There is something deeply unsettling about Palm Sunday, if we are willing to sit with it long enough.

It begins with real joy, overflowing into the streets—jackets thrown down, branches waving, voices raised: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”

It feels like a parade. It feels like a protest rally. It feels like a victory march. It feels like everything is finally going right.

And this is the part we love—the celebratory, public, confident faith. The triumph lingers, and we want to linger there too.

But the Church, in her wisdom, or perhaps in her refusal to let us hide from the truth, does not allow us to stay there. Because almost as soon as the palms are raised, the tone shifts. The liturgy changes. The story turns. And we find ourselves no longer in a parade, but in a Passion.

The same voices that cried out “Hosanna” will soon cry out “Crucify him.” And that shift is not just something that happened long ago. It is not just about them. It is about us.

Matthew tells us that when Jesus enters Jerusalem, the whole city is in turmoil. It was Passover and the city was full of people. The word he uses suggests something like an earthquake, a shaking, a disturbance. People are asking, “Who is this?”

And the answer comes: “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

It is a good answer. A respectful answer. Even a faithful answer. But it is not the whole truth. They see a prophet. They welcome a king. But they do not yet understand a Savior who suffers.

And if we are honest, neither do we.

We want a certain kind of Messiah. We want a Jesus who fixes things. A Jesus who does it all, so we don’t have to. A Jesus who restores order. A Jesus who validates our expectations and affirms our sense of how the world should work. A Jesus who hates the same people we do. We want a king who rides in strength, who conquers, who wins.

But Jesus comes on a donkey. Not by accident. Not because there were no other options. But intentionally, deliberately, prophetically. He is fulfilling the words of the prophet: “Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey.”

When the conquerors entered the city they had just conquered, they would ride on a big horse. When a King or a general wanted peace with a city, they would come riding on a donkey, a beast of burden, a beast of humility and peace.

This is not a king who comes in power as the world understands power. This is not a king who comes to dominate. This is not a king who puts his name on buildings. This is not a king who puts his face on gold coins. This is not a king who puts his signature on dollar bills. This is a king who comes in humility.

And that should give us pause. Because humility is not what we usually look for in leadership. It is not what we usually celebrate. It is not what we instinctively trust. We are taught that humility and compassion are weaknesses. We are told that empathy is a sin. And yet, this is how God chooses to enter the city.

But even more than that, Jesus knows exactly where this road leads. He knows the cheers will fade. He knows the crowd will turn. He knows the cross is waiting. And still, he goes. With a smile on his face.

There is something profoundly important in that. This is not a story that spins out of control. This is not a tragedy that catches Jesus by surprise. Jesus is deliberately provoking the authorities with this act. This is a deliberate act of love.

He enters Jerusalem not because things are going well, but because they are about to go terribly wrong, and he refuses to turn away. And then, as we move from the procession into the Passion, Matthew draws us into the story in a way that is almost uncomfortable.

Because we begin to recognize the characters. Judas betrays, but not out of pure malice. Perhaps out of disappointment. Perhaps out of disillusionment. Perhaps because Jesus was not the Messiah he expected.

Peter denies, but not because he does not love Jesus. He does. Deeply. But fear gets the better of him. The disciples scatter, not because they are faithless, but because they are human. And the crowd… the crowd shifts. That is perhaps the hardest part. Because crowds still shift. Public opinion still turns. What is celebrated one moment is condemned the next.

And if we are honest, we know this is not just about ancient Jerusalem. We have all had moments where we have been Judas, choosing something else over Christ. Moments where we have been Peter, failing to stand firm when it mattered most. Moments where we have been part of the crowd, swept along, uncertain, inconsistent.

Palm Sunday forces us to confront that reality. It holds up a mirror and asks, “Where am I in this story?”

But here is where the story refuses to become merely a story about human failure. Because even as all of this unfolds, even as betrayal, denial, abandonment, and injustice take center stage, Jesus remains steadfast.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, we see the most human moment of all. Jesus prays: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” There is no denial of suffering here. No pretending that this is easy. No spiritual bypassing. Jesus names the pain. He feels the weight of what is coming. He tries to get out of it. He tries to bargain with God.

And then he says: “it’s not what I want Father, but what you want.” That is not resignation. That is trust. Deep, costly, vulnerable trust.

Before Pilate, Jesus stands silent. He does not defend himself with clever arguments or by shouting ‘fake news’. He does not make fun of Pilate and call him crass names. He does not call upon power to save himself. He does not even seem interested in winning, as we understand it.

Because the victory he is seeking is not about avoiding the cross. It is about transforming what the cross represents. It is about turning the symbol of hate into a message of love.

And then we come to the crucifixion itself. A place of shame. A place of humiliation. A place of suffering and death. And this is where our theology is tested. Because we often want to ask: Why does God allow suffering? And that is not a small question. It is not an abstract question. It is a question born out of real pain, real loss, real grief. Experiences we have all had.

Palm Sunday, as we move into the Passion, does not give us a neat or tidy answer. Instead, it gives us something far more challenging and far more profound. It shows us a God who does not stand at a distance from suffering. It shows us a God who enters into it. Fully. Completely. Without holding back.

A God who knows betrayal from the inside. A God who knows what it is to be misunderstood. A God who knows what it is to be abandoned by friends. A God who knows physical pain, emotional anguish, and even the experience of death.

This is not a distant deity. This is Emmanuel, God with us. Even here. Especially here.

And so the question shifts. Not why does God allow suffering? But where is God in the midst of suffering?

And the answer, given to us in the Passion, is this: God is right there. On the cross. In the pain. In the darkness. In the place we would least expect, and often where we least want to look.

And yet, even here, even at the cross, the story is not without hope. Because woven through the Passion are these small, quiet signs that something more is happening. The curtain of the temple will be torn in two. The earth will shake. The centurion will confess: “Truly this man was God’s Son.”

Even in death, something is being revealed. Even in suffering, something is being transformed. And that something is unconditional love for everyone, even those who have put the nails in his hands and feet. Even the ones who betrayed and denied him. And even the ones who ran away and hid.

Palm Sunday invites us to live in the tension that holds together the joy of the procession and the sorrow of the Passion. To resist the temptation to rush too quickly to Easter, while also refusing to believe that Good Friday and the crucifixion are the end of the story.

Because we know, though we do not yet fully celebrate it, that resurrection is coming. Not as an escape from suffering, but as a transformation of it. Not as a denial of death, but as a defeat of it.

So, what does this mean for us? It means that to follow Jesus is not simply to wave palms when it is easy. It is to walk the road when it is hard. It’s to love when love costs something. It’s to forgive when forgiveness feels impossible. It’s to remain present in the face of suffering, our own and that of others. It’s, ultimately, to take up our cross.

And that is not a metaphor we should rush past. Because crosses are heavy. They are real. They are often unwelcome. But they are also the place where transformation happens.

Palm Sunday asks us: What kind of disciples do we want to be? Disciples of convenience? Or disciples of commitment? Followers of a triumphant moment? Or followers of a crucified and risen Lord?

Because the truth is, we cannot have Easter without Good Friday. We cannot have resurrection without the cross. We cannot fully understand the depth of God’s love unless we are willing to walk through the places where that love is most costly.

And yet, here is the grace. We do not walk this road alone. The same Christ who enters Jerusalem walks with us. The same Christ who prays in the garden prays for us. The same Christ who endures the cross meets us in our suffering. And the same Christ who is raised will raise us, too.

So today, as we hold our palms, let us do so with open hearts and open eyes. Let us celebrate, but not superficially. Let us reflect, but not despair. Let us commit ourselves again to following Jesus, not just in the moments of joy, but in the moments of challenge, of uncertainty, and even of suffering.

Because this is the road to which we are called. A road that leads through Jerusalem. Through the garden. Through the cross. And, by the grace of God, to the empty tomb.

Amen.

John 4:5–42

I am not sure how many times I have preached from this passage from the Gospel of John we heard this morning, but I learned something new this week in my preparation. I guess you can teach old dog new tricks.

And that is the beauty of Scripture: just when you believe you have understood everything, it reveals a new message to you. This reminds us that its core invitation is always unfolding.

But, before we get that, I want us to go back to Ash Wednesday, back to the start of Lent just 3 weeks ago, for on that day we heard one of the great invitations of Lent, and it comes to us from the prophet Joel:

“Return to me with all your heart.”

That simple phrase echoes through the whole season of Lent. It is not merely a call to repentance in the narrow sense of feeling sorry for what we have done and the things we have not done. It is something much deeper. Joel is calling us to return, to turn our whole lives back toward God.

Not halfway. Not cautiously. But with everything.

And that invitation comes alive for us in today’s Gospel from the fourth chapter of John. This is a long passage rich with theological and spiritual understanding, and I wish there was more time to dig in, to go deeper, to spend a little more time just listening to what God is trying to tell us.

Jesus travels through Samaria and stops at a well in Sychar at noon. A Samaritan woman comes alone to draw water, which is unusual, since women normally come together in the morning or evening. Her solitude suggests some isolation from her community.

And then, in this unexpected setting, Jesus does something remarkable. He speaks to her.

Now we should not miss how shocking this moment would have been. A rabbi speaking publicly with a Samaritan woman crossed several cultural boundaries at once. Jews and Samaritans lived with centuries of mistrust and hostility. Men rarely initiated public conversation with women they did not know. Yet here is Jesus, sitting at a well, asking her for a drink.

But as is often the case, Jesus turns things on their heads.

The conversation that follows becomes one of the longest theological dialogues in the entire Gospel. Jesus tells her:

“If you knew the gift of God… you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

At first, she misunderstands. Maybe she is taken aback because a Jewish man is speaking to her. But she thinks Jesus is speaking about ordinary water, the water just there in the well.  After all, the well is deep, and Jesus has nothing with which to draw from it. But Jesus is pointing to something deeper.

He is speaking about the thirst that lives inside every human heart.

We know this thirst: a longing for meaning, belonging, love, peace, to matter, and not feel alone.

We try to satisfy this thirst with success, possessions, recognition, relationships, or distractions. Some are good but don’t satisfy the soul’s deeper thirst.

Jesus says:

“Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.”

He is speaking about the life of God flowing within us.

But before the woman can receive this living water, something else must happen. Jesus gently brings her face-to-face with the truth of her own life.

“Go, call your husband.”

What follows reveals the complexity of her story. She has had five husbands, and the man she now lives with is not her husband.

This, for me, is where I noticed something new.

In John’s eyes, she is a nobody; he does not even give her a name. Her gender, religious orientation, social standing, and personal habits distance her from Jesus and from her community. When reading this story, one understands that people in her own community try to avoid her. No one comes to draw water in the heat of the day!

And based on very little information, we judge her and her life.

For centuries, preachers and others have used this moment to shame her, but the Gospel does not invite us to judge her. In fact, in the world of the first century, a woman rarely had the power to initiate divorce. Her situation may say more about the instability and vulnerability of her life than about moral failure.

For centuries, this woman has been judged, and we do not even know her name. The focus is on her so-called sin, even though we have no idea what the backstory is. What about her other husbands? Where are they? Do they face the same shame that she does? My guess is no.

She lives in a male-dominated society, with no rights, as property of her father, then her husband. She cannot escape a bad situation or choose her fate. Marriages were arranged, with little role for love.

But here we sit, in a long line of people who have prejudged this woman. We know nothing about her; we do not even know her name. Yet, because she is a woman, she is considered expendable.

But this story, this passage, is good news for anyone who may have felt humiliation of stigmatization or the pain of being judged by people who only see what they want to see.

What Jesus does here is not condemnation but recognition. He sees her—her pain, history, and truth. He does not turn away but engages and continues speaking, revealing himself. He takes her seriously, maybe for the first time. Her community and welfare matter a lot to Jesus.

Jesus does not see her for what she has done; Jesus sees her for who she is, a beloved child of God.

This is the moment where the connection to the prophet Joel becomes clear.

“Return to me with all your heart.”

Returning to God means bringing our whole selves into the presence of God, not the polished version we show the world, but the real story of our lives. The broken bits. The complicated relationships. The doubts and wounds we would rather hide. All the stuff we do not want anyone to know about.

Notice what happens next: the Samaritan woman brings her whole story into this encounter. The conversation shifts to questions of worship—whether God should be worshipped on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem—and Jesus responds with words that still echo in Christian faith today:

“The hour is coming when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”

Spirit and truth. Truth means honesty before God. Spirit means openness to the transforming presence of God.

And then comes the most astonishing moment in the story. The woman speaks about the coming Messiah, and Jesus tells her plainly:

“I am he.”

In the Gospel of John, this is one of the earliest and clearest revelations of Jesus’ identity, given not to a religious leader or a disciple, but to a Samaritan woman drawing water at a well. She becomes, in that moment, the first evangelist to her town.

I am not sure we understand how astonishing that is. Jesus revealed himself to a nobody, a person shunned by society because of her past. There is an echo here of his own story through his mother. Mary had nothing and, at great personal risk, said yes to God.

The Woman at the well had nothing, and Jesus gave her everything.

She leaves her water jar behind and runs back to the city, saying, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done.”

Notice the unfinishedness of that statement, especially knowing what we know about her. “Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did… and loved me anyway!” She does not need to say the last part; however, her action implies those words, as she is filled with joy and runs back to town.

“Everything she ever did” is a long list; it is common knowledge in her village, it is always before her, in every judgmental glance or knowing stare from her neighbors. Jesus, knowing this is not extraordinary, but Jesus knowing this and loving her anyway, is the remarkable part. The one who knew “everything she ever did” and loved her anyway, saved her life.

And notice one very important thing, Jesus never asked her to confess, to turn back from her “sinful ways,” and he never offers her a word of forgiveness, just nonjudgmental love and acceptance, that’s it.

As she gets up, she leaves her jar behind. She came to draw water to sustain her life, but she left with water that would give her eternal life. She is now the jar that will bring that same water to others.

She no longer hides her story. The very thing that once isolated her becomes the doorway through which others encounter Christ. And many believe because of her testimony. Many are drawn to him and come to hear more; they want the water, too.

That is what happens when someone truly returns to God with their whole heart: shame gives way to freedom, isolation gives way to community, and thirst gives way to living water. The key message is clear—God desires the authentic, entire self we bring, not just the polished parts.

Lent offers us this same invitation. Like the woman at the well, we’re being called to sit with Christ and let him speak truth into our lives—not to condemn, but to transform.

The good news of the Gospel is that God already knows our story and still offers us living water.

So, the question Lent places before us is simple and direct: What would it mean for us to return to God with everything, holding nothing back? This is the heart of today’s message.

Not just the parts of our lives we are proud of. But the whole story.

Because it is there, at the well of honesty and grace, that Christ is waiting to meet us.

Amen

Well, here we are. Another Sunday and another hastily rewritten sermon because of a catastrophic world event. I cannot count the number of times I have had to rewrite sermons based on changes in the world but, here we are. Bombs are dropping, human beings are dying, and, some people are rejoicing.

It appears a man who perpetrated evil on an immense scale has been killed. However, as followers of the Prince of Peace, we cannot rejoice in the death of another human. Rather, let us say, “May his name and memory be blotted out.”

But let us not forget the words from Jesus we heard this morning from the Gospel of Matthew, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”

Those words are short. Simple. Almost gentle.

But do not mistake their gentleness for weakness.

In these deeply troubling days, as violence escalates in this new war involving Iran and others in the region, Jesus’ words land with sharp urgency. They are not abstract spirituality. They are not poetic sentiment. They are a summons.

“Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Not blessed are the powerful.
Not blessed are the warmongers.
Not blessed are the victorious.
Not blessed are those who dominate the battlefield.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

When Jesus speaks these words in the Sermon on the Mount, he is not addressing emperors or generals. He is speaking to ordinary people living under Roman occupation. People who knew military presence in their streets. People who understood that decisions made in distant halls of power could disrupt, wound, or even end their lives.

They knew what it meant to live beneath empire. And to them, to people without armies, without influence in imperial courts, Jesus says: you are blessed when you make peace. That alone should unsettle us.

Because in our world, blessing is often equated with strength, leverage, dominance, and victory. But Jesus redefines blessing as he does with so many thngs. He locates it not in conquest, but in reconciliation.

We must be clear: peacemaking is not passive. It is not pretending that injustice does not exist. It is not moral equivalence. It is not naïve optimism.

Peacemaking is active. It is courageous. It is costly. It is easier to escalate than to de-escalate. It is easier to retaliate than to restrain. It is easier to wrap violence in patriotic or ideological language than to do the patient, frustrating, fragile work of diplomacy.

War promises clarity. It promises resolution through force. It promises strength.

History teaches us otherwise.

War spreads. It destabilizes. It wounds generations. The cost is borne not only by leaders and governments, but by families, by children, by the vulnerable, by those whose names we will never know but whose lives are precious to God.

The Rev. Karen Georgia Thompson, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, spoke words that name this moral reality with clarity: “We call for an end to the abuse of government might that is poured out on people who are not the ones making decisions yet bear the brunt of the ensuing violence, casualties of actions they do not support.”

That is not partisan speech. That is prophetic truth.

Too often, those who suffer most are not those who decide. Civilians become casualties. Infrastructure collapses. Children inherit trauma. Entire communities are destabilized by forces far beyond their control.

And the Gospel insists that those lives matter.

And what happens next? What is our responsibility as the ones who caused the destabilization of another country? What is our obligation to the people we say we just freed from a mad man? What will the cost be in human lives, in tax dollars, in moral certainty? Dropping the bombs is the easy part, cleaning up the mess created by those bombs is hard and costly.

When Jesus calls peacemakers blessed, he is not offering a political slogan. He is revealing the character of God.

Children resemble their parents. To be called children of God is to reflect God’s heart. And the heart of God is not bent toward destruction, but toward reconciliation.

Throughout Scripture, we encounter a God who hears the cry of the oppressed. A God who sends prophets to interrupt violence. A God who calls nations to account. A God who declares that swords shall be beaten into plowshares.

And in Jesus Christ, we see that heart embodied. We follow the One who told Peter to put away the sword. We follow the One who wept over Jerusalem’s coming violence. We follow the One who forgave even from the cross.

If we claim his name, we cannot treat peacemaking as optional.

Now, let us be honest: this is not simple.

There are real threats in our world. There are dangerous regimes. There are injustices that must be confronted. Peacemaking does not mean ignoring evil. It does not mean abandoning accountability. It does not mean leaving the vulnerable unprotected.

But neither does it mean baptizing every escalation as righteousness.

Peacemaking asks deeper questions.

What will actually protect the innocent? What will actually preserve life? What will interrupt the cycle rather than intensify it?

And perhaps most importantly: who bears the cost?

If the cost is poured out upon people who are not making decisions, if it falls upon families, upon children, upon the elderly, upon those simply trying to live, then we must ask whether we are reflecting the heart of God.

Jesus does not say, “Blessed are those who win.” He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

The Greek word suggests those who actively create peace, who forge it, who build it, who labor for it. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is the presence of justice, dignity, and right relationship.

Shalom. Wholeness. Flourishing.

That kind of peace requires imagination, the imagination to believe enemies can become neighbors, that diplomacy is not weakness, that restraint can be strength. It requires humility, the humility to admit that no nation is ultimate. No ideology is sovereign. No military is redemptive.

Only God is sovereign.

But here is the harder truth.

Peacemaking does not begin in foreign policy. It begins in the human heart.

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount moves from interior transformation to outward action. Anger, contempt, lust for domination, these are seeds. The seeds of violence are planted long before armies mobilize.

They are planted in narratives of fear. In language that strips others of humanity. In the slow erosion of empathy.

Are we cultivating peace in our own lives? Or are we nurturing resentment? Are we quick to demonize entire peoples? Quick to assume the worst? Quick to reduce complex human beings into caricatures?

The Church must resist that erosion.

We must insist that every life, Iranian, Israeli, American, Palestinian, every life is held within the love of God. We must insist that no child is expendable, and that includes those sexually abused by the privileged class. We must insist that no bomb carries righteousness within it.

The Sanskrit word “Namaste” is often translated as the phrase, “the spirit in me recognizes the spirit in you.” This is a profound translation as it signifies that a shared divine light, or soul exists within all individuals, transcending physical differences to foster mutual respect, equality, and connection.

As a follower of Jesus, commanded to love everyone including our enemies, we must see that divine light in the other person and we must foster mutual respect, equality, and connection.

And we must pray, not as an afterthought, not to avoid engagement, but as a discipline that shapes our hearts toward compassion rather than vengeance.

To pray for peace is to allow God to rearrange our instincts. To be peacemakers is to live in tension. It is to refuse simplistic binaries. It is to acknowledge complexity without surrendering to cynicism.

It is to speak when silence would be easier.

It may cost us. It may cost us popularity. It may cost us comfort. It may cost us the ease of aligning uncritically with national narratives. But Jesus never promised that blessing and ease were the same thing. He promised that those who resemble the heart of God would be called God’s children.

“Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Blessed are those who defend the innocent who bear the brunt of decisions they did not make. Blessed are those who advocate restraint when the drums of war grow loud. Blessed are those who insist that diplomacy is not weakness but wisdom. Blessed are those who believe that love is stronger than fear.

They shall be called children of God. Not because they fix every geopolitical crisis. Not because they eliminate conflict overnight. But because in their lives, the family resemblance becomes visible.

The Church may not control governments. But we shape consciences. We form hearts. We proclaim another way. And in times like these, that witness matters profoundly.

So, what does peacemaking look like for us?

It looks like praying for leaders, that they will pursue de-escalation and dialogue with courage equal to the courage required for war. It looks like refusing dehumanizing rhetoric. It looks like educating ourselves beyond slogans. It looks like supporting humanitarian efforts that care for those caught in conflict. It looks like forming our children not in hatred, but in empathy.

It looks like examining our own hearts and asking ourselves questions. Where am I harboring contempt and for whom? Where have I grown numb to suffering because it feels distant? Where have I confused strength with aggression?

Peacemaking begins there. And then it radiates outward.

In a world trembling under the weight of violence, perhaps the most radical act of faith is to believe that peace is still possible. Not inevitable. But possible.

Because the resurrection tells us that violence does not have the final word. Because the cross reveals that love is willing to absorb hatred rather than perpetuate it. Because the Spirit continues to work in hearts and in history.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”

May we live so that the name fits. May our words reflect mercy. May our advocacy reflect justice. May our prayers reflect courage.

And may our lives, in ways large and small, bear witness to the God whose deepest desire is not destruction — but reconciliation.

Amen.