I was in the ministry for thirty years (that’s thirty Palm Sundays!) before I realized that, unlike Matthew, Mark, and John’s gospels, in Luke’s version of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, no one actually waved any palm branches. How could I have missed this? In Luke’s version, religious leaders demanded that Jesus quiet his cheering followers. To this, Jesus replied, “I tell you that if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” What does he mean by this? Does Jesus mean that if his followers were silenced, even the stones would sing his praise? Or was Jesus reaching back into the collective memory of the Jewish people to recall incidents when stones were collected and stacked as a memorial which reminded the people of the mighty acts of God that occurred in that place? In this case, if all the followers were silenced, the stacked rocks would still be the reminder of God’s great works and would tell the story of Jesus to the world. Since we are using Luke’s version of The Triumphal Entry, we are renaming Palm Sunday. For this Sunday only, we are calling it “Rock Sunday.” To prepare for Sunday, read Luke 19: 28-40.
The Story That Cannot Be Held
In this week’s sermon, Pastor Kurt encourages us to see the charge Jesus gave to Peter to “feed my lambs” to be applicable to all of us.