Explore and respond

Ideas for a sermon or interactive talk

See also ‘Thought for the week’ to read out in place of a sermon; and 'The week in focus', linking the readings to the news.

• Imagine you are listening to someone who was in the crowd outside Jerusalem. ‘I only went in to do a few little jobs, getting ready for the Passover, but it was so busy. Then something strange happened. That Jesus, the one we keep hearing rumours about, he turned up. I suppose he’s getting ready for the Passover too – but emotions were running high and someone must’ve remembered something they’d heard him say or seen him do, or remember something from Scripture. They started calling out, as if they were hailing a king! Quickly it became a shout, and more and more people joined in. Some put their cloaks on the ground. Others waved branches as if he’s the new king! There’s a sense of expectation here now…and unrest, I fear. It’s as if something’s about to happen. What if he’s the one who will save us?’
  
  
• What would you do if the king was coming to your local town? How would you prepare? Where would you roll out the red carpet? What would you do to ensure his security, to manage the crowds, to facilitate a welcome? Jesus didn’t engage with any of these things. His entrance was planned to be both low-key and make a statement; his welcome was spontaneous. Where would you have been in this?
  
  
• What does it mean to ‘treat someone like a king’? Do we indulge them? Revere them? Fear them? What special treatment is Jesus seeking here after so unusually asking for it? Usually keen to be low-key, here he’s been provided with a ‘pristine’ mount because it has hitherto been unridden, and is preceded and followed by acclaim and excitement. What thoughts, immediately or in the aftermath, might he be hoping to arouse in those who witnessed his procession?
  
  
• Is the Palm Sunday procession an end or a beginning? Is Jesus’ real kingship shown in this day of acclaim, as people finally recognise and acknowledge the depths of wisdom, love and faith that have earlier been shown in his teaching, preaching and healing? Or is that all being set aside as Jesus confronts the real business of his kingship in endurance, sacrifice and mystery? Do we, by concentrating on the mysterious, and the crisis that verse 11 foreshadows, avoid the demands made on us as his followers to be peaceable and seek healing? Or do we, by focusing on the human Jesus as ‘the Great Example’, forget that he, even in this life, was something more, and unique, God in human form? How do we pull the two responses together?

Thought for the week

Read out in place of a sermon if you wish

What does the idea of a king offer? Leadership? Just symbolic leadership? Or something more? What do you think people were expecting from the one who came, ‘in the name of the Lord’? What did the name of his ancestor David add, I wonder? Glamour? Charisma? The mantle of a kind of ‘superman’ if you think of David and Goliath (1 Samuel 17), or the romance of a kind of Cinderella fantasy if you focus on the choice of the youngest and least regarded brother, the shepherd boy, as king (1 Samuel 16)? A poet who gloriously lamented the death of his friend, Jonathan (2 Samuel 1; 17)? A warrior king who made Israel great? If there was also scandal (2 Samuel 11:14), and tragedy (2 Samuel 18; 33), they perhaps weren’t coming to mind on that day! But overall, in David, we have the picture of a many-faceted but undoubtedly great man who served his people well. Does this picture help us at all to understand Jesus as king? 

The UK got a new king last year, and the transition from the late Queen Elizabeth II to King Charles III has provoked some discussion of the acceptability of kingship in the modern world. It would probably be fair to say that we are happier with humility, romance and peaceable arts than with battle prowess, ambition, or a colourful past! Perhaps the essentials of Jesus as servant king of his people, humble on a donkey, acclaimed with peaceable palms, not the weapons of war, have gradually rubbed off on earthly monarchs down the years as they internalise the meaning of their anointing as servants of God and a nation. Modern British constitutional monarchy, crystallised in the late Queen, has been displayed in service, tact, self-restraint, concern for suffering, and the sponsorship of good causes and peace between nations. 

But surely this is not enough to imagine the kind of king Jesus is? There is ‘soft power’ in King Jesus, certainly. Seemingly the sheer appeal of his personality brought people out to line the roads and shout, ‘Hosanna’! But there was hard power, too, principally seen later when he drives the merchants out of the Temple but hinted at even on Palm Sunday. He gives his orders, and the disciples carry them out. With everything else, calm, certain, dignified – even on a donkey – he has the qualities of a good commanding officer. 

In the end, there is no possible full comparison for Jesus’ version of kingship. He shows both the compassion that wills an end, and wins hearts, and the strength of purpose that achieves it, by force if necessary. But he also had that perfection of motive, which meant that neither hard power, nor soft power, was ever used for selfish purposes. And that, none of us, king or commoner, will ever achieve. But, strengthened by the grace that God alone gives, we can go on trying in our imperfect ways to follow our utterly selfless divine example.