From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ, 

On Palm Sunday we celebrate the kingship of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We celebrate the dramatic moment of his triumph as he enters Jerusalem, the Holy City, and all the children cry, “Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord! He comes as the promised son and heir of David, the messianic king, "meek, and riding upon a donkey."  

There is no mistaking the powerful symbolism of the occasion: the ecstatic multitudes acclaim their king, and cast garments and branches in the way to make a royal path for him.  

The Pharisees demand that he dismiss this noisy crowd, but Jesus simply answers them, "I tell you, if these should hold their peace, the very stones would cry out." 

"Hosanna to the Son of David!" It seems a moment of great triumph as Jesus enters the Holy City and goes on to cleanse the temple at the city's heart. It seems a moment of great triumph; but how quickly is that moment overshadowed by the terrible events which follow. Jerusalem cannot accept this king.  

It cannot understand his kingship; it will deny him, and he will be crucified outside its gates. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kills the prophets, behold your house shall be left unto you desolate. What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is as a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away." 

The whole business seems full of tragic contradiction. As Dean Crossman puts it in his lovely hymn: 

            Sometimes they strew his way, And his sweet praises sing, 

            Resounding all the day Hosannas to their king; 

            Then "Crucify" is all their breath 

            And for his death they thirst and cry. 

The whole affair seems contradictory. And the liturgy mirrors precisely that contradiction.  

We sing that glorious and triumphal ninth-century hymn, "All glory, laud and honour to thee redeemer King." We bless and distribute the branches of palm, the symbols of his kingship; and then we hear the Passion—that cruel and violent story of the condemnation of the just and innocent. 

It seems such a tragic and painful contradiction. But in that very contradiction there is a simple, and powerful, and all-important message, which sums up all the lessons of our Lenten season.  

The point is just this: The kingship of Jesus, true kingship, true liberty, true dignity, does not consist in worldly pomp and power, in worldly glory and ambition, nor in worldly grace and beauty. The ways of God's kingdom are not the world's ways, and the glory of its kingship is altogether different. Its kingship is the kingship of a servant, its liberty is the liberty of free obedience; its virtue is humility. 

"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." That is the essential message of the day. 

In the events of Passiontide there is a dramatic transformation of the very idea of kingship. "He reigns and triumphs from the tree." What is going on here is a complete overturning of conventional worldly attitudes and understandings about true dignity and true worth.  

It is a kingdom not of this world—it is a kingdom whose rampart is the cross, whose bricks and mortar are bread and blood, and whose heirs are all of us who cry out Hosanna and Crucify even as he begs his Father to forgive. 

That is the kingdom we are welcomed into next week, as Holy Week unfolds. That kingdom where that which has been cast down is being raised up—where all things are brought to their perfection by the one who reigns from the tree. So let us gather at that throne of grace. Let us come as we are, with all we have, so that we can be made one mind, one heart, one hope in Christ. 

Yours in Christ, 

—Fr Robert