Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday
Light of Christ Anglican Church
The Reverend Michael J. Moffitt
March 29, 2026
Behold Your King Is Coming
Text: Matthew 21:1–11
This past week as I considered our worship service this morning my focus was on imagining what our Lord Jesus was experiencing. He alone knew where this journey would take him and yet his focus was on his disciples.
Today we celebrate Palm Sunday where Jesus intentionally entered Jerusalem with His disciples to the massive crowds cheers and celebration as waved palm branches and shouted,
“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
In a real sense even with tens of thousands of people all around Him, Jesus was alone. Only He knew the purpose and outcome of His arrival. The crowds believed He was coming to take His place as King of Israel on the throne of David. That would come much later but His journey would begin with His being nailed to a Roman cross.
Not to jump ahead to Maundy Thursday, but as I asked the Lord about this sermon I remembered something Jesus would tell His disciples in the upper room on the night of His arrest. As He prepared to introduce the “Lords Supper” he said something that I found very sobering. Listen to Luke 22:14–16,
And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”
He was looking forward to sharing the Passover meal with His disciples, His friends, because what He was preparing to do would change their lives forever.
He knew what that was going to mean to them and He wanted that for them. It’s why He came. Can you even imagine love like that?
So as we enter into Holy Week lets focus on the fact that what Jesus did 2000 years has indeed changed our lives, if we know Him.
On Maundy Thursday we will enter into what is called “The Triduum.” Three Days. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.
Today, we had two gospel readings from Matthew’s gospel. The first and much shorter reading told the brief account of Jesus returning to Jerusalem in His triumphal entry. Of course this story gives us context for the peoples’ joy and celebration as Jesus enters into Jerusalem riding on the foal of a donkey. Many may have remembered Zechariah 9:9,
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophecy. The triumphant entry was clearly a symbolic act on his part. So the people seeing this fulfillment rejoiced and laid down their cloaks and palm branches in praise and rejoicing. This was the Messiah that they had waited on for thousands of years.
The wonderful part of this rejoicing was that they were correct. Jesus was/is the fulfillment of God’s promises, but what he came to do was not what they felt they needed. So the celebration ended up being short lived.
In our second gospel reading this morning from Matthew 27:1–54 you have had the story read to you in its entirety. Now for a few moments longer we will consider the implications and importance of the greatest story of self-sacrifice ever told.
Jesus, who knew the prophecies foretelling his coming, acted with love and courage knowing fully what would happen to him. Consider a few descriptions from our reading from Isaiah 52 and 53,
His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind…. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief……but he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities…. he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, like a lamb he is led to the slaughter…Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him, he has put him to grief..
Each season we are pointed to the accounts in the story, even though we can’t imagine what this was like for Jesus and the disciples. For all eternity, the Trinity had lived in perfect unity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But now for the first time the Father, who is perfect purity, righteousness, and holiness, would have to turn away from his beloved Son in the moment of his great need. There is simply no way that we can ever comprehend what being perfect, righteous, and completely holy is like. Because of that we can’t really understand how sin could be such an affront to God.
I’ve heard people suggest that this whole scenario seems foolish and an overblown reaction on the part of God. Couldn’t he just live and let live? Was all this death and sorrow, and talking about wrath, justice, and hell really necessary?
The holiness and purity of God is something we have no capacity to thoroughly understand, but many places in Scripture show that God cannot reveal Himself to us physically at present or our human bodies would simply be consumed.
When Adam was created, he did live in the presence of God and things were vastly different. However, when Adam chose to disobey God, his relationship and existence before God were fractured and death entered the created world for the first time.
Since that moment, God has been forced to distance Himself from us for our own survival—this is actually an act of mercy from God! We can’t be fully in the presence of the God who is without sin, morally completely pure, and undefiled in any way. The fact that men and women don’t see the “Big Deal” is actually a perfect example of their blindness and the reason that Jesus, the perfect “God/ Man” had to come to pay a price we couldn’t pay.
In our Epistle reading from Philippians 2:6–8 the Apostle Paul explained that it was God who made a way for us to be restored to fellowship with Him. It was God who willingly came to us in human form and dwelt in our midst, put up with our arrogant, selfish, and foolish nature, and died for us.
For those of us who have been Christians a long time, we are accustomed to hearing certain passages read during this time of year. We have learned to identify those passages of scripture, Psalms, or prophecies that are Messianic in their reference. It serves as a reminder that we can see the history of redemption unfolding and moving ever forward toward the day when Jesus will return, and all things will be made new.
We read together Psalm 22 this morning and from the first verse we are reminded of the words of Jesus on the cross as he experienced the wrath of the Father poured out upon him because of our sin. It’s sobering to consider but is nothing like what it meant when Jesus read those words knowing it referred to him.
Consider Psalm 22:1, 7–8, 10–11,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; “He trusts In the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him.”
It’s the cry of agony, of someone bereft of all hope and Jesus was willing to go through this moment that you and I could not begin to comprehend. Why? Because this was the only way that we could escape an eternity of this type of agony, where there is “no God.”
That is the description of Hell, and he was willing to go there so that we could avoid it. It’s a place where God removes his loving mercy and presence entirely but is very present in His wrath, for eternity. We have never experienced that and if we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we never will have to.
We are living in a time where very many have turned from godly virtue and embraced a level of evil that is startling. We are seeing many of those in leadership resisting the very law of God that was the foundation of our country. They insist that those who love God’s word and teach that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation are narrow minded bigots, fascists, who need to be silenced.
Jesus was in a very similar situation when he entered into the city of Jerusalem. The religious leaders who should have welcomed him, instead saw him as a threat to their authority and rule over the people of Israel.
Leading up to Jesus’ entry back into Jerusalem tensions had been growing between him and the religious leaders, who have made it known that they intended to kill him. This is an extremely dramatic scene. By openly entering the city where he is a marked man, Jesus takes the first step toward the final confrontation. Again, it is an intentional move, and he knew that this was why the Father had sent him.
Passover was one of the three major feasts that Jews were supposed to attend in Jerusalem, and consequently the population of Jerusalem swelled enormously at this time. The city was packed not only with those who had come from all over to attend this feast, but also those who had come to see what Jesus would do. There was a sense that a showdown was imminent. As this great crowd is beginning to gather from around Israel—and even the larger world of those who lived away from Jerusalem—news about Jesus was spreading and for many there was a feeling of hope that maybe, finally, the Messiah had come.
Jesus was indeed the Messiah, and he had come to set them free but not from Roman rule, that wasn’t their greatest need, and he knew they wouldn’t understand what he was preparing to do.
The fact that they chose to welcome Jesus by waving palm branches reveals a lot about what it was that they were expecting from him. This had all the elements of a patriotic parade. In the Bible palm branches symbolized victory, peace and celebration and served as ways to acknowledge faith and hope. In Leviticus 23:40 they were used during the Feast of Tabernacles to show gratitude for God’s provision and harvest.
Jesus coming as the King-Messiah was a far greater event than they could realize. Jesus knew the prophets and the role he was to play but at the time he was the only one who did. John 12:16 recounts,
Only after Jesus was glorified did, they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him.
Try and understand this from the perspective of the disciples. They were most likely caught up in the nationalistic fervor of the crowd because they also believed that Jesus came to Jerusalem to take over as king and they would rule with him. They thought they were honoring Jesus as king, and they were, but at this point no one was connecting the Scriptures with what was happening—even the disciples would not put the two together until after Jesus was glorified. That wouldn’t happen until the Holy Spirit anointed them and empowered them at Pentecost.
It has been my experience that I rarely fully understand what God is doing. Praise God that he is not constrained by the limits of my imagination. Jesus wasn’t going to be limited to being the King of Israel, he was the creator of the universe and had come to do a greater and more complete work than they could conceive of. He was going to transform the world and make a way for mankind to be reconciled to the Father.
They didn’t conceive of how lost they were and how much they needed God’s mercy, and they certainly didn’t see how far God was willing to go to save them. He loved them more than to simply solve their immediate situation as servants of Rome and his task and vision was far broader than Israel.
If Jesus had settled for the throne of David in Jerusalem the real issue of mankind’s bondage to sin and death would never have been dealt with and the kingdom of Satan would have remained in power and authority over the earth. At the time of his entry in Jerusalem only Jesus fully understood what was at stake and that only he could do what was necessary to overcome the kingdom of darkness.
It was no coincidence that Jesus chose Passover to enter Jerusalem. Flavius Josephus, the 1st-century Roman-Jewish historian, wrote that one year a census was taken of the number of lambs slain for Passover and that figure was 256,500. Jesus entered Jerusalem walking in the midst of lambs who were destined for sacrifice during the celebration, and as he walked, he alone knew that they were a symbol of what he had come to be. Remember in John 1:29 John the Baptist pointed to Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
Jesus was the living reality of what the sacrificial lambs pointed to—a sacrificial atonement that would be made once and for all. Scriptures like Isaiah 53:6–7 that we read this morning,
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, everyone, to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.
I am certain these things were on his mind as he entered Jerusalem to the cheers and celebration of the crowds. It’s likely that some would be the very ones a few days later who were screaming, “Crucify him. Crucify him!” and yet he still came. Our epistle reading from Philippians 2:5–11 reminds that, at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father.
Why? Because he is the King who overcame sin and death and for those who embrace him by faith and live for his glory there is new life both now and throughout all eternity.
Unfortunately, the truth is that there are many churches who claim to gather to worship God but deny the divinity and authority of Jesus Christ alone, and as a consequence, they are merely celebrations of death. When he came into Jerusalem, they welcomed him as their new King, but when he went to the cross to pay the price for our sins, He did the kingliest thing that he could do, he laid down his life for his subjects.
As we consider all that is happening in our country and around the world it’s a reminder that we are far from being through telling this story. Jesus won the victory over sin and death but the battle for souls still rages. The only hope for
our community, our state, our country, and the world is Jesus Christ, and he has commanded “his body” to deliver the message of the cross to those around them, even if it comes at a great cost.
The task before us is to live into the victory that Jesus won and in His glorious name enter the fight that rages on all around us. Signs of the kingdom of darkness are all around. We don’t have to look very far but can see the evidence and can read about it daily in the news. The task before us is to be living witnesses to the love and power of Christ to those around us and to be continually praying that God would use us in the lives of those in our community.
Let’s pray.
©2026 The Rev. Michael J. Moffitt.
