A sermon preached by the Revd Dr Trevor Jamison at Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, North Shields, 13th April 2025
Watch the whole service on YouTube
‘Now as he [Jesus] was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen.’ (19:37)
So having carried out a ministry over three years, which took place mainly outside of Jerusalem, Jesus was now about to enter into the city in some style. Careful arrangements had been made so that he would ride in, not walk in. He had instructed two of his disciples to, ‘go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, “Why are you untying it?” just say this, “The Lord needs it”.’ (19:30, 31)
They brought it back. Having thrown their two cloaks on the colt, they ‘set Jesus on it’ (19:35) – sounds almost like “they put him on a pedestal” or “set him up for a fall” – and off they go, with others ‘spreading their cloaks on the road’ ahead of him. (19:36)
And the start-point for this this procession, this parade into Jerusalem, is ‘at a place called the Mount of Olives.’ (19:29) So they are descending from the heights in order to process into the city, and that’s when the shouting and singing starts: ‘approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen.’ (19:37) The whole multitude …
I suppose I must have read or heard this Gospel account of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem hundreds of times. I think, though, it’s the first time I have ever paid much or any attention to that phrase: ‘the whole multitude of disciples began to praise God joyfully.’ I found myself catapulted back in time, to a different place, though only three decades or so back in time, and to a place not all that far from Jerusalem.
In a flash, Luke’s Gospel was rewound from chapter nineteen – just outside the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, just before Easter – all the way back to chapter two, and to fields just outside Bethlehem at the first Christmas. ‘There were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified … And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God …’ (2:8-9, 13)
‘A multitude of the heavenly host [is] praising God’ (2:13) at the beginning of Jesus Christ’s life on earth is matched by a ‘multitude of disciples [who] began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice’ (19:37) towards the end of Jesus’s life on earth. In Luke’s Gospel a ‘multitude’ of angels praises God, marking Jesus’s entry into this world, and then another ‘multitude’ (of disciples) praises God in advance of Jesus’s exit from this world. It’s Christmas and Easter all at once!
In the fields outside Bethlehem, the heavenly multitude’s praise takes this form: ‘Glory to God in highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’ (2:14) while on the road from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem, the earthly multitude of disciples proclaim, ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!’ (19:38)
Glory, God, heaven, earth, peace proclaimed at Bethlehem; blessing, Lord, peace, and heaven celebrated at Jerusalem; two multitudes with essentially one message. And because of where and when these two multitudes appear they function as “bookends” containing the story of the life and ministry of Jesus. Today, we are invited to pause, prior to Easter, and “re-read” in an instant the story of Jesus’s ministry here on earth, and to celebrate it for how it shows God has been at work to bring peace on earth and in heaven; to bring peace into our troubled existence, into our troubled lives.
We’re invited to remember and celebrate Jesus’s teaching; parables of seeds sown and about roadside Samaritans; parables about friends at your door at midnight and rich fools dying before they can fill their barns; stories of growth featuring fig trees, mustard seeds, and the yeast which makes the dough rise; good news about lost sheep, lost coins, and lost sons, all of which are found; parables of the rich and the poor, of widows and judges, of Pharisees and tax collectors; stories which turn the ways of the world upside down; teaching which proclaims that God’s way is to scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts, to bring down the powerful and lift up the lowly; to fill the hungry with good things, while putting the rich to the back of the queue. (Luke 1:51-53)
We’re encourage and invited to remember and celebrate that with Jesus actions accompany words; he enables people to experience God-in-action as well as well as to learn about God-in-words. So during his ministry he had as much time for those at the bottom as those at the top, dining with the tax collectors as well as with Pharisees and other notables. He healed the sick, whether they were the children of important officials or socially marginalised folk like people with leprosy. He fed the hungry, just like the Magnificat proclaims God does. He stilled the storms within the possessed and in the Lakeland setting of creation.
We’re urged, encouraged and invited to recall how rather than reject people Jesus called people to him, acting out God’s desire that the whole of creation, including the whole of humankind, including you and me, will be reconciled with the God who gives us life and sustains us through life. In Jesus God is calling us to come to him. So we remember Jesus calling people to follow him, calling them to walk in his ways, which are God’s way; men and women who came to form a multitude of followers, ones who would sing God’s praise; ‘disciples [who] began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen’ (19:37) as they made there way into the city.
Today we find ourselves part of a multitude who sing God’s praise, and who seek God’s peace on earth; people who have received the teaching of Jesus; people who have seen and experienced Jesus active in the world; people called by Jesus to follow him. We’re a multitude of those privileged to know the story of the ministry of Jesus upon earth; his life announced by a multitude of angels at Bethlehem, and farewelled by a multitude of disciples on Palm Sunday. To know the life and ministry of Jesus, and how that reveals that God loves us, and that God is at work to save us, is cause for excitement and celebration, just like back then at Jerusalem.
Today’s day of celebration needs to be a clear-eyed one. The week ahead for Jesus brings betrayal (as today’s second reading from Luke Gospel (22:1-6) reminds us), and betrayal brings suffering and death, before we get to resurrection and an empty tomb. But today we celebrate the life and ministry of Jesus – teaching, actions, acceptance, calling of others to follow in his way, God’s way. So yes:
‘‘Glory to God in highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours!’ (2:14)’
‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!’ (19:38)
Prayer
And so we pray, gracious God, accept our praise today, as part of the multitude of your Son’s followers. Thank you for Jesus; for his life, and for his ministry here on earth; all the way from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. Strengthen us now to continue to follow in his way, as he heads towards the cross on our behalf and for our sake. Enable us to grieve at its necessity even as we are renewed by its power, and so continue to sing your praises. Amen.
(Prayer takes some inspiration from one for Palm Sunday by C N R Wallwork)