Scripture Reflection for Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion:
Matthew 21:1-11
Isaiah 50:4-7
Psalm 22:8-9, 17-18, 19-20, 23-24
Philippians 2:6-11
Matthew 26:14-27:66 or Matthew 27:11-54
This Sunday in between the palms and the hosannas, the breaking of bread and the agony on the cross – one question cuts through everything: “Who is this?”
We hear it at the very beginning, as Jesus rides into Jerusalem. We then hear a variation of it later, when Pilate asks, “Are you the king of the Jews?” In fact, throughout this liturgy of Palm Sunday, there are a variety of answers.
“This is Jesus the prophet,” the crowds cry out.
“The form of God…taking the form of a slave,” Paul writes to the people of Philippi.
Is he King of the Jews? “That’s what you say,” Jesus himself replies to Pilate.
But the last word is left to the anonymous centurion, who speaks for us all: “Truly, this was the Son of God.”
We realize that so much of what we hear this Sunday is more than a long and agonizing recounting of the last days of Christ’s earthly life. It’s really a summation of who he is and what Christ gave on our behalf. And what a summation it is.
There’s the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and the betrayal at the Last Supper; we hear the interrogation by Pilate and witness the agonizing walk to Calvary. It is epic. It is heartbreaking. It is exhausting. There are judgement, torture, betrayal and death.
It stings. It overwhelms. We stand there clutching our palms during the longest Gospel of the year, shifting on our feet, hearing once again what we’ve heard so often before and aching to just sit down. But we can’t. And for good reason. We need to hear it. We need to be reminded. This is where Lent has led us.
And it just might help us appreciate once more that question Matthew records in the Gospel. Who is this?
It’s probably not a question we thought about much during Lent. During those 40 days, we’ve been thinking about other things. Maybe they’re incidental: things like ashes, hamburgers, purple vestments, the absence of alleluias. Or maybe they are the things that are on our own personal “to do” list – bad habits to correct, faults to acknowledge, sins to confess.
A lot of us spend Lent reflecting more deeply on (as the Confiteor puts it) “what I have done and what I have failed to do” – looking at our problems, our sins and shortcomings, and seeking ways we can refocus our lives to be worthy of what is coming on Easter. We’ve been trying to pray more, give up more, give more to those around us as a way of living in imitation of Christ.
But then we hit Palm Sunday and it hits us back.
The reality of Christ’s Passion strikes at the heart and tells us: This is why we’ve been doing this. This is what it was really about. This is who it was all about. Who is this?
Scholars and saints have spent centuries trying to find new ways to answer that question, but this Sunday, as we brace ourselves again for Holy Week and the Triduum and the greatest feast on the Christian calendar, an anonymous soldier says what the world needs to remember:
“Truly, this was the Son of God.”
It doesn’t get more basic than that.
We tend to think that the great takeaway of Palm Sunday is in those long strands that we carry home and tuck behind pictures or mirrors hanging on the wall.
No. Just listen to the centurion. That’s the great message of Palm Sunday – and it can serve as a kind of haunting lectio for the days to come.
Deacon Greg Kandra is an award-winning author and journalist, and creator of the blog “The Deacon’s Bench.”
