Palm Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons

Christ the Bridegroom - Icon

Palm Sunday
April 13th 2025

A place of many contradictions.

As we enter into Holy Week, helped on our spiritual journey by the celebration of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, we find ourselves in a place of many contradictions.

In the Roman rite the Palm Sunday Liturgy begins with a commemoration of Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, halting near the Mount of Olives, and asking two of his disciples to bring a colt to him, in order that he might ride on in majesty into the city and fulfil the words of the Prophet Zechariah about the coming Messiah:

"Tell the city of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you! He is humble and rides on a donkey and on a colt, the foal of a donkey." (Zech 9:9)

This is a sign of triumph and fulfilment. Jesus is making a royal claim, but contrary to many patterns of power, His is a claim of humility, of accessibility to all, particularly the lost and outcast, but in contradistinction to many Kings, His is also a kingship of peace not war rooted in the Word of God.

Benedict XVI in his book: 'Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection', writes: "He wants his path and his action to be understood in terms of Old Testament promises that are fulfilled in his person. The Old Testament speaks of him - and vice versa: He acts and lives within the word of God, not according to projects and wishes of his own."

In this image of King and promised messiah we see the 'topsy-turvey' hand of God who challenges the root and basis of humankind's power structures, be it political, economic or even religious. This Messiah, this King, is one who understands us and our world from a totally different view point than those we often espouse as rulers or leaders, for His values are based not on power, so called strength or economic riches, but in the loving humility of God.

Paul's hymn: Christ the Servant of God!

This gift of humility, Christ's openness to God, and not his own wishes, and also therefore, his command and example for us who follow Him, is there in that hymn of the Servant Christ, which forms the second reading, taken from Paul's letter to the Philippians, in the Liturgy of the Word that follows our procession. Here we find enhanced that contradictory image of the Messiah who is all powerful, yet all embracing in an open humility, leaving no avenue of approach to His person closed to us. Isn't this a far cry from the arrogance we often find in many of our leaders, (or perhaps even ourselves at times) who seem to create barriers between themselves and people rather than break them down?

We can rejoice that unlike many of us humans, Christ has an accessibility that is infinite, because he knows and understands the depths of darkness and in mercy and forgiveness offers us ways around sin that cuts us off from Him."

Rather, he emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

coming in human likeness;

and found human in appearance,

he humbled himself,

becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:7,8)

Gathered up in this ancient hymn are so many rich images, deep teachings about and from Jesus the Christ, whose simplicity is revolutionary. Why do we never seem to learn His lesson? I suppose the simplest answer is that we are human and not divine, the flaws of our own nature take years to really discern and a lifetime to overcome. That is the problem of a people made from the grains of stardust moulded together, shaped in the clay of Mother Earth by the creative hand of God, our earthbound connection with each other is made new by the Risen Messiah Christ, whom we discover in our lives and whose forgiveness we experience and who will exalt us by the power of His name. But to know and understand that, also means we must face the passion and death he undertook for our sakes, and that is why each year our commemorations return us to face our destiny with Him, our yearly remembering places us with Him in these scenes as though we are there.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus!

We enter the Eucharist on Palm Sunday in triumph, but we leave our assembly more soberly, because in our Liturgy that story of the Passion is narrated, a strong reminder that this is Holy Week. Each day is part of the journey Jesus undertook, and we go with Him, to see there in the story the contradictions of human life laid bare for us to know and understand better. Here we discover betrayal, cowardice, arrogance, cruelty, dissembling, and awful, true, mendacity, yet dotted in the pathos and starkness are those glimpses of stardust that we truly can become, rather than remain in the muck of Adam and Eve's clay. Here are stories of love, tenderness, compassion, bravery, compunction, the gift of true tears, and the generosity of those people, who also like us, come to witness love for Jesus, support him, and at the end, care for the body of the dead Christ.

Before we come to celebrate the resurrection, we need to face the mirror the passion and death of Jesus holds up for us and having faced who we truly are, let go, once again, of all the clutter in our souls and hearts. This week is a time to fix our eyes on Jesus and be one with the colt, carrying Him deep within us, in order that we too may say with real meaning:

"Blessed is the king who comes
in the name of the Lord.
Peace in heaven
and glory in the highest." (Lk 19:38)

Lectio Divina

Philippians 2

Canticle - Christ, the servant of God v 6-11

Though he was in the form of God,
Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

He emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant,
being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form,
he humbled himself and became obedient unto death,
even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name which is above every name,

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Ambrose of Milan

Explanatio super Psalmos CXVIII [Comment on Psalm 118

"Christ, hung on the tree of the Cross... was pierced by the lance, whereby blood and water flowed out, sweeter than any ointment, from the victim acceptable to God, spreading throughout the world the perfume of sanctification.... Thus, Jesus, pierced, spread the perfume of the forgiveness of sins and of redemption. Indeed, in becoming man from the Word which he was, he was very limited and became poor, though he was rich, so as to make us rich through his poverty (cf 2 Cor 8, 9). He was powerful, yet he showed himself as deprived, so much so that Herod scorned and derided him; he could have shaken the earth, yet he remained attached to that tree; he closed the heavens in a grip of darkness, setting the world on the cross, but he had been put on the Cross; he bowed his head, yet the Word sprung forth; he was annihilated, nevertheless he filled everything. God descended, man ascended; the Word became flesh so that flesh could revindicate for itself the throne of the Word at God's right hand; he was completely wounded, and yet from him the ointment flowed. He seemed unknown, yet God recognized him" (III, 8, Saemo IX, Milan-Rome 1987, p 131, 133)."