Palm Sunday

Five years ago, or so, I was asked by our pastor to speak to the congregation on Palm Sunday about something I had discovered while working on a Session workshop. That year, our pastor had the elders of the church meeting to work out a vision for the church. Week to week, we had met and gone through a number of tasks and tests to try to work our way to a shared vision.

Unfortunately, it seemed that everytime I came up with something, my findings would be discarded and we would be directed in a new direction. Every week seemed to find the same frustration. We didn't seem to be any further to the vision.

One Saturday morning, I was thinking about the latest task and flipping over the internet on the website for the church. As I flipped through the website, I came to some historical pieces which referred to an earlier time in our church when the Session met and felt like the church was passing through a spiritual malaise. The elders prayed about it and decided that the church needed to repent, beginning with the elders themselves.

The Session minutes reported that as soon as the elders and the congregation were led to repent, the spiritual malaise retreated and the church seemed to rise spiritually.

As I read this, it occurred to me that we too were being called to repentance. So on our Sunday evening meeting, at the end I asked Rev. Dalstrom to let me relate my findings. In response, the elders immediately concurred and the next Session meeting was spent in nothing more than the elders praying and asking for forgiveness.

After this, Reverend Dalstrom asked me to bring this before the congregation. So as Palm Sunday bore closer, I prepared to relate my findings and the efforts of the elders to begin the act of repentance. Oddly, however, as Palm Sunday came closer, my thoughts changed as I continued to read a book I had been reading for some time.

Suddenly, the message changed. Rather than a message of repentance, God seemed to be telling me that the final message was that the end result of repentance and faith that Christ's sacrifice was effective to save me from my sins. The book I had been reading taught a lesson about how many Christians suffered from a lack of acceptance in the gift of forgiveness.

The writer stated that many Christians continued to suffer from anxiety about their sins, even after they accepted the gift of forgiveness. It seemed that these anxious Christians simply could not accept the sacrifice of Jesus as a complete and effective cleansing of their sins. These Christians just could not accept that the sacrifice of the Christ was sufficient to eradicate all of their sins. These Christians were always working to try to earn forgiveness, even when the promise of the Christ was complete forgiveness itself.

This failure to have faith in the final and effective sacrifice of Jesus as a complete eradication of our sins became a failure of faith, the failure to accept the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice. It became a sin itself. Perhaps this was the final sin of the Christian.

The message the writer gave me was that the sacrifice of Christ was final and totally effective. There was nothing else to be done. We need not suffer or agonize over our sins, because, through our faith in the sacrifice of Christ we were forgiven once and for all. The end result was a complete release of the anxiety and concern for ourselves. God himself had provided the sacrifice.

So the message that God had ultimately laid on my heart was more than that we needed to repent from our sins. The final message was that when we repented our sins and believed in the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins, our sins, in fact, were fully, effectually and finally forgiven. The weight of our sinfulness was released and we could live our lives without the burden of our sinful nature.

When I came before that crowd on Palm Sunday, the message I gave was not the message I was listening to in my heart. Oddly, many people in the congregation that day apparently didn't hear me. Perhaps that is because the message that I needed to deliver that Sunday morning was not that they needed to repent, but that if they did repent, that God would wash away their sins, completely, fully and effectively forever.

On that first Palm Sunday, the disciples, followers and just plain folks of Jerusalem followed the Christ and proclaimed him the Messiah. They waved their palm branches and shouted Hosannahs to the blue skies above them. However, less than a week later, they would turn their backs on their Messiah and deliver him up to the Roman government for execution. Even the disciples would run away. The sacrifice that was meted out to the Messiah was answered with derision and scorn.

Somehow, they could not accept that this sacrifice was effective for their forgiveness and salvation. Instead they waited for more. But they had it right the first time. He was the Messiah and his gift of himself made the action complete. They need not look for anything more or try anything else. The man who arrived on the donkey's back was the one who could effectively and finally provide them with the salvation they sought.

The burden upon our shoulders is cast off. To continue to feel it is a sin, itself. We need to repent, but we also need to believe that we are free from that sin. That is the final message of Palm Sunday and all of Holy Week. Amen.