Palm Sunday 2025 - The Revd Canon Jo Spreadbury

As we enter into Holy Week, I have been reminded of a remark by Rowan Williams about the Gospels which may be helpful for us to reflect on in relation to the events that are about to unfold through the course of this week:

‘The Gospels…’ he says ‘ are (intended to) bring each hearer into a dramatic relationship with the subject of the story’ (that is with Jesus) ‘ offering a place within the story itself, as recipient of forgiveness and of judgement, as colluding with the betrayal of Jesus and sharing in the power of the risen Lord…..the one addressed by the words uttered in the past, is the hearer in the actual present’

What this means is that we really can say that the Gospels are written for us. Although those who composed them could not have foreseen that we would here this Palm Sunday listening to the story of the Lord’s entry into Jerusalem they did in some whole point is to way envisage these stories being told in order to change people.. The whole point is that we are brought into a dramatic and personal relationship with Jesus, and, as Rowan Williams says, we are offered a place within the story itself.

The Gospels reach out across time, challenging us, asking for our response. We may think we are reading them or hearing them; but the truth is they are reading us, they are hearing us, they are exposing to us the sometimes eager, sometimes loving, sometime fearful, sometimes guilty inner dialogue of our own hearts.

I never used to understand this. The Gospel stories and particularly the story of the passion used to make me feel very uncomfortable. Often sad, of course, but sometimes I felt ashamed and it took many years to realise that such shame is one way of responding – many of the characters close to Jesus experience something like shame as the week of his passion progresses. This Sunday may be a beautiful spring morning and the birds and flowers may be saying to us that all is right with the world. But today we are called to listen to a different music, a dissonance, for all is not right with the world; there is violence, there is oppression, there is desperate poverty and need and despair. And there is the Son of Man, pursuing his lonely road to the cross. And who goes with him?

Palm Sunday has Jesus entering Jerusalem, and however often you have heard or read this story you sort of know the meaning of it is to be in it. One way of doing this is through the imagination. Where are you in the picture, in the scene?

The crowd, yes always the crowd, curious, exciteable, eager for some spectacle to lift their hearts and minds; longing for a figurehead to carry their aspirations of significance and freedom. Or perhaps you are behind the shutters and walls of the city, too fastidious to come out, or too frightened, or too sceptical – after all you’ve seen it all and heard it all many times before. Or perhaps you are one of the disciples, nervous, edgy, hopeful, triumphant. Or perhaps you are the observer, the journalist or reporter, taking in what is going on – the colours and the shouting, but from an objective view, not letting yourself get caught up.

If you have experienced this many times, and feel there is not much more to be said or gained from reading this story, let me commend two further approaches which you might not have considered:

One is drawn from the superb paintings by Nicholas Mynheer, the Sarum Cycle, that we have had in the ambulatory through this Lent. In these images the buildings and the whole environment all play their part – they curve and sway and lean in towards Jesus.

As Mynheer says: The buildings, the people and the very landscape are all involved in the event; together they shout, ‘Hosanna in the Highest, Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord.’

So one way of approaching the familiar scenes of Holy Week this week, might be to reflect on the how the creation responded to its creator: the buildings recognising the Master builder of the universe as he passes by, the trees willingly leaning their branches towards him who goes to be nailed to a tree.

Or a second approach – based on the fact that we won’t have actual donkeys here today: they were booked but the owner has sadly been unwell and is unable to bring them. So we thought for the Pompey Sunday service to get all the little ones to be the donkeys themselves today!

So perhaps you too might be able to receive the unfolding events of Holy Week one more time, from the point of view of – the donkey.

The donkey who doesn’t know what is going on at all. The donkey has been tied up, waiting for hours. Then it is taken and led to a strange place, cloaks are put on its back and then a strange man sits on its back and guides it through the streets. The donkey knows nothing of what is going on, but it plays its part faithfully just by doing what it does.

And perhaps later in the week the donkey was in the street while Jesus passed by carrying the cross, or in a field overlooking Golgotha. And then maybe on Easter morning the donkey has found some beautifully sweet new grass in a quiet garden – and can meet once again his gentle Jesus, now risen from the dead.

The donkey plays its part faithfully just by doing what it does. If we could just do that this Holy Week we would know something important about what it is to follow Christ.