Audio recording Sermon manuscript: Our Gospel reading today has two parts. The first part deals with the events that we are familiar with concerning Palm Sunday. Jesus was entering into Jerusalem to celebrate the upcoming festival of Passover that was happening that week. There were more people than usual in Jerusalem because they were doing the same thing that Jesus and his disciples were doing. Interest in Jesus was quite keen because of what he had done just days before. He had raised Mary and Martha’s brother, Lazarus, from the dead, even though he had been dead for four days. This is why the crowd is large, and why they are praying to Jesus: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” The second part of our reading tells us some other things that happened that day. These are lesser known happenings connected with Palm Sunday. It is this second part of the Gospel reading that I’d like to focus on today. The second part is different from the first part. In the first part of the reading there is a joyous, spontaneous parade (which are always the best kind of parades). In this second part the topic is quite different. Jesus speaks about his soul being troubled, about hating one’s life, about death, about being lifted up on the cross. Here on Palm Sunday, even while the crowd was singing and smiling, Jesus came to understand that his hour had come. How did that happen? John says that there were some Greeks there who came to Jesus’s disciples. They said, “We want to see Jesus.” So the disciples went to Jesus and told him about it. Immediately Jesus said, “The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” This is what made Jesus understand that his death was quickly approaching: Some Greeks came to see him. So why should this make such an impact? For us Christians it is easy to forget that salvation is really a Jewish, an Israelite prerogative. The people whom God chose out of all the nations of the earth were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Greek people are from an entirely different branch of the human race. They aren’t even distantly related to Abraham, like some of the other people in the Middle East were. When Jesus came he did not disrupt or overturn this basic structure. He was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. When he sent his disciples out, they visited their fellow Jews. Jesus said to the Samaritan woman at the well that salvation comes from the Jews. Now, as it turns out, there were non-Jews who came to believe in Jesus. The Samaritan woman believes in him. Then her whole village came to believe in him. There is one outstanding male example of faith and one outstanding female example of faith. Both of them are non-Jewish. The man who is said to have great faith is a Roman Centurion. The woman who is said to have great faith is the Canaanite woman, whom we heard about four weeks ago. On the other hand, while there certainly were Jews who believed in Jesus, most did not. After his first sermon in his hometown of Nazareth the men of the synagogue want to throw him off a cliff. The Jewish leaders in Jerusalem are especially hostile to him. They believe that he is a dangerous heretic who is leading the people astray. So already before Palm Sunday you see that the Jews, the people who should have received Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, were resisting him. These are the nobles of the human race, who, if anybody has a claim to the King’s Son’s wedding banquet, they do. But they are unwilling to come. On the other hand, people who don’t belong at the wedding banquet—the non-Jews—are being compelled to come in. This is not by accident. It is all there in the Old Testament. God threatens to punish all who break his commandments, and the worst punishment that God can inflict upon a person is hardness of heart. When his people, who have had his promises and commandments, who have been visited by him and know his will, do not repent, then God will