200405 Palm Sunday Drive in Service <--click here for audio 200405 Palm Sunday Order of Service <--click here for bulletin Sermon manuscript: Parades are a time of celebration and pageantry. You don’t have a parade at the time of tragedy and defeat. Parades are for winners. Today we hear of a parade that happened in Jerusalem. The winner is Jesus. He was the one who was being celebrated. John tells us that one of the reasons why there was a large crowd surrounding Jesus as he entered the city was that they had heard about what he had done to Lazarus. Lazarus was a man who had died not long before this. He remained dead for four days. His body had started to decompose. But the composer of the Universe showed up—that’s Jesus—and told Lazarus to come out of his tomb. And he did. God’s people had had prophets in the past who were able to bring life back to the dead, but that was very rare. It also happened only with those who had freshly died. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Jesus had told Mary and Martha, Lazarus’s sisters, that he is the resurrection and the life. That indeed seemed to be the case.And so the people were wondering, might this be the Christ? Why, yes, that must be so. You hear them say that in the rousing chants as they marched along: “Hosanna,” (which means “please, save us.”) “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel.” They knew who Jesus was and they acted accordingly. There was a great deal of enthusiasm and warmth in that crowd. They were moved to produce song and dance and art spontaneously—which always makes the best kind of such things. They cut palm branches and waved them. They put their own clothes on the road for Jesus’s donkey to walk on them. Here we see a little foretaste of heaven. We creatures were made to praise God. It is our highest and most fulfilling activity. The problem we have while in this life is that our heart is so often not in it. And our heart is not in it because we are weighed down with cares and worries and sadness. That is why we Christians always enjoy when a little bit of heaven breaks into our gray and dreary lives and lifts up our hearts—lifts them up unto the Lord. It is good and right and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to the Lord. Nobody had to tell these people to do what they did. They did what they did because they wanted to, more than anything. Luke tells us that the Pharisees were appalled by this creative worship, but Jesus tells them that if the people didn’t cry out, then the stones would have to sing. The joy simply couldn’t be contained. Heaven is a good place.But the sour faces of the Pharisees show us that not everyone thought this parade was heavenly. The Pharisees had been convinced long before this that Jesus was no good. They were irritated that the people were being taken in by Jesus, whom they regarded as a false teacher. They had tried to get it across to the people that Jesus was a Sabbath breaker, and therefore couldn’t be any good, but the people weren’t listening to them. The Pharisees are frustrated, as you heard in our Gospel reading. “We aren’t getting anywhere,” they said. “Look, the whole world is going after him.”But they were exaggerating, as cranky churchmen are liable to do, when they said that the whole world was going after him. Not all of Jerusalem was there. Pontius Pilate certainly wasn’t there. He didn’t know anything about Jesus until the Jews brought him before him so that Jesus could be put to death. The vast majority of Jerusalem was going about their workday, for this was not a day of rest for them. According to the Jewish mindset their Saturday is our Sunday. Therefore their Sunday is our Monday. Sunday was the beginning of the work week for them. These Jews who joined in on the parade had to skip work to do so, which they gladly did. It’s not every day that the Messiah comes to town. But most people paid no mind to what was going o