The Road to the Cross
The Road to the Cross
Mark 11:1-2, 7-11
March 29, 2026 Meeting Jesus on the Road - Palm Sunday
Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church of San Rafael, CA
Link to PDF of sermon below
1 When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, "Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it.
7 Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. 9 Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" 11 Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
Palm Sunday is part of the church calendar, the liturgical calendar. The first day of Holy Week. I have been thinking about Palm Sundays in the various churches I have served. And reading about other churches and pastors.
One commentator wrote – “One of the most exciting and profound liturgical experiences of our church is the Palm Sunday procession around our church block downtown. It is exciting because we as the church get to invite, show, and legally disrupt the normal flow of traffic if even for a brief moment during Sunday morning. Also, we are loud…. We start our procession from the church by waving the palm branches. Then we chant and sing as loudly as we can. Some people of the neighborhood wave back at us. Some roll their eyes. Some are nonchalant about it. The police officers are irritated with the procession but can’t do anything about it because it ends as quickly as it started.
“It is short-lived, but it is revolutionary. It is significant not because we caused some kind of huge commotion or change. Rather, we disrupted the normalcy of things by crossing boundaries between the church and the world, the liturgical and the mundane, the divine and the human, the loud and the silenced.”
Today we are walking around the sanctuary. What if I invited you to get up, walk across the patio and onto 5th Ave? Are you willing to walk outside on 5th and E? What would that feel like? It makes us think who joined in the procession and who did not. How does moving and walking and reenacting the Palm Sunday procession shape our understanding? We think about the actual and symbolic roads and paths and trails we have traveled in our lives.
The inner journeys. What might this this event symbolize? What does it mean to follow the ways of Jesus? Shouting Hosanna – Save us. Save us from…. False self, save us from ignoring our blindspots, save us from our own prejudices, save us from despair, save us from indifference.
Palm Sunday is a day of paradoxes and wondering about the path of devotion that leads to life.
Mark 11:1–11. The so-called triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem really is not triumphant at all. Among many other reasons, the procession is not fully triumphant because it lacks the finale of a royal, imperial, and even messianic procession during the time of Jesus. The procession should have ended with a grand ritual or sacrifice, expulsion of former vestiges of power, and a banquet celebration. None of them happened.
Instead, Jesus rides on the small donkey, looked around the temple area and disappeared to Bethany (verse 11). This anticlimactic ending could be either a reflection of Mark’s take on the suffering Messiah, or Jesus is subverting the Roman Empire by mimicking and mocking such imperial procession.
Historians tell us that Jesus knew exactly what he was doing when he asked his disciples to secure a donkey for his journey down the mountain into the holy city. In their compelling book, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus' Last Days in Jerusalem, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan argue that two processions entered Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday two thousand years ago.
Every year during Passover — the Jewish festival that swelled Jerusalem's population from its usual 50,000 to at least 200,000 — the Roman governor of Judea would ride up to Jerusalem from his coastal residence in the west. He would come in on a large horse in all of his imperial majesty to remind the Jewish pilgrims that Rome demanded their complete loyalty, obedience, and submission. The Jewish people could commemorate their ancient victory against Egypt and slavery if they wanted to. But if they tried any real time resistance, they would be killed without a second thought.
As Pilate clanged and crashed his imperial way into Jerusalem from the west, Jesus approached from the east, looking (by contrast) ragtag and absurd. Unlike the Roman emperor and his legions, who ruled by force, coercion, and terror, Jesus came defenseless and weaponless into his kingship. Riding on a donkey, he made it clear that his rule would be power and authority that was based on love, humility, and sacrifice.
If there’s a single day on the liturgical calendar that illustrates the dissonance at the heart of our faith, it’s Palm Sunday. More than any other, this festive, ominous, and complicated day of palm fronds and hosanna banners warns us that paradoxes we might not like or want are woven right into the fabric of Christianity. Jesus, human & divine, on a donkey. Dying in order to live. Grace. Power defined by love, compassion, justice and peace.
Is this a procession, a parade or a protest? Maybe some of each.
It feels like a heavy week to me in the midst of much heaviness in the world. But there is beauty too.
It is also a time we look at our own roads and path. Here is a photo taken by long time church member and photographer Steve Sarhad. It is part of the Fort Ross Trail. He says – I like to take pictures of S curves because you cannot tell where they are headed.
What leads to deeper understanding of divine love? forgiveness? Grace? Injustice? Grief? Death?
Since we live in a world that's full of pain, mystery, and contradiction, then we need a spiritual life that is deeply rooted and robust enough to bear the weight of that messy world. We need a faith, spiritual life that empowers us, in Richard's Rohr's beautiful words, "to live in exquisite, terrible humility before reality."
In reference to Palm Sunday, Frederick Buechner writes this: “Despair and hope. They travel the road to Jerusalem together, as together they travel every road we take — despair at what in our madness we are bringing down on our own heads and hope in him who travels the road with us and for us and who is the only one of us all who is not mad.”
Palm Sunday reminds us that Jesus’ procession offered the same vision of his life and ministry, the prophets and the mystics – ancient and modern. Our deepest truth is that of we are beloved and held in that love in the midst of daily life, in the midst of outer challenges and suffering and in the midst of our inner struggles, regrets, the hurt we cause and the hurt we hold onto, held in love in grief and sorrow and in the midst of beauty and joy of life. Save us – save us from living in the shallow waters of life, save us from ignoring the deeper questions and mysteries. Christ is on this road with us on Palm Sunday as we move into Christ’s passion – the events of Holy Week. Public disruption and an inner journey of discernment.
This road leads to the cross and death. And then to Easter morning. But today we pause on this road into the ancient city. What do we see? What do we feel? What do we hear?
Ending – bagpipes and holy week
I’m grateful to Brian Maas, who writes, “There is something about the wail of a bagpipe that just seems especially appropriate to the nexus of experiences and meanings that takes place on Palm (Passion) Sunday.” He describes a practice in churches he has served in which the palm procession is accompanied by a bagpipe. Maas writes, “The piper bears an instrument ideal for the day and its colliding narratives and competing themes. No matter what they play, some will hear celebration, some militancy, some somberness of a funeral procession. Whatever the notes, the meaning belongs not to the piper but to those who hear them.”
This week, churches move through events as described in the gospels. I encourage you to imagine Jesus turning over the tables in the temple, imagine Jesus gathering with his followers in the upper room for the last supper and washing their feet as a servant would do, imagine him standing trial in front of religious leaders and Roman leaders. He prays in the garden of Gethsemane. He walks the road to the cross and breathes his last. This week we hold these stories of the threat and triumph, the nobility and the betrayal. What do you need to hear today and this week - the hope of the one who came on a donkey and embodied divine love, the acknowledgement of a prophet in conflict with injustice, or the empathic compassion of a suffering servant.
Holy Week offers a huge buffet for the grieving and the fearful , for the heart-sick and the hopeful, for those seeking justice and those seeking peace. So we will sing, we will be quiet, we will hear music that speaks to our souls that we may take this journey again through Holy Week. And like our Scottish Presbyterian ancestors who established this church 157 years ago, we may hear bagpipes. Amen.
Resources
Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember (Harper & Row, 1984)
Brian Maas, “Palms, Passion, preachers—and pipes” March 31, 2023 The Christian Century https://www.christiancentury.org/sunday-s-coming/palms-passion-preachers-and-pipes-matthew-21-1-11-26-14-27-66
Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (Whitaker House, 2016)
Debie Thomas, “My Broken Hosanna,” April 7, 2019 Journey with Jesus https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2162-my-broken-hosanna
Rev. Joanne Whitt, “Palms, Passion, or Bagpipes?” March 25, 2026 Solvitur Ambulando https://solve-by-walking.com/2026/03/25/palms-passion-or-bagpipes/