Preaching Palm Sunday: Sermons worth listening to

Mar 1

Whew!

I thought I was giving myself the somewhat simple task of pulling together a collection of good Palm Sunday sermons to share to inspire preachers in the preparation of their Holy Week homilies this year. I did not realize what a daunting task this would be. I have listened to, or attempted to listen to, well over a hundred Palm Sunday sermons. I have watched hours of videos. In the end, what I have found is a handful of pretty good sermons; a fair amount of sermons that are just OK (not offensive or bad, but not exactly inspiring); and an overwhelming deluge of sermons that are just terrible (for various reasons).

Palm Sunday is obviously a tricky service to preach, especially for preachers in liturgical traditions like the Episcopal Church, where the service has two very different gospel readings, memorializes two very different events in the life of Jesus, and has two starkly different moods. Add to that the dynamic of having (usually) slightly better attendance by visitors and major services planned for the week ahead, and the preacher has been given a daunting task indeed. It is easy to see why Palm Sunday, of all Sundays, has more than its share of weak sermons.

Below is a collection of sermons that I think are above average for tackling the content of Palm Sunday with the right tone and that weave the various scriptural and theological strands of the service together effectively. Of course, no sermon and no preacher is ever perfect, but these are worth listening to. I apologize in advance for including one of my own sermons in the mix, but after reviewing so many, I do think that it does a decent job. There have been plenty of my past sermons, however, that would not have made the cut.

I also want to offer here a few words of advice for the Palm Sunday preacher, and this is based upon all of the sermons I reviewed to compile this list. I wouldn’t describe these as rules, more like suggestions. The Holy Spirit may lead you to do something differently, and if you can pull it off, more power to you. The “good sermons” I have linked to below, don’t necessarily follow all of these suggestions and they still do a good job. But based upon listening to a lot of terrible, or uninspiring, Palm Sunday sermons, here is my advice to preachers:

Begin with the Passion, NOT with the Palms. The last thing your congregation will have heard before you ascend the pulpit and begin your sermon will be the retelling of Jesus’s passion and death. Start there. Despite commonly referring to the day as “Palm Sunday,” it is really the Passion that is of utmost importance today. Yes, you will talk about the Passion again on Good Friday. It’s OK. You can talk about it more than once. The earliest Christian lectionaries include the Passion reading as the gospel for this Sunday, so it would seem that our tradition does not want us to consider Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of David in a way that is divorced from his suffering and death and I think that’s right. When Cranmer created the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, he dumped the Palms but kept the Passion. The Passion was more important. You can take people back to the palms, processions, and shouts of ‘Hosanna!', but at least start by in some way acknowledging the gravity of the story that was just told in the Passion Gospel. At least pay attention to the mood in the room when you begin your sermon.
No jokes; no perky “good morning!” See above. Your congregation JUST heard about their Lord and Saviour being laid in a tomb. There are plenty of times when humor and lightheartedness are helpful and even important in the pulpit, but Palm Sunday and Good Friday are definite exceptions. At least pay attention to your tone of voice. You can make kind and gentle remarks without appearing flippant.
Don’t over-explain. With so much going on in the Palm Sunday liturgy, and so many rich symbols, there is a definite temptation to turn the sermon into an adult-forum or a Sunday school. Try to resist this temptation. You don’t need to explain the historical significance of every symbol in your sermon. Yes, you will have visitors that don’t go to church every Sunday. Just let them enter into the drama of the story and the liturgy. You probably don’t need to say “Today is Palm Sunday and today we blah, blah, blah…” Use your sermon to help the congregation to experience the story of Jesus, who is the crucified Messiah, on a deeper level, or simply sit down and let the Holy Spirit, the gospel and the liturgy preach the sermon for you.