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.
Have you ever felt like this?
by Rev. Andy Blacksher, Executive Pastor Simon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, Zebedee’s sons, and two other disciples were together. Simon Peter told them, “I’m going fishing.” They said, “We’ll go with you.” They set out in a boat, but throughout the night they caught nothing.