Link: Darkest Hour, Palm Sunday 2014

Summary of what I was saying and why:
Palm/Passion Sunday is wonderful and really hard to preach. And I don’t know how not to say something. I started thinking about how attractive Jesus must have seemed, riding into Jerusalem. It could all be real…and then we’re outside the tomb, defeated. And we need to stay there a bit.

Theology: Resurrection
Jesus Count: Medium
Good News: This is the darkest hour

What did I change on my feet?
Ten minutes before the first service I realized that we weren’t doing the Liturgy of the Palms (first Holy Week at St Peter’s). Suddenly I needed a new beginning.
What didn’t work/what did I miss?
At the later service I left out the part about the story of faith being God’s love story for us. At the early service I think I soft pedalled the end.
What did work?
I think I mostly hit a balance between the promise of good news and the reality of the dark place the Gospel reading ends at. And I think this sets up the arc of my preaching for Holy Week.

Other sermons I liked:
Bishop Fisher, Staggering Violence & Peace
“My friends, I chose to be with you this morning – to share in the staggering acts of violence on the last day of Jesus on this earth.
I chose to be with you this morning – to challenge us to have a peaceful response to the staggering violence all around us.”

Priest Arnold, What wondrous love is this?
“This was evil’s one last chance to destroy God, and so evil threw all of its best weapons against Jesus – betrayal, doubt, pain, mockery, humiliation, shame, abandonment, and finally, the robbery of life itself. All of these, evil hurled at Christ, and he absorbed them all with divine peace and hope. And there, on the cross, Jesus shattered evil’s power.”

Priest Kadel, Palm Sunday
“We are moving quickly toward Easter, the Feast of the Resurrection. But the joy of that feast doesn’t come from the spirit of a party—“Hey-Sanna, Ho-Sanna, Sanna, Sanna, Ho”, but in Jesus complete and fearless giving of his life, his entirely loving life, for his people, the poor and the humble. For us.”

(Here’s the list of people I usually listen to. Am I missing someone?)
The Anglican Church of Canada uses the Roman Ordinary Time numbering system instead of numbering the Propers. Because all of this is new to me, I’m now indicating both numbering systems.