April 13, 2025
Palm Sunday is what’s called an evangelical feast. I think I’ve talked about these before. These are holidays that are mentioned in the New Testament, that we can pinpoint to a specific date. Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey is something that happened in all four gospels, and in every case it happened on the Sunday before Easter—another evangelical feast that’s (obviously) found in all four gospels. Other examples of evangelical feasts are Ascension and Pentecost. They’re not found in all four gospels, but they are in the New Testament and we can pinpoint the date of each holiday.
Palm Sunday is important because it’s a scene of triumph at the end of a three years of wandering ministry, confirming that Jesus is who we thought he was all along—a King who will save his people.
But it’s also a confirmation that Jesus is no hypocrite. He’s obviously not in it for the power and the glory. He could have ridden into Jerusalem on a magnificent stallion. He could’ve been carried into the holy city on a palanquin—a chair carried by servants. He might even have marched in as a conquering soldier. Any of these might have made a powerful statement.
But he rode in on a donkey, the humblest of animals. Low, slow, undignified—it was probably the least impressive way to make an entrance. But the Prophet Zechariah had spoken of this very thing: Rejoice, O people of Zion! Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey—riding on a donkey’s colt.
—Zechariah 9:9
When I think about the Palm Sundays of my childhood, I think the church has traditionally concentrated on the triumph of the day. Like the people of Jerusalem, we victoriously wave our palm branches and sing All Glory, Laud, and Honor. But sometime since my childhood, something dawned on the church. We celebrate Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem one Sunday. Then the next Sunday we celebrate his conquest over death. If we only attend church on Sundays, we move seamlessly from one victory to the next, with not a hint of pain, and certainly no mention of torture and death.
And so Palm Sunday is now a day of transition. We wave our branches, yes, but after the children leave, we shift the focus from the palms to the donkey, from victory to humility. And for that, today, we turn to Paul, who calls the church at Philippi to have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. In older translations, he might say, “have the same mind.” In our Lenten study this week, somebody suggested to word mindset, which I think may come closest to the mark.
So be of the same mindset as Jesus, who did not cling to equality with God. This means that he was, in fact, God’s equal, but didn’t insist upon the honors that came with that status.
As humans, I think we tend to be protective of any power or status or honors that we might have. If we work for a big company, we might object if someone beneath us in the pecking order is listened to and we are not. If we have a title and somebody calls us by our first name as though they’re our equal, we might get a little miffed. I (and most pastors) have had to get over the fact that you can now go online and, within seconds, be granted the ordination it took us two degrees and at least nine years to attain. Jesus let go of an infinitely greater honor when he refused to cling to his divinity but took on the form of a servant and died a criminal’s death. Think about it: He went from divinity to execution, all out of love for us.
And this is the mindset Paul call for us to have. I think we can look at three words to describe it: humility, service, and obedience. These don’t do it justice, of course, but they come as close as any words can. In obedience to God’s will, Jesus humbly served. And in obedience to God’s will, we, too, are called to serve in humility.
The language of Philippians 2 is nothing if not cosmic. We move from divinity to crucifixion to the worship of beings on earth, above the earth, and beneath the earth. We see Jesus as a criminal and as divine, and we end with the inexpressible glory of God. And so I think it’s understandable if we’re a bit overwhelmed by what this passages says. It’s not just understandable, it’s really quite unavoidable. The human mind simply cannot comprehend the incomprehensible.
Have you ever seen an advertisement showing a product, but there’s no way to tell the actual size of the object, so in the next picture they show it next to a human hand… or a penny or a quarter. This is to give perspective. Unless we have a context for something, we simply can’t put it in perspective.
And so we need context for who Jesus is and what Jesus has done, or else Christianity is just a big, fancy theory. It’s just a philosophy that most of us can’t possibly relate to. And that, I think, is why God gives us community; that is why God gives us the church. The church gives us a context for the humility, obedience, and service that we have seen lived out in the life of Jesus. The church gives us an image of the Kingdom of God; the church is how we see that the Kingdom really is at hand.
And so when Paul tells us to have the same mind, the same attitude, the same mindset that Jesus had, he’s not only calling us to be Christlike, he’s also calling us to Christian unity. When we are like Christ, we cannot think of ourselves as better than anyone else. For if Christ gave up divinity in order to be crucified, how can I possibly think of my station as better than anybody else’s?
If Christ obeyed God to the point of being nailed to a cross, then there’s really nothing that I am called to do that is asking too much.
And if Christ’s service to us resulted in our salvation from death, then what service can I possibly refuse my God or my fellow human being?
As we think about our Christian walk, the opportunities that the church presents us with are simply ways to be obedient, to practice humility, and to serve God, one another, and our neighbors. Let’s enter Holy Week with a renewed commitment to be each other’s brothers and sisters in the church, and God’s people in the world.
—©2025 Sam Greening
