Sermon at St. John’s Parish Church, West Grimstead – Palm Sunday – Sunday 13 April 2025
Isaiah 50:4-9a; Philippians 2:5-11;
Luke 19:28-40
May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may the
words that I speak be theirs and be a blessing upon all who hear them. Amen
It is quite traditional, in the Church of England, on this Sunday, Palm
Sunday, to give a dramatized reading of the Passion of Christ according to Mark
and, indeed, in my younger days as a chorister in Lincolnshire, I recall
singing the St. Mark Passion on Palm Sunday as composed by the almost unknown
Irish composer Charles Wood, a student of whom was Ralph Vaughan Williams.
I have always thought it a little strange to have a complete rendition of
the Passion Story in advance of Good Friday itself and this year we have done
things a little differently here in West Grimstead and I really want us to
consider and reflect upon the events of the Sunday before Holy Week and the
weekend of the Crucifixion and Resurrection and wonder what thoughts might have
been going through Jesus’s head knowing that he was to die before the week was
out.
Therefore,
perhaps it is not possible to read the story of Palm Sunday without it being
overshadowed by the knowledge of what lay ahead. Perhaps it is not possible to
imagine the crowds in Jerusalem shouting, “Hosanna!” without also imagining
them shouting, “crucify him.” Perhaps the sense of social isolation we felt
during the Covid-19 pandemic can prompt thoughts of the isolation felt by Jesus
of Nazareth as he rode into Jerusalem.
What
do you say when you know you are going to die and can say nothing?
During
the First World War, just before the Battle of the Somme in France in 1916,
Captain Duncan Lennox Martin of the 9th Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment
had gone home on leave, he had taken with him a large-scale map which he used
as his guide in making a plasticine model of the battlefield. The map and the
model caused him to realise that when he and his company eventually advanced
from their trench, they would die, cut down by fire from a machine gun post in
the German line they faced. On his return he showed the model to his senior
officers who, despite his misgivings, responded that to advance was his duty.
In
Captain Lennox Martin’s company, was Lieutenant William Noel Hodgson. On 29th
June 1916, Hodgson, the son of the Bishop of Saint Edmundsbury and Ipswich and
a man whose faith seems to have endured the horrors of the Western Front, wrote
a poem called Before
Action. His poem is a reflection on the death that awaited:
By all the glories of the day
And the cool evening’s benison
By that last sunset touch that lay
Upon the hills when day was done,
By beauty lavishly outpoured
And blessings carelessly received,
By all the days that I have lived
Make me a soldier, Lord.
By all of all man’s hopes and fears
And all the wonders poets sing,
The laughter of unclouded years,
And every sad and lovely thing;
By the romantic ages stored
With high endeavour that was his,
By all his mad catastrophes
Make me a man, O Lord.
I, that on my familiar hill
Saw with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of thy sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must say good-bye to all of this; –
By all delights that I shall miss,
Help me to die, O Lord.
On
1st July 1916, Noel Hodgson was killed by a single bullet through his neck,
fired from the same machine gun that had killed his comrades. What had been his
thoughts in the days before the battle? When he could not speak to his men of
his death that lay ahead, not even hint at what would happen, how difficult was
it to continue his duty? In Noel Hodgson’s mind, would there have been a
terrible sense of isolation, a deep loneliness?
As
Jesus rode into Jerusalem, what poems might he have written? As he knew that
his death was drawing close, how lonely must he have felt? How difficult it
must have been to have continued through the days now remembered as Holy Week.
“Not
my will, but thine be done,” says Jesus on the Thursday night in the Garden of
Gethsemane. In the final line of Before
Action, Noel Hodgson asks that God will help him though the death
that lay ahead. What a profound sense of desolation there must have been in
those words.
And let’s spare a thought for the colt, the
young donkey. Jesus made a point of
riding not as a conquering King, on a large white charger but on a humble
donkey illustrating that he came to Jerusalem not as a conquering monarch but as
a humble servant; to lay down his life for us all. This poem written by Mary Oliver reminds us
of this and is one I particularly like:
On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.
How horses, turned out into the meadow,
leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
clatter away, splashed with sunlight.
But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited.
Then he let himself be led away.
Then he let the stranger mount.
Never had he seen such crowds!
And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen.
Still, he was what he had always been: small, dark, obedient.
I hope, finally, he felt brave.
I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him,
as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward.
So as we enter Holy Week, the last week of Lent, and
before we follow the gloomy narrative of the Passion and the glorious story of
the Resurrection, let us reflect fully on our own place in this narrative
remembering that Jesus had come into the world to save us from our sins, to
open the way to direct dialogue with our Creator. Let us never forget the events of Holy Week,
how the cries of “Hosannah” quickly changed to cries of “Crucify Him”. How quick are we to change our allegiances in
the face of difficulty? How easily could
we be swayed from the path of true Faith?
We are currently living in a world of complete chaos and
confusion – politically, economically and culturally. Very often some change is necessary but, so
to, is the need to uphold and demonstrate those true Christian Values which we
were taught by and exemplified by Jesus.
We must, if we are true followers be prepared to make sacrifices on
occasions in order to continue to shout “Hosannah” and not turn away so easily
from our own beliefs.
Amen MFB/214/10042025
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