A homily for Palm Sunday of the Passion of Our Lord, April 13, 2025
Luke 19:28-40, Isaiah 50:4-7, Philippians 2:6-11, Luke 22:14—23:56
I grew up in a Ford family. Over the years, we had more Country Squires than three seasons of “Bridgerton.” And a couple of Mustangs, of course.
At one point, we added a Volkswagen Bug, and we owned our share of VeeDubs, but they were always The Second Car. The big Ford V-8 was the vehicle of choice.
Yet when it was time for me to take out a loan, sign on the dotted line and drive away in my own wheels, I opted for a, yes, sexy VW Scirocco. And don’t you know, I felt some guilt pangs for betraying the Blue Oval.
Utterly preposterous, of course. The folks in Dearborn, MI, and Lakewood, NJ, were going to lose exactly ZERO sleep over my purchase.
Nonetheless, even today, my earliest hard-wired brand loyalty occasionally tugs at me, even after I’ve driven the sourest lemon imaginable.
I wonder if any of the palm-waving hosanna-shouters felt as much guilt as I did in a German sportscar when they turned their backs on Jesus?
And let’s not forget, they didn’t stop at ignoring or shunning the Carpenter from Nazareth. No, they gathered angrily at the high priest’s and at the governor’s palace. They didn’t shrug their shoulders at the various pronouncements and say, “Sure, whatever,” to the political and religious leaders. They hollered, “Crucify him!” again and again, louder and louder, to the point where the muckety-mucks feared a riot.
“Hosanna? Did we say that? Nah, it must have been somebody else.”
What’s the expression — “The worm turns”?
It took a lot to believe Jesus, and to believe in Jesus, in the Holy Land of the first century. He wasn’t the kind of king, the kind of warrior, the kind of Messiah the children of Abraham were looking for. What he asked of people — to love God and to love their neighbors as themselves, and even love their enemies — that was just plain crazy.
And the whipped cream and cherry on top of his crazy was his insistence that he was the Son of God, that he was in the Father and the Father was in him. Never mind how many people he healed or how much water he turned into the best possible wine. And Lazarus? Pfft.
Nope. Go ahead and crucify him; we’re going to look for a better offer. So what if he was descended from King David.
And yet, Jesus died on the cross for them as readily as he died for every other member of humankind past, present or future.
It still takes a lot for any of us to believe Jesus, to believe in Jesus in the divided and materialistic world of the 21st century. His simple message of inclusive unconditional love is under attack from every point of the compass, even from men (mostly men) and women who claim The Christ as their Savior.
Empathy, as exemplified by the Galilean, is ridiculed.
But Jesus is still healing, through those among us who believe that he can be found in the least among us. Jesus is still speaking through the Word that the Holy Spirit inspired and filled with grace. Jesus is still challenging us to carry our own crosses in his name, to leave the Earth and all of Creation better than we found it.
And if we accept our crosses in Jesus’s name — no matter how heavy or light they may be — the Son of Man, through his love and grace, will imitate Simon of Cyrene for us.
May we always show how strong our spines are. Especially these days.
