Let us pray: O God, open my lips and let my mouth proclaim your praise. Amen.

    There is not a whole lot that I remember from my church childhood. Despite the fact that our family was a regular attender at worship for as long as I can recall, from as early an age as I can remember until I left home to attend university, I can count the number of sermons I remember from that period on the thumb of one hand. Now that’s not to say that being part of a community of faith did not have an influence on me. I know, in very large part, that I am here today because of the time we spent as a church going family. It was the relationship that had a lasting effect on me. I’m sure the words and worship had some influence at the time, but in the long term it was the relationship, the friendships my parents formed with other church going families, the routine of attending worship, and the priority that it set in my mind about the importance of honouring and praising God the creator.

    Having said all that, there is one lasting memory from all those years. Palm Sunday. I think it would be fair to say that I remember it better even than most Christmases, and certainly all the Easters. Christmas at church was far overwhelmed by Christmas at home - so that explains that one. Easter was about new spring clothes and the annual family photograph on the front lawn. But Palm Sunday was a purely church event. It wasn’t mentioned much in any other context - newscasts didn’t talk about Palm Sunday and it wasn’t in the local paper other than on the religion page. Add to that the fact that it was about a parade - if we didn’t hold our own, then at least we talked about it, and it involved palms - which to my young and curious mind, represented something strange and exotic. After all, we lived in a land of falling leaves and snow - palm trees were not part of that context. And happy, cheering people, glad to see Jesus, and using a word that seemed to exude their happiness and excitement - Hosanna. It’s really no surprise at all that to young and impressionable ears Palm Sunday would evoke such deeply embedded memories, and more than memories even - one might even say that it was a big part of my enculturation as a member of the Christian community.

    I’m not sure exactly when the bubble burst. I don’t even think it was that dramatic. Perhaps it was more like a car tire or an air mattress with a very, very small hole. The air gradually leaked out - not with a bang, but so slowly that it was almost unnoticeable, except that eventually the air pressure inside the tire or the mattress matched the air pressure outside. In fact, the result was far more dramatic than the realisation.

    I’m talking about the realisation that Palm Sunday was not all that I remembered. My childhood memory of Palm Sunday, matches pretty closely the theme of the very first Palm parade - the one we heard about in the scripture passage that began worship this morning. For the people who gathered to shout hosanna as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a lowly donkey it was a time of celebration and excitement. For the kids watching, I’m sure it was the crowd and the excited cries of Hosanna that drew the attention. Parades can be so exciting to young eyes and ears. And if people cared enough to make the road easier to travel by throwing down palm branches, then the person on the donkey must be pretty special.

    My childhood memory does not tie the passion story to Palm Sunday. That came along much later - and in large part it came for the very reasons I’ve described already. Thoughtful people said that even if you were a faithful church goer, attending worship every Sunday, you could still miss the passion story. So much happens in a week,  separating two Sundays of two very different kinds of celebration, that attending worship only on Sunday is not enough.

    So, somewhere along the way - most certainly after I became a worship leader - Palm Sunday was transformed. It became Palm and Passion Sunday, and in that change there was also a change in focus. No longer was Palm Sunday simply a day for celebration. It was muted by the events that followed. The triumphant entry of a servant King - come to help the people shed the oppressive reign of the Roman Empire - was just what they wanted. But it’s not what they got. Some of them, perhaps many of them, didn’t understand the full weight of the term Servant King - they didn’t realise just how deep and far that could go.

    Along with that change in focus came some complicating technical considerations. How could one tell the passion story without telling the whole story, and how could one tell the story on one Sunday and then for those who did attend worship on the Thursday evening and Friday of Holy Week tell the story again without it becoming too repetitious?

    The answer is that it’s a story that needs to be told. The power of Easter cannot be understood without it All of it, triumphant entry into Jerusalem, betrayal, trial, humiliation and execution. It all needs to be told, even if we hear it over and over again.

    Having said that, I must also say that this year - and for the first time in many years, I was starting to hear voices telling me to keep thinking. It should ever be thus. As soon as we stop reflecting on our faith and the stories of our faith, it grows stagnant and benign, and the stories lose their meaning. The voices were telling me to think harder about Palm Sunday as a celebration on its own. I heard it, almost as a passing thought, in one of the Lenten Lunch talks. I heard it again, in a resource I am using for my own preparation for Lenten worship. Other voices were telling me to stay the course - keep the Palm and Passion focus - that contrasting Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday with the backdrop of the Passion is an authentic way for us as Christians to remember our story and guide our faith journey. In fact, some commentators suggested that worship on Palm and Passion Sunday is open ended worship - worship begins on this day and continues as a journey through Holy Thursday and Good Friday and a Saturday vigil if there is one, culminating in the joy and celebration of Easter. Today’s worship does indeed end in an open-ended fashion with a call to God that we’ve been using throughout the season of Lent, a voice yearning for God’s presence deep within us.

    That’s the way I want to close today. I want to close without closing. I want to leave things open-ended. Where will the journey take us this week? What do our traditions, our emphases, the variety of ways we tell the story say to us and to those who come after us? What will children remember about this when they are our age? What about Palm Sunday and rekindling an emphasis on it alone? Let us be open to the spirit and the message it has for us God’s people. O God we call, from deep inside we yearn, from deep inside we yearn for you...