Palm Sunday 2023 Matthew 21:1-11 and Philippians 2:5-11
Before we look at the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, a few thoughts on today’s 2nd reading might help put things into perspective. So what does today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians have to do with Palm Sunday? Let’s have a look.
In today’s letter to the church in Philippi, Paul looks to the story of Jesus for the pattern of Christian living in our text by showing us rather than telling us what it is to imitate Christ.
In the first 4 verses of this chapter Paul has asked his readers (us) to act with humility and to consider others in their community as more important than themselves. He then connects our story directly to Jesus’ at v.5, the start today’s reading. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” The ‘you’ Paul uses is plural. So here, Paul speaks to us as a community aiming to form a collective mind that informs collective actions.
Today we may consider a collective mind to be a bad idea. We use the word “groupthink” to describe a situation in which group pressure results in flawed or senseless decisions that may hurt others. Paul calls for a different kind of Groupthink, in which a community of people exhibits a transformed mind by following Jesus’ example of humility and service to others.
The rest of the reading, once we have the “mind of Christ,” can be divided into two sections: what Jesus did for humanity (verses 6-8) and what God did for Jesus (verses 9-11). There are three key words here; emptied, (v.7,) humbled (v.8,) and exalted (v.9.)
Paul defines “he emptied himself” not by what Jesus gave up, but by what he took on. That is, Jesus emptied himself not by “taking off” his divinity, but by “taking on” the form of a servant (verse 7). The pre-existent, divine Jesus did not consider his status to be a reason to avoid the incarnation, but to embrace it. True humility meant using his status not for exploitation but for self-sacrificial service to others.
The thing here is that Jesus fully humbled himself not despite being God, but because he was God. Does that make sense? The very nature of God is self-sacrificing love. This is what John means when he writes that “God is Love.”
Now look at what God does. The mind-blowing thing here is that the flip side of his self-sacrifice is that he was exalted by God in the fullness of his humanness. Imitating Jesus does not only mean to follow his example of humility, but also to follow his example in exaltation.
To exalt means to raise up or promote, so we as believers aren’t concerned with self-promotion, but with God’s promotion. Jesus’ brother James says a similar thing; “Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you” (James 4:10).
So how do these thoughts of imitating Christ, as Paul tells us, relate to the triumphant entry we celebrate on Palm Sunday?
Matthew’s account we just read however is not really triumphant at all, don’t you think?
Matthew is telling a different story. Not a triumphant entry, but a humble and meek one with a different kind of king.
When James and John asked Jesus to let one of them sit at his right hand when he came into his glory, they wanted to be raised up higher than the other disciples. Jesus told them that their greatness will be measured by the extent of their service.
Matthew leaves out talk of victory to stress humility. Jesus, in his entry into Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives rides a humble donkey. Triumphant Kings and warriors rode war horses, didn’t they? The donkey is absurd, isn’t it?
The Peace of Rome, or Pax Romana, was achieved by military occupation and full obedience to Roman provincial Governors. You couldn’t stir the pot on pain of death.
But in a very deep and different way, this is a victory parade. Where peace has been achieved through a different means. There is just an unarmed Messiah on a donkey, knocking at the door of Jerusalem, while people yell Hosana, which means Save, or Save us.
Christ’s peace, pax Christi, is a peace that totally stirs the pot. On the surface, a seemingly harmless procession becomes an earth-shattering reality. The last two verses read “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.”
The words “the city was in turmoil” can also be interpreted as “the whole city shook.” Jesus as King of Kings claims our very culture for the Kingdom of God. Just as the Old Testament prophets and Psalmists declared that the Lord shakes the mountains and melts the rocks, Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, shakes the world by his presence.
Not with the trappings of war, but unarmed and en-fleshed with love. This love disarms, because it’s nonviolent and the most powerful force in the universe, because God is love. So when Jesus processes into Jerusalem, his love enters their world. His love meets hate. His nonviolence meets violence. And this will shake anyone and anything up.
Jesus didn’t come to uphold a status quo; he came to save the world from itself. Salvation shakes things up and it should shake us up. It’s not until we are shaken that we realize that we are in the presence of the Most High King.
He’s riding on a donkey, so he doesn’t look like we expect (or perhaps want) him to look.
As we enter Holy Week, and Good Friday particularly, it’s a time to consider what Jesus’ triumph is. His triumph will be in his death where he takes all our vain little worldly so-called triumphs, names them sin and death, and takes them fully into and onto himself for us. And dies for them so we don’t have to die. Next Sunday we will celebrate what happens next when at the very place our mortality begins, it ends, and we ourselves are exalted by God. Let me pray …