Sermon for Palm Sunday, Year B

Pavel Popov, Judas Betrays Christ with a Kiss (Date Unknown)

Mark 11:1-11

Mark 14:1-15:47

In Episcopal parish churches where they don’t have a choir to sing the Passion Gospel on Palm Sunday, it’s common to have a dramatic reading of it instead. Members of the congregation are assigned different parts, from the narrator, to Peter, to the maid who accuses Peter of being one of Jesus’ disciples, to the centurion at the foot of the cross.

The parish priest almost always takes the part of Jesus. The full congregation takes the part of the crowd, shouting out with particular enthusiasm the lines, “Crucify, crucify him!” (Sometimes one wonders whether they’re referring more to Jesus or the rector.)

Countless sermons and devotional commentaries on this practice point out the contrast between the crowd’s cries of “Hosanna” when Jesus enters Jerusalem, and the same crowd’s cries of “Crucify, crucify him!” within the same week. By reciting these lines, the congregation is reminded that even if we join in singing the praises of Jesus in church, we need to take care that we don’t end up effectively calling for his crucifixion at other times in other contexts.

This year, both the Palm Gospel and the Passion Gospel are taken from Saint Mark. Some biblical scholars reckon Mark’s the first of the canonical Gospels to have been written, while others question that hypothesis. Either way, Mark’s Gospel is clearly the shortest and most succinct of the four.

I want to argue this morning that a careful reading of Saint Mark shows that the real contrast he has in mind is not so much between the cries of “Hosanna” on Palm Sunday and “Crucify him!” on Good Friday, as between the disciples’ enthusiastically following Jesus into Jerusalem at his Triumphal Entry but then deserting him at his arrest a few days later.

Let’s look at both events a bit more closely. On Palm Sunday, Jesus makes his final approach to Jerusalem among the crowds of pilgrims going up to the Holy City to keep Passover. His route by way of the villages of Bethany and Bethphage on the Mount of Olives has deep significance. According to Old Testament prophecy, this is where the Messiah will appear on the Day of the Lord: “On that day,” says the prophet Zechariah, “his feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives which lies before Jerusalem to the east.”

The elaborate preparations involving the colt evoke another prophecy of Zechariah:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on an ass,
on a colt the foal of an ass.

Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a young donkey is thus what the biblical scholars call an enacted sign: a bit of street theater designed to make a theological and political point. He’s visually proclaiming himself the true king of Israel, the Messiah or Anointed One of God, arriving to take possession of his capital city.

The point is not lost on those accompanying him. Spreading their garments and leafy branches in his path, they pay him the homage due royalty and acclaim him the one who comes in the name of the Lord to restore the kingdom of his father David.

Those who engage in this acclamation are not, however, the multitudes at large. Rather, they’re those who’ve traveled with Jesus from Galilee, along the Jordan valley, through Jericho, and up to Jerusalem. The Twelve Apostles are the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples, but the disciples are really a much larger group. They’ve followed him, listened to his teachings, and witnessed his miracles – most recently the healing of blind Bartimaeus on the road out of Jericho. These disciples traveling with Jesus and the Apostles are the ones who acclaim him as Messiah as they enter Jerusalem.

Within the week, however, their hopes for the establishment of the messianic kingdom are dashed. After eating the Passover meal with the Twelve, Jesus goes out to a place called Gethsemene with Peter, James, and John, and spends much of the night in prayer. Identified by his betrayer Judas with a kiss, he is seized by an armed mob sent by the chief priests and scribes and elders. Then, as Mark notes with characteristic brevity, his disciples all forsake him and flee.

There follows that strange incident, found only in Mark’s Gospel, of the young man who follows him wearing only a linen garment. The mob seizes him but he leaves the linen cloth and runs away naked. Biblical commentators down through the centuries have speculated on his identity. Some have wondered if he’s Mark himself. Most likely, however, Mark’s point in relating the incident has to do with the shame of nakedness in that culture. Rather than allowing himself to be seized so that he can continue to follow Jesus in the Way of the Cross, the young man chooses instead the shame of running away naked. In this way, Mark highlights the shame of all those who abandon Jesus and flee in the moment of crisis.

Peter subsequently experiences the shame of forsaking Jesus when he denies him three times in the high priest’s courtyard when accused of being one of his disciples. Remembering the Lord’s prediction, “Before the cock crows twice, you shall deny me three times,” Peter breaks down and weeps bitterly.

In the end, Jesus faces his trials, his scourging, his mocking, his carrying of the cross, and his death by crucifixion alone, abandoned and forsaken by the same disciples who followed him into Jerusalem singing hosannas just a few days before. The sole exceptions in Mark’s account are the women who came up with him to Jerusalem. As Jesus dies on the cross, they stand watching from afar.

New Testament scholars suggest that Mark may have been writing specifically to encourage Christians in his own day to remain loyal and faithful to Jesus under the threat of persecution and martyrdom. Unlike the disciples who fled, the Christians of Mark’s generation had received the Holy Spirit, first poured out upon the Church at Pentecost, and subsequently conveyed in the Church’s Sacraments. One of the Spirit’s gifts is fortitude, the ability to stand fast and confess Jesus as Lord even at the cost of one’s own life. The martyrs of the early Church exhibited such fortitude in spades.

This gift of remaining faithful unto death was most recently displayed by the twenty-one Coptic Christians beheaded by the Islamic State on a beach in Libya; to a man they died saying prayers, with the name of Jesus on their lips. They did not forsake Jesus, and Jesus will not forsake them.

Mark’s challenge to us, then, is not to forsake Jesus as his disciples did on the night of his arrest. We’re called to remain faithful in simple ways: most of all by keeping on coming to Mass and participating in the life of the Church – both when it feels good and when it seems difficult, inconvenient, and the last thing we feel like doing. For if we continue faithful to Jesus, in season and out of season, we have the assurance he will continue faithful to us.