Palm Sunday

Philippians 2.5-11; Matthew 21.1-11

I believe that the message of Palm Sunday is a very simple one for Christians. The message is simply an invitation held out by Christ to all who think they are able to, from those who are confident, to those who feel they only have a ghost of a chance, to follow Him through the events that we shall follow this week here in church in our worship. He's inviting us to follow Him from His entry into that sacred city of Jerusalem, His entry that we celebrate today, through His trial and death and on beyond that to His resurrection. For as we have said before; as Christians we don't follow or live by a set of moral rules and an ethical code; not in the first instance anyway. We follow a person, that person being a man, Jesus Christ. And it's as we follow Him, through all the events of His life but especially those we hear about this week, as we follow Him and give our lives over to Him in faith and love, He becomes our Lord. And we discover with that, that He is already and always has been, our Saviour.

With all the schools now on holiday, this week is most definitely a holiday for many. And quite a few will be missing from our congregation today because of that. But for we Christians, this week is no holiday, this week is the most important week of our whole year. This week is Holy Week. And it's a week that we can best answer that invitation held out to us by our Lord to follow Him, by giving ourselves to reflection and prayer whether we be at home or away, at work or on holiday. We can take more time out even just a few minutes more each day to read and think about the last days and hours of Jesus life and of His resurrection.  And we can come to church, to the worship more often this week as we have an act of worship every day. Each of our services on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are services of reflection and penance, asking nothing of you but to ponder your relationship with God and your walk with Him. Maybe you can make connections with what we thought about before Lent began and our preparation for it as we heard those words of Jesus in His Sermon on the Mount. Or you might like to think about how you've engaged with Lent itself and what the season has revealed.

As we make our way through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday we pay more close attention to the events of the closing hours of Jesus life before His death. And with this we can ask ourselves what meaning they have for our own lives, how we respond to what is happening to Jesus. And we do that because every year it's as if it were happening for the first time, because in God's time there is no time and the events, stretched out into time are happening continuously. The world is created and redeemed simultaneously in God's time. In human earthly time they are separate events. So on a cosmic scale Jesus is for ever being betrayed, being crucified, dying and being raised. And that's why these 'event's are meaningful for us, because they are for us as real as they were to those around Jesus 2,000 years ago. So what does in mean for you for your Lord and Saviour to be put to be betrayed and put to death now, for you, because that's what is happening when you come to worship, we aren't just remembering something that happened a long time ago to other people.

And then on Holy Saturday night shortly before midnight we shall begin our Easter proclamation, having first blessed new fire and lit our Paschal Candle and heard the story of the creation of the world and the redemption of God's people. At midnight we shall proclaim the resurrection and receive the Holy Communion of Easter. Finally on Easter Day we will celebrate the resurrection all together united as one body with the Lord in our midst, just as the disciples, gathered as one body, were visited by the risen Jesus in that upper room and where later Thomas would fall to his knees and proclaim Jesus as 'my Lord and my God'.

And so we'll come to the end of this Holy Week with heart, mind, body and soul renewed and resurrected along with the risen Christ. But we'll only understand, we'll only KNOW what all of this means, what the point of it is, if we've accepted the invitation that's on offer today, this Palm Sunday, to follow Jesus as closely as we can through the whole of this week. And that will be difficult for all of us because as we do follow closely it's only then do we recognise the times when we betray Jesus and leave Him deserted for things and people more attractive to the fallen human heart and mind. And it's at those times that we need to fall on our knees, ask His forgiveness, which will be given, and proclaim Him - 'My Lord and my God.' It will be a difficult journey but one that's worth doing because it's a journey that leads to new life, to life in all its fullness, to resurrection life.