, the Lord of lords is come!   

Betrayal

The day we mark as Palm Sunday held such exhilarating promise for those first disciples.

They entered that city with Jesus armed with the memories of food multiplied for thousands, of healings beyond the realm of reason, of demons scattered, wind and wave calmed with a word,

And now Jesus, was entering the city of Jerusalem, ready to inaugurate the Davidic Kingdom and restore their sovereignty.

Can we visualize how pleased and proud those disciples and followers were? How broad their smiles as they walked alongside that donkey? Basking in the cheers of the throng?

Even as, on the sidelines, arms crossed, stood some of the priests, some of the scribes, some of the Pharisees. Such irony. God’s priests and teachers of the scriptures and the faithful adherents of the Law of Moses seething with fear-fueled rage because Jesus spoke of the spirit of the law, welcomed those they thought far removed from God’s grace and, most importantly threatened their political cover from Rome.

Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, "What will you give me if I betray him to you?" They paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he began to look for an opportunity to betray him. After the supper Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, Get up, let us be going. Look, my betrayer is at hand." While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived; with him was a large crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. all this has taken place, so that the scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled." Then all the disciples deserted him and fled. 

Can we understand how those disciples reeled in the wake of that spasm of hate and fear when, in the Garden of Gethsemane, those particular Priests, Scribes and Pharisees sent soldiers to arrest Jesus and incited good people to spit and yell and call for his death.

 Friends, we love Palm Sunday but its jubilation and promise opens onto a week when fear gave birth to murder.

Sacrifice

After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him. And about three o'clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.

I grew up in an evangelical environment where following Palm Sunday, we skipped over Passion Week altogether and eagerly greeted Easter. And it’s no wonder. Who wants to look at the cross and crucifixion full in the face? Not only does it make us recoil, it poses a question we can’t answer: Why did Jesus have to die?

What Hast Thou Done?

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard folks say “I should have been on that cross. Jesus died in my stead.” 

And in one sense this is true. We are saved, we are redeemed because of Jesus’ sacrifice. But because we are an individualistic people in general, we formulate our thinking about our relationship with God and especially the crucifixion of Jesus through an individualistic prism. 

What God has done by way of the cross is so much bigger than individual salvation. It is cosmic. 

The cross calls us back to creation when that which was not God emerged and ruptured the sacred, harmonious concourse of God’s creation and in the words of Genesis 6:5 humankind was bent toward evil. This evil had to be addressed. And only God could do so.

In addressing the problem of evil, the great scholar N. T. Wright says this about what God does in the vortex of the crucifixion:

Evil is the force of anti-creation, anti-life, the force which opposes and seeks to deface and destroy God’s good world of space, time, and matter, and above all God’s image-bearing human creatures. That is why death,…is the final great enemy. …that evil at all levels and of all sorts had done its worst and that Jesus throughout his public career and supremely on the cross had dealt with it, taken the full force, exhausted it---when then, of course, death itself had no more power. (p89)

He continues

YHWH in person, on the cross, where evil of the world does all that it can and where the Creator of the world does what God can. Jesus [God incarnate] suffers the full consequences of evil: evil from the political, social, cultural, personal, moral, religious and spiritual angles all rolled into one; evil in the downward spiral hurtling toward the pit of destruction and despair. As he does so precisely as the act of redemption, of taking that downward fall and exhausting it, so that there may be new creation, new covenant, forgiveness, freedom and hope. (92)

So yes, Jesus’ death on the cross makes the way for our own personal salvation, but in that “here but not yet” paradox of our faith, Jesus’ death deals the final and complete defeat of evil and death—and atone for it. We await the full manifestation of this reality in the new heaven and the new earth spoken of in the Book of Revelation. But in our here and now, we can claim this reality, this salvation and we are right to pause in awe of this cosmic sacrificial salvation and fall faces to the ground in gratitude. 

May this that we sing now, guide our prayers this Passion Week.

Linda Quanstrom, Pastor

Cornelius UMC

Cornelius OR