Prayers of the People: Palm Sunday/The Sunday of the Passion ~ 6th Sunday in Lent RCL Yr C

For Sunday, April 13, 2025, Readings: Liturgy of the Palms: Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29; Luke 19:28-40; Liturgy of the Word: Isaiah 50:4-9a, Psalm 31:9-16, Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 22:39--23:49-56

Jesus said] "Go into the village...and as you enter you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden... [Luke 19:29a]

   This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it…This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it…Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. [Psalm 118:20,24,26]

    Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself...humbled himself... [Philippians 2:5-7a,8a]

   Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed [the people] again, but they kept shouting, Crucify, crucify him. A third time he said to them, "Why,  what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death...But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed."  [Luke 23:20-23]

    Then about an hour later still another kept insisting, "Surely this man was also with him...But Peter said, "Man, I do not know what you are talking about!"…At that moment…the cocked crowed…Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord…”Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.” [Luke 22:59-62]

      Of course, regular Church-goers in the Episcopal, Catholic, and other so-called main-line liturgical denominations know that Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday, for many decades now, are at once separate and yet one commemoration. The recounting of the procession with palm branches celebrates the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The Passion narrative develops the details of his Last Supper, the betrayal by Judas, and the machinations of the Chief Priests whose local standing and power among the Jews and Rome were clearly threatened by this acclaimed and unorthodox prophet and miracle-worker.

     We remember that his arrival created quite a stir. To this day in the Palm Sunday processions our hymns and shouts with "Hosanna" ["Hoshana" in Hebrew], praise to God with great elation, are as exuberant as when Jesus was greeted by the throngs that lined the road from Bethany to Jerusalem. They sang and shouted Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord [Ps 118: 26].  Cloaks and branches on the pathway for Jesus were a sign of the highest honor. The palm was the symbol of triumph and victory in the Greco-Roman culture of the times. The donkey or colt was itself a deliberate choice of Jesus sending the disciples to specifically retrieve it. The prophet Zechariah says in the Old/Hebrew Testament: Rejoice greatly, O daughter, Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter, Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey [Zechariah 9:9]. Jesus was accused later in the week of proclaiming himself "King of the Jews," yet riding into the city of Jerusalem on a donkey would have been a known and understood symbol that he was coming in peace, as one would do to show a peaceful arrival rather than a warrior King riding in on a grand horse, bent on taking power and war.

     All these elements were carefully noticed and recorded by the Roman occupiers and the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council, who had its own police force and trial court and who set the deadly wheels of what is to come in motion. How easy, it seems, to go from enthusiastic cheers of the crowd to the politically manipulated yet equally enthusiastic and malevolent jeers by the same people mere days later. How altogether and suddenly eerie now.

     The tone is set for this new journey through Holy Week in our own times of political machinations, violence, crowd wrangling, and manipulation. It is also time for me to acknowledge to my innermost self the moments of my own betrayal of Jesus through denial in thought, word, action, or plain inaction. Turning away from the unpleasant, the insincere, and especially the dangerous is safer and less stressful in the short run, but, going with the flow by participation or neglect reaps far more tyranny and destruction than standing up to oppression. 

        Dr. Martin Luther King said it best, "A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time came for Peter, that time is now for us. We, together, are the voice and power of Christ’s love in times of Palms and in the ensuing Storms. Let us always sing HOSANNA in the name of Jesus, our Redeemer Lord.

LET US, GOD’S PEOPLE, PRAY
 
Leader:  ~ O Jesus, our Lord, jolt us out of merely listening to the re-reading of familiar texts to know now the sudden joy of Your arrival in our midst. Open us to the shudder of feelings, today, and in this coming week, as beguiled minds turn to riotous, politically-manipulated, and deadly betrayal. Inspire us in this day, and every day to come, to experience the breadth, the depth, and the power of Your love, and to never deny You within ourselves or to another.

 
                                                        O Christ, our Strength and our Salvation             
         RESPONSE:                   We commit ourselves to You
 
~ O Jesus, our Lord, we turn to You for the courage to stand up, expect, and require that all who hold or seek office in the governments of this Earth, this Country, and this Community be exemplars of principled justice, mercy, and peace. We pray especially for: add your own petitions
 
                                                     O Christ, our Strength and our Salvation
                                                       We commit ourselves to You
 
~ O Jesus, our Lord, in Your loving-kindness make Your face to shine upon those who suffer through chronic pain, distress in spirit or in life, and refresh all who give them care. We now join our hearts to pray for those in need…add your own petitions
 
                                                     O Christ, our Strength and our Salvation
                                                       We commit ourselves to You
 
~ O Jesus, our Lord, fill the hearts of all who mourn with the comfort of the joyful and jubilant welcome that those we love received in their new and eternal life. We pray especially for: add your own petitions
 
                                                     O Christ, our Strength and our Salvation
                                                       We commit ourselves to You
 
~  O Jesus, our Lord, we pause in this moment to offer You our other heartfelt thanksgivings, intercessions, petitions, and memorials, aloud or silently… add your own petitions
 
                                                     O Christ, our Strength and our Salvation
                                                       We commit ourselves to You
             
~ O Jesus, our Lord, may each of those who lead us in Your Church be granted the tongue of a teacher and the humility of Your human likeness, as they guide us all to stand up together with faith and trust in You. We pray especially for: add your own petitions
 
                                                     O Christ, our Strength and our Salvation
                                                       We commit ourselves to You
             
The Celebrant adds: Lord God in Christ, agitate our spirits and provoke our desire to seek Your mind in all that we do. Urge us to empty ourselves of all that draws us away that we may find our true and everlasting life in You. We ask this of You, our Hope and our Redeemer; and the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier of our Souls; who together with the Almighty Creator is One God, now and forever. Amen.

 

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