Palm Sunday Sermon (transcribed)
13 April 2025
Philippians 2:5-11, Isaiah 50:4-9a, Luke 19:28-40; Luke 22:14-23:56
The Rev. Matt Rowe
Let the same mind be in you as in Christ. Jesus.1
Lord may the words of my mouth And the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, our strengthen our Redeemer. Amen.
Today, we have participated in two processions. Each of these processions takes us into the mind of Christ Jesus, the mind that is to be in us. Paul says, let the same mind be in you, and the you is plural.2 Paul urges the followers of Jesus at Philippi to let the mind of Christ be their mind together. And today Because the word of God is living and active,3 God speaks to this congregation here gathered through the words of Paul, as we have come together to confess Jesus Christ as Lord, exhorting us to let the mind of Christ be our mind together.
The very core of the mind of Christ is humility,4 and his humility is on display in both processions. In the first, the entry into Jerusalem, Jesus comes riding a colt, a young donkey, which is emblematic of a servant. A noble king, a victorious king would enter on a great white horse, or a gilded chariot, or a carriage carried by slaves. But Jesus, even as he is welcomed and hailed as a king, enters Jerusalem as a servant.
The second procession, the Via Dolorosa, the road from which no one returns, that leads to the Skull, Jesus treads as a servant, bearing the weight, bearing, the full weight of the sins of the world. Your sin. My sin. Our sin.
Jesus chooses humility, even though he is in the form of God, even though in his essential inner nature, he expresses his essence as the eternal second Person of the Trinity,5 a majestic life in the realm of eternity. Jesus could have held onto his identity by right, but he chose not to exploit the privilege for his own benefit,6 because the will of the Father for the Son is that the Son should be the Savior, the way of eternal life for all who believe. And the Son chose not to be disobedient to the Father. And so, he surrendered, he emptied himself of all privilege and glory. He accepted the form, becoming in reality, a slave, entering this realm of time and space with all its changes and chances. He comes into this world as one who is, as he will say of himself, lowly and humble in heart.7 He is the perfect antidote to self-serving vanity.
As a humble slave he is obedient, a word that means attentively listening.8 Growing up in an observant Jewish home, Jesus listens attentively to the Scriptures. I believe he comes to identify strongly with a theme that we find in the latter part of the book of Isaiah, the theme of the Suffering Servant. We hear of him today, the one whose ear God has opened, the one giving his back to the smiter.9 And that leads to Jesus's unique obedience, obedience that changes the world, the obedience to the point of death, even death on a cross.
The cross. Even Romans hated it Cicero said it's the most cruel and hideous form of punishment.10 And in the Jewish mind, guided by the words from Deuteronomy chapter 21, to be hung on a tree is to be under God's curse. So when Jesus is nailed to the cross, he is no longer an Israelite. He is outside of God's Covenant. That is why the cross is a stumbling block to the Jewish mind, as Paul writes in First Corinthians chapter 1.11
From the highest glory of eternity to the lowest possible end to a human life. Following human logic, this is nothing but a tragedy. This is pointless. It appears that the better strategy is to grasp at whatever privilege you can, to look out for number one because nobody else will, and don't appear to be a threat to the empire because the empire strikes back. God, though, is, as Isaiah says, one whose thoughts are not our thoughts, whose ways are not our ways.12 God seems to like to step in at points like this, when it all seems pointless. And step in he does, raising the lifeless Son to New Life on the third day, lifting him through the clouds to the place of honor at the right hand of the Father on the 40th day, back where he belongs, only now he can lead all of us there because of his humility and obedience.
There is to be a third procession today. It starts when you hear the words, “The gifts of God for the people of God.” Today we behold and partake of his Real Presence, the life that was poured out for us, the life that now lives to give life to all who by faith receive.
And so we bow, the knee, the heart. And we confess Jesus Christ is Lord. And we pray to let his mind be in us, his humility, his attentive listening, that we may bring glory to God the Father through the love of God the Son, in the communion of God, the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1. Philippians 2:5
2. ὑμῖν in The Lexham Analytical Lexicon to the Septuagint (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012).
3. Hebrews 4:12
4. A.T. Robinson, “Philippians 2:5” in Word Pictures in the New Testament.
5. Rudolph Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament I, 193.
6. Ralph Martin, Philippians: An Introduction and Commentary, 107.
7. Matthew 11:29
8. Gerhard Kittel, “ἀκούω” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, electronic ed., 1:224-25 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964).
9. Isaiah 50:4-9a
10. Quoted in Martin, Philippians, 110.
11. Martin, Philippians, 110.
12. “The Second Song of Isaiah,” Quaerite Dominum, The Book of Common Prayer, 86.