Prayers of the People: Palm Sunday/The Sunday of the Passion ~ 6th Sunday in Lent '25 WLWC Yr C

For Sunday, April 13, 2025, Readings: Liturgy of the Palms ~ Matthew 21:1-11, Psalm 118:19-29; Liturgy of the Word: Isaiah 49:5-16, Psalm 22:1-11, Galatians 3:23-4:7; Mark 14:32-52

  The disciples went and did just as Jesus instructed them…A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road and other cut branches…and spread them on the road…shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Holy One! Hosanna in the highest!” [Matthew 21:6, 8-9]

   This is the gate of the Holy Presence…This is the day that the Fount of Creation has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. [Psalm 118:19-29]

  “…I will give you as a light to the nations, for it will be that my salvation reaches to the end of the earth.”  [Isaiah 49: 6b]

    “Commit yourself to the Saving One; let God rescue and deliver the one in whom God delights!” [Psalm 22:8]

     Now before faith came, we were garrisoned and guarded under the law…Therefore the law was our instructor until Christ came…But now that faith has come…in Christ Jesus you are all daughters and sons of God through faith. [Galatians 3:23-26]

   Jesus and his disciples went to a place called Gethsemane and he said…”You all sit here while I pray…and stay awake…” Jesus came a third time and found them sleeping… “Enough! The hour has come. Look! The Son of Woman is betrayed into the hands of sinners…”  [Mark 14:32,34b,41]

     Of course, regular Church-goers know that Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday, for many decades now, are at once separate and yet one commemoration. And even non-regular Church-goers know the basic elements of both. 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.

     Although there are differences in the texts used for this Sunday between the Revised Common Lectionary and this, Dr. Gafney’s Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church, they are minimal given the theme. Dr. Gafney uses the Gospels of Matthew and Mark instead of Luke in the RCL. Within the synoptic Gospels, the basics remain fairly constant with more or less detail and slight variations. And, Dr. Gafney uses her own translations and emphasizes the feminine presence by her language and expansive titles for God yet does not change the context of the readings in any other way.

     We remember that the arrival of Jesus 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 Faithful One, a Light to the Nations, jolt us out of merely listening or re-reading to know now the sudden joy of Your continuing Holy Presence 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.
 
                                                        Jesus, our Saving One            
         RESPONSE:                   We commit ourselves to You
 
~ O Faithful One, a Light to the Nations, 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

                                                     Jesus, our Saving One
                                                       We commit ourselves to You
 
~ O Faithful One, a Light to the Nations, 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
 
                                                     Jesus, our Saving One
                                                       We commit ourselves to You
 
~ O Faithful One, a Light to the Nations, 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
 
                                                     Jesus, our Saving One
                                                       We commit ourselves to You
 
~  O Faithful One, a Light to the Nations, we pause in this moment to offer You our other heartfelt thanksgivings, intercessions, petitions, and memorials, aloud or silently… add your own petitions
 
                                                     Jesus, our Saving One
                                                       We commit ourselves to You
             
~ O Faithful One, a Light to the Nations, 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                                                     

                                                     Jesus, our Saving One
                                                       We commit ourselves to You             

The Celebrant adds: Oh Christ, Son of Woman, agitate our spirits and provoke our desire to seek Your mind in all that we do. Urge us to empty ourselves of all distractions pulling 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 Fount of Creation, is One God, now and forever. Amen

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