3/29/2026_Palm Sunday_Seeing Clearly

Isaiah 50:4–9a
Philippians 2:5–11
Matthew 21:1-11
Matthew 27:11–54

Yesterday, all over the country, many were in the streets—walking, chanting, showing up because something in us refuses to accept the world as it is.
There was urgency. There was grief. Oh my goodness there was hope and joy.

And today, we find ourselves in another procession—time folding in on itself—leading us into a city much like our own.

Another crowd pressing into the streets.

Another moment charged with urgency and hope—asking what kind of world could yet be born.

This story presses a deep question beneath all the movement and energy:

Do we actually understand what we’re seeing, what we’re experiencing when we show up?
Do we recognize God when God appears—not in the ways we expect, not in power as we’ve been taught to look for it—but in vulnerability, in silence, in suffering love?

Because the crowd on that first Palm Sunday thought they knew exactly what was happening.

They knew on the West one side, Pontius Pilate was entering Jerusalem with imperial force—soldiers, banners, cavalry. A display of domination meant to keep people in line.

And then from the East, Jesus was entering in from the Mount of Olives. No army. No spectacle. Just a borrowed colt, and then, a crowd of ordinary people, with a cry:

Hosanna.
Save us.

This is not just praise. It is a plea. A politically charged hope that something different is possible.

And Jesus answers that hope—yet not in the way they expect.

He does not take power.
He does not overthrow Rome.
He does not become the kind of king they were looking for.

Instead, he redefines power itself.

Not domination, but presence.
Not violence, but solidarity.
Not control, but in risky love.

Palm Sunday is a celebration. Palm Sunday is a confrontation.
Two processions.
Two visions of power.
Two very different kinds of “peace.”

And a crowd—full of hope, full of expectation—knowing what they are seeing before them is what God is doing.

And, by the time we reach the Passion… almost all of them have lost sight.

Jesus stands before Pilate. “Are you the King of the Jews?”
A political question—about threat, control, legitimacy.

And Jesus barely answers. Then he goes silent.

I think it’s important that we see that silence—is not weakness.
It is a refusal.

A refusal to justify himself within a system that only understands power as domination.
A refusal to perform innocence for an unjust court.
A refusal to grant moral authority to violence dressed up as order.

And the result is exactly what empires do. What our empire is doing. 

He is mocked.
Beaten.
Executed.

The crowd disappears.
The leaders mock.
The state carries out death.

But if I’m honest, one of the hardest parts of this story, and the story of our time, is not just the violence.
It is the silence.

Because we are living in a moment where harm is not abstract.

People are being detained—families separated, lives upended—and it happens with a kind of bureaucratic efficiency that tries to make injustice look normal. And there is so often silence, or half-speech, from those with power to intervene.

Reproductive rights are being stripped away, body autonomy contested and controlled—and again, silence or evasion from many who could speak clearly.

Trans and nonbinary siblings are facing targeted legislation, erasure, violence—and the silence from institutions that should protect dignity—it is loud.

Across the world, bombs fall, civilians die, entire communities are displaced—and the global response so often feels like carefully managed quiet.

It feels like being in that crowd watching injustice unfold in front of our eyes and yet, silence is deafening:

Where is God in this?
Why does it feel like no one is speaking?

The Passion definitely does not give us answers.

But it does reframe the question.

Because if we expect God to show up primarily through the powerful—speaking clearly, fixing things from above—then the story will always confuse us.

Because that is not where God is most visible. Transformation happens through the most unlikely of characters… us. 

We can be just like that Roman centurion at the foot of the cross—standing as people deeply embedded in these systems of violence.

And he says:
“Truly this was God’s Son.”

Not the leaders.
Not the crowd.
Not the governor.

Someone on the margins of power.
Someone who has witnessed the suffering up close.

He sees. He names. 

It is often those closest to suffering—
those whose lives are most on the line—
who see most clearly where God is.

And they tell us exactly where God is.

God is not in the silence of complicity.
Not in the preservation of power.
Not in systems that harm and justify the harm.

God is in the one who is suffering.
God is in the one who refuses to dehumanize.
God is in the one who stays aligned with love, even when it is risky and costs.

And that does not mean God is absent from the silence. Completely the opposite:

God is in the people who keep speaking when it would be easier to stay quiet.
People who keep living fully as themselves in the face of erasure.
Communities that protect one another, accompany one another, refuse to disappear.
God is in the steady refusal to believe that violence gets the last word.

The silence in this story is not approval.

It is exposure.

It reveals what systems do when left unchecked.
It reveals how power operates.
It reveals how quickly crowds can turn.

And in that exposure, the cross tells the truth.

So the question for us is: Where are we?

Are we among those who look away?
Who waits for someone else to speak?
Who convinces ourselves that silence is neutral?

Or are we willing to stand closer to the cross?

Closer to those most impacted.
Closer to the truth, even when it is uncomfortable.

Because Philippians is not just describing Christ. The author encourages us to “Let the same mind be in you…”

This is our invitation.

To loosen our grip on the forms of power the world rewards.
To align ourselves with the vulnerable.
To risk being misunderstood.

To choose a love that does not dominate—but accompanies.

And this is the hope, even now:

That even when we do not see clearly—
even when the silence feels heavy—
even when the world feels like it is unraveling—

God is still being revealed.

In risky love.
In embodied solidarity.
In those who refuse to let injustice have the final word.

May this same mind be in us. Amen.