Grace and peace to you from the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Holy Week is upon us. 

I pray that your Lenten journey has been filled with the joy of walking with Jesus. 

I was very fortunate to have two pastors in my internship experience that walked with me in my journey to becoming a pastor. 

They instilled a spirit of joy and praise while discovering that there are many difficult questions about God and God’s ways that lead us to faith. 

Faith that allows room for questions and mystery. 

Our common prayer is that God’s saving will is done. 

I offer a quote from my pastor’s who lived into John C. Maxwell's saying, 

“You talk talks and your walk walks, but your walk talks louder than your talk talks.” 

Since the beginning of God’s beautiful creation we are joined in a journey. 

On this Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday, we come together to celebrate God’s saving action in Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. 

Luke’s gospel brings us into a familiar story, for most Christians, that also has some differences from Mark, Matthew and John. 

In all gospels we have the intense drama of truth to power. 

Truth that Jesus loves you and God so loved the world that Jesus came to us, as one of us, to live life with all of its ups and downs, joys and sorrows, on a path to glory that we have been promised to inherit with our faith. 

Faith that swims in the living waters of love for God, and loving one another.

Jesus is accused of being a King, perverting the nation, and not bending his knee to Caesar. 

How dare he put himself in front of the nation, teaching and preaching love and forgiveness. 

Our story then, as is now, is about power and what happens when divine power is put on trial. 

A trial that makes a mockery of Jesus and our victory parade, welcoming our Lord Jesus on a colt, with cloaks covering the ground, people cheering the Messiah, the anointed one. 

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” 

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as a champion is short lived when he is brought before Pilate. 

Both Pilate and Herod are eager to hear from Jesus, perhaps gain favor to their perceived power only to be met with no answer. 

I wonder what they were expecting? 

What are we expecting? 

The truth of Jesus is the walk of love. 

Love that recognizes those in need, and not only saying something about it, but actually doing something. 

Love that calls out hate, bigotry, and oppression. 

Love that walks to a cross, willingly crucified, and gasps through the labored breaths as Jesus suffocates on the cross, that they will be done. 

That is the love of God.

Love that has a mysterious power that we, that I, struggle to understand, but faithfully step forward to walk with Jesus. 

As a pastor I have a sacred call to both walk the walk and talk the talk. We are all called together to walk the talk, living into the WORD of God. As Christians we relive this passion, the trial of Jesus on a daily basis. 

Where do we see the abuses of power that have turned helping people into a weakness, much like Pilate and Herod conspired to kill an innocent man. 

Pilate says so, “You brought me this man as one perverting the people; and after examining him before you, behold, I did not find this man guilty of any of your charges against him; neither did Herod, for he sent him back to us. Behold nothing deserving death has been done by him; I will therefore chastise him and release him.” 

What happens when those in power are afraid to act? 

When instead of doing something they only have their word and their word is backed only with violence and hate. 

Or they do nothing. 

What does it mean when the warnings to people who presume they can find security from God in their institutions and trappings of power, who create their own social and institutional systems that appear to align with God’s purposes? 

“Crucify, crucify him!” 

Do we listen to the will of the people or the will of God? 

Salvation is not in our hands, but God’s. 

What does Jesus do?

He walks on, offering blessings to women and children. 

We follow Jesus, like Simon the Cyrene, and a great multitude of people. Arriving at Golgotha, the place of the Skull, they nail Jesus to the cross. Not alone, but with two criminals. 

Jesus forgives the criminals and the crowd, “For they do not know what they do.” Words of forgiveness that walk us to the cross with Jesus. 

Whenever you have been left hanging in despair, pain and suffering remember the promise from Jesus. 

“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” 

Imagine what it will be like walking and talking with Jesus in Paradise. What does that look like for you today? 

Loving Jesus and one another doesn’t have to wait for the right time. 

Many chose to walk away, “And all the multitudes who assembled to see the sight, when they saw what had taken place, returned home. 

And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance and saw these things.” 

For this we can say, Thanks be to God. Amen