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Over the course of the season of Lent, we have been following Christ in the Scriptures as he made his way from one town and village to another, teaching the people with his great parables. Just before today’s readings, we find our Saviour in the home of his friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. And from this moment, we are able to follow the Great Sufferer on, day by day, and step by step, to the hour of his passion and of the world’s redemption, when we hear him cry, “It is finished,” on the cross.

Having traveled southward towards the Holy City, from a spot near the border with Samaria where he had spent several days in dreadful preparation for the coming events, he came to the village of Bethany (lying three or four miles from Jerusalem with the Mount of Olives between them) and then to the household in which he called Lazarus back from the dead only a few weeks before. There, in the evening, Simon makes a feast for the Divine Guest. There, Lazarus ponders the mystery and wonder of his own rising from the dead. There, Martha, with characteristic activity and anxiety, serves at table. There one of the Marys anoints the feet of her friend and Lord with her most costly perfume, foreshadowing the Jewish burial rites which will be fully performed in a short time. It does not take a great deal of imagination to complete the picture of that supper, of the happy group yet filled with fearful apprehension, the memories of mercies and miracles, and the final parting for a night of troubled sleep.

The next morning, Jesus took up his sorrowful journey again, and moved slowly towards the Temple. As the Passover, with its sacrifices, was at hand, companies of pilgrims, driving their sheep for sacrifice at the altar, would be seen in the roads, coming into the city from all quarters, to the center of the nation’s faith. Among them goes the Lamb of God—the one sacrifice—full, perfect and sufficient, whose coming these burning altars had heralded for generations before. But he is not only sacrifice and priest; not only prophet and fulfillment; but another of his characteristics is kingship. So, in token of that royal office whereby he is to reign forever, he must enter the city of his sacrifice with kingly honors, in meekness to die, yet in majesty to triumph. So the young colt is procured and draped with the cloaks of the disciples, and Our Lord enters Jerusalem as a king, greeted with the cheers and adoration of a nation assembled. The people begin to cry out the refrain of the psalm which heralds the coming of the Messiah. The Pharisees order Jesus to quiet the crowd, to which he replies, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” Indeed this is the fulfillment of his kingly entrance into Jerusalem. And as a king, Jesus does his duty and goes straightaway to the Temple to observe the Passover. That evening, with considerably less fanfare, Jesus and the twelve return to the area of Bethany, bringing him one day’s journey closer to Calvary.

And this is where Palm Sunday brings us, to the realization that Christ is the Great Sufferer—a sufferer before us, a sufferer with us, a sufferer for us. In the Epistle, we read that, “though he was in the form of God, [Jesus] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” Not only did Christ look like us, he was us in every way, even in the most unpleasant ways; which means that there is nothing so unpleasant about you or me that Jesus does not fully understand—yet he loves us still, ‘warts and all’. At Bethany, “Jesus wept.” Four days later, he comes to Gethsemane, and the fifth day to the cross. In order to gain the faith of the world, Jesus must suffer excruciatingly. Because of this suffering, something in him touches everything in us. All of our humanity, with all its possible moods and conditions is somehow included and understood in him. He is there in joyous family reunions, such as that recently televised one of the little six-year-old boy and his father who had come home from service in Iraq. And because of his extreme suffering, he is there with us in prison camps and cancer wards. He came to Bethany not only when his three friends were well, but also when Lazarus was dead. This is one of the remarkable characteristics of the Christian faith. It is not one-sided, being all for sadness or all for mirth. It is neither stoical nor epicurean. It has as many sides as our life has, goes with us wherever we go, and only asks that it may consecrate every aspect of our lives with its blessing.

Our Saviour suffered for us that we might not suffer forever. He is the first to weep with us, and the first to rejoice. But it is in trial—of the conscience, the heart, the body—that our greatest desires lie, and it is there that he meets us with the special ministry of his mediation. It is when, coming to the sepulcher of Lazarus with his friends, he weeps; it is when he cries out with his own anguish at Gethsemane and on the cross that he draws us nearest and makes us feel how really one with us the Divine Redeemer is. Imagine for a moment a Christ who demanded our faith only on the basis of our happy moments, absenting himself from us in times of pain and grief. How utterly disappointing and crippling life would be! But thanks be to God, we are one with Christ in his suffering as he is with us. Indeed we are more at one in what we suffer than what we enjoy, partly because in pain we are more aware of our mutual dependence, and partly because pain is often more intense and longer lasting than pleasure. For example, a family you know might experience a sudden windfall. This impacts the community very little. Imagine, though, if that same family experienced a tragic death or the destruction of their home by fire. Then, in their deepest suffering, the community comes together and the best in people—the Christ in people—can be seen. No matter how fortunate you are at present, you would not trust your salvation to any other than “a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief”.

We find in the Son of Man signs of an intense sympathy with others’ sorrow which is a kind of willing sorrow in itself. Our redemption in Christ, through his death is an outward and historical fact for us. It is not a cool transaction which took place thousands of years ago and far away, of which we are passive beneficiaries. Christ redeems us by dying, and in that death entering with all the power of his sacrifice, and all the spirit of his mercy, and all the tenderness of his cross, into our lives today. We know his crucifixion only as we are crucified with him. And that is what we will do later in the week in the anamnesis of Good Friday. Anamnesis is making the past a present reality, it is different from mimesis, which is merely miming or acting something out, like a pageant. We are not merely producing a sort of yearly tableau vivant, we are experiencing the rich palette of emotions, actions and motives, all that is glorious and all that is the most despicable within us, all in this one week. After weeks of preparation, today we stand at the gates of Jerusalem. In the liturgy of Palm Sunday, we are made aware of the “uneasy coexistence between [our] celebration of Christ’s ministry and [our] reluctance to follow the same path.” Carrying palms, we cry out ‘Hosanna!’, ‘Blessed is the king!’ But the mood quickly changes with the collect, which leaves no ambiguity about the eventual death of Christ. “The revolution is completed by the move into the liturgy of the word, in which [we] are confronted with the full horror of Jesus’ end and with [our] complicity in it.”

We will soon move into the Holy Communion, in which we will receive the One whom we welcomed as a king and condemned as a criminal. “The significance of this ritual…is that the Palm Sunday liturgy bodily and verbally situates [us] in the role of receivers, observers, and responders to the action of Jesus. Whether shouting ‘Hosanna!’ in the liturgy of the palms, or ‘Crucify him!’ in the liturgy of the word, [we] both celebrate and resist the path of Christ.” Even though the intimacy of communion is a part of our liturgy today, on Palm Sunday we are primarily observers, or perhaps a better word is voyeurs, for it conveys the disgusting hypocrisy with which we laud our king one moment and cry out like hungry curs for his blood the next.

Palm Sunday always leaves me feeling a little dirty and ashamed, and if we get our anamnesis right, that’s what it should do. This day gets us ready to radically switch roles later in this Holy Week, when we change from filthy mob and corrupt officials into real imitators of Christ in the washing of the feet on Maundy Thursday and real sufferers with Christ on Good Friday. But for now let us remain in this uncomfortable and frightful place, where we consider our complicity in the suffering of Christ and of the world today. And having done that, we can turn to Our Lord on Good Friday and say, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Amen.