March 29, 2026 Palm Sunday

I speak to you this morning in the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

270 – 15 – 81 – 84 – 87.
This may seem cryptic to you or a jumble of nonsense—unless, perhaps, you’re familiar with the eastern half of Pennsylvania. But it’s the line I thread through the network of U.S. highways and interstates when I go to see my confessor at the Episcopal Church’s Holy Cross Monastery outside of Poughkeepsie, New York.

That journey takes me past a lot of evocative place names—Gettysburg, Carlisle, Allentown, Scranton. These places carry complex and dark histories: from the sin and death of war to the atrocities and abuses of the Indian boarding school system. They lie heavy on the landscape with an oily residue of human sin all around.

And sometimes this sin is born of even the best of intentions. I think of those industrialists and working poor of Pennsylvania’s coal fields who sought the great American project of industrial revolution, even as they destroyed the health and vitality of the land and natural resources.

Sin abounds. And yet, we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge that in each of these cases, many of our fellow Christians viewed their actions as righteous. Very rarely in life are these complexities easily resolved. Time and again, we are confronted with the ambiguities and sorrows of a broken world—caught between moral quandaries that seem impossibly hard to resolve.

Very often, we look backward on even our best intentions and see in them spaces and moments of fractured brokenness.

And in some ways, this is the reality of our observance of Palm Sunday and Jesus’ so‑called triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Because that triumphalism is but a fleeting moment of elation.

To play with Leonard Cohen a bit, what we find today is a strained and broken hosanna.

Pope Benedict, in his multi‑volume work on Jesus, writes that all three synoptic Gospels, as well as St. John, make it clear that the scene of messianic homage to Jesus was played out on his entry into the city—and that those taking part were not the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but the crowds who accompanied Jesus and entered the holy city with him.

Things are almost always more complicated than they seem, are they not?

It can be easy to see today’s narrative as Jesus finally getting the earthly recognition he deserves. But that’s not exactly the case. These were ragtag folks from the fringes. The usual crowd of Jerusalemites—especially the social influencers and people of wealth and power—were not the ones participating in today’s activities.

As St. Matthew records, “The city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’”

Remember too that it was the feast of the Passover, and people had come from all over for the festival. Matthew continues, “The crowds were saying, ‘This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.’”

The regular citizens were probably unaware of who he was or what was going on. They were perturbed that their routines were being disrupted. They likely looked askance at this spectacle and saw in it nothing more than a circus of distraction—something to gawk at or be frustrated by.

And what of this hosanna?

Pope Benedict points out that this Hebrew term, transliterated into Greek, is a liturgical phrase with ancient roots in the Jewish festival of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. It is a complicated term, originally with a more somber meaning: “Come to our aid—save us.”

Over time, however, the feast became more festive, and the petition became more a proclamation of joy with messianic overtones. Yet it retains some ambiguity and complexity—and that plays out in the text as well.

In Matthew’s Gospel, after the procession, the chief priests and scribes become particularly angry—among other reasons, because the children of Jerusalem are running around proclaiming hosanna in the temple. Jesus quotes Psalm 8 in reply: “Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise.”

But even here, Jesus doesn’t resolve the complexity of the situation.

Even in his crucifixion and resurrection, he doesn’t eliminate our experiences of ambiguity or alienation. He doesn’t take away our feelings of being torn—stuck in the middle, morally compromised.

What he does is stay in the fray. He offers us understanding in times of trial and tribulation.

I say this not to diminish the power of the cross or the profound reality of salvation offered once and for all—but to emphasize that what it does offer is companionship when assurance feels distant.

When we look at our palms and our hands today and see a ragamuffin band of outsiders proclaiming joy into a void, Jesus is here today saying: “I get it. I’m here. This is hard and fraught. But still—find me a donkey. Find me a colt. Be the innocent children playfully running in the temple. Remember who I am, even if no one else does. Dance in the dark. Be silly. Be joyful. The world won’t understand—but that’s okay.”

And so, when we consider who we are to be—how we are to be in the world in this moment—let us fully appreciate our own location.

Just like the other ambiguities, we do not fit neatly into one category or another. I do not truly know your hearts this morning, but I would hazard to guess that many of us here are most like the intelligentsia and state functionaries of the Jerusalem scene.

In our comfort, we look around at the chaos and often get angry or agitated because our way of life has been impacted—our comfort compromised.

Much of what we are confronting in this moment of social upheaval are long‑standing structural and social inequalities, perpetuated by powers that be for generations. We’ve simply not been aware of them because they haven’t impacted us personally.

May we find in this time and season of discomfort not exhaustion or outrage, but instead a greater awareness of those on the margins—a greater ear to listen to their stories, to let them lead us into deeper, righteous relationship.

But then, too, as the church—as a people of resurrection, joy, and hope—we as a community are also a marginalized and outside voice in a present world of cynical nihilism and materialistic obsession.

We, as a community of resurrection, remember today what our first ancestors did on that hillside morning millennia ago.

To a world full of Gettysburgs and Carlisles and Scrantons—to a world full of broken promises and lost dreams—our being the Body of Christ is a ministry of companionship, a witness of understanding and support, a witness to the silly joy in the midst of sorrow.

And like the string of numbers I began with this morning, that may sound like incoherent nonsense to the world at large. It is as though we are speaking an incomprehensible language of hope.

But that doesn’t remove its truth. That doesn’t remove its power.

And especially in times when we, as individuals in the Body of Christ, struggle to remember that truth, it gives us power to go forward.

Even now, we are witnessing the power of light over darkness. Again and again, the world over, we continue to witness the power of joy and light breaking through even the most difficult and darkest of times.

Even now, we can run and jump and shout with glee—“Save us, Hosanna!”—because the one who saves us is with us, even now.

And what a relief that is.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

March 22, 2026

What are the places of new life in your life?

For me, food is one of those. Of almost anything else in my life, I am more open and more interested in exploring different cuisine and trying to cook it as well. There’s not yet a food profile or cuisine that I have shied away from. There are probably some parameters on that, but I’ve pretty much been open to everything I’ve encountered.

But one of the places of kind of staidness in my life is my musical proclivities, my musical tastes. I tend to have a set of artists, a certain musical genre that are my limitations, and I don’t really push myself or expand my horizons much outside of that. But that’s not true of my father. My 69‑year‑old father, almost 70, is constantly finding new artists, new music that I have no awareness of.

Several years ago, he very excitedly texted me and Julie from the Library of Congress. He was on the floor in the main reading room doing some research, and Lizzo had come in and was in the main reading room playing James Madison’s flute, and he surreptitiously got his phone out and snapped a couple of images. Well, I had no idea who Lizzo was. I had only kind of become aware of her a day or two before when Julie mentioned that she was coming to Capital Arena.

And so it was just yesterday, actually, that he texted me and said, “Have you listened to Dax’s new song that references Psalm 130 that we will say today?” And I said, “Who’s Dax?” Apparently, Dax is a 31‑year‑old Nigerian‑Canadian rapper who has begun getting some real attention and prominence in his music over the last couple of years. And so, dutifully, I went and tracked down this song called God Can You Hear Me? It’s quite a profound song, so I appreciated him sending it along. At the beginning of this song, he quotes Psalm 130: “Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice.”

Dax really taps into the lament that we hear in the psalm today. “God, can you hear me?” is a plea—a desperate plea—for God to come through, to break through all of the barriers of noise and distraction and complication that we are constantly surrounded by. Those things external to us that kind of keep us rooted in the matters and physical, material things of this world, and not the things of the Spirit—the internal things that nourish and sustain us.

He picks up on the lament that we hear in Psalm 130 today. And yes, if we read the full psalm toward the end, we get this sense of redemption. But it begins again out of the depths—it begins in this place of despair, of uncertainty, anxiety, of inner turmoil.

And it’s interesting, too, that we have this psalm today, because in a way it’s kind of incongruous with our other readings, is it not? We have the famous and wonderful story from Ezekiel of these dried bones returning to life, the promises of Christ made manifest in resurrection, and the words of Saint Paul in our epistle reading from Romans. And then this incredible story of resurrection and new life in the Gospel of John as Jesus comes to the tomb of his friend Lazarus and calls him forth.

I want to suggest to you this morning that we basically have two major points that come out of our readings today. One is this promise of redemption over despair—that the place of departure for Psalm 130, that utter despair and uncertainty, the weight of the challenges of the world, are not the end of the story. That there is new life even beyond those places of brokenness.

But that new life is not just a kind of ethereal, promised revelation of resurrection in a future time, but a reality of resurrection in this very moment—a true resurrection.

You know, Martha says to Jesus when he comes to her, or when they meet one another, that she knows her brother will be raised again in the resurrection. So often when we think about resurrection in our own lives, we kind of dismiss it in a similar fashion. We see resurrection as making do the best we can with the realities of the world that we encounter around us. We accept resurrection in this kind of limited way that Martha does—that yes, there may be some goodness, some glimmer of new life, some joy that we will encounter down the road. But this can’t actually happen. People can’t come back from the dead.

True resurrection is not a reality in the here and now; it is only the thing that will happen in the eschaton, at the end of all, when God finally rights all of the wrongs that we are so frequently mired in. And Jesus counters that argument with this incredible gift of new life—with the miracle of Lazarus being raised from the dead.

True resurrection is not just a thing of mystical promise, some point over the horizon, but it is a reality that we have before us each and every moment of every day—an opportunity to be renewed, restored, and truly resurrected from the depths of our despair, cynicism, and brokenness.

Modern science is interesting, because just 15 years ago, when I was studying to be a psychotherapist, we were taught that you max out at something like 25 or 26 years old, and then it’s all downhill from there—that your brain stops developing, you begin to atrophy. You can hold that at bay if you stay athletic and mobile, but it’s just a process of death. There’s nothing left to do.

And just in these last 15 years, that narrative has been broken. It’s been liberated with the recognition that even those of us of advanced age can have a renewal of life—that neural pathways after a stroke can begin to knit themselves back together, that new growth can happen even in times of advanced age or deterioration in other parts of the body, that we can truly experience new life biophysically. It’s an incredible revelation, but it speaks to the reality that we so often have this limited material perspective—that we know how this is all going to play out.

We can affirm things like the resurrection as incredible moments in the ministry and life of Christ, but we often fail to see their sustained import for us in the ways we live in the world around us. Ultimately, even when we are rooted in our faith, we unfortunately fix before us the cold reality of the grave and the earthen tomb.

We are reminded this Sunday that it does not have to be that way—that we can embrace new life, we can embrace the power and truth of the resurrection even in the here and now, even in the brokenness and despair that we encounter in these days.

And I was reminded of how that manifests just this week as well. Some of you may have heard that Bob Mueller passed away just at the end of this week. He’s not just some big‑name former FBI director who had all of these various hats that he wore in his life—he was my former parishioner.

One of the most incredible parts of my journey with him, and with the congregation I was serving at the time, was that in the midst of all the drama and all of the political posturing in the years that he was leading the special counsel’s investigation, his wife and Bill Barr’s wife participated week in and week out in a Bible study together at my church. And he and Bill enjoyed a deep and close friendship.

That new life, that new growth, that opportunity to see resurrection even in the midst of death was not just some hoped‑for future reality but a promise of real and true transformation even now.

And so today, as we encounter this great story of Lazarus, as we prepare ourselves for these moments in just a couple of weeks in which we will face head‑on the realities of death and the tomb, I want to remind us that the story does not end on Good Friday. The story does not end with the material, physical things of decay.

The story—even now, on that journey to the grave—is a story of resurrection, of new life, and of transformation into the kingdom of God.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.