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Lectionary for March 29, 2026
Sunday of the Passion/Palm Sunday
Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16;
Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew 26:14–27:66
I’m struck every year by the sensory experience of the Passion, Holy Week and Resurrection. Around this time of year, my brother’s eyes would water in church and eventually swell shut (he is deeply allergic to donkey dander, palms, incense, and lilies). Yet, despite what Kevin cannot smell or see if he goes to church, he can still hear. Palm/Passion Sunday, especially the readings, cue into the aural details of Jesus intentionally marching toward his murder.
The first reading is one of the four “servant songs” in Isaiah that describe the ministries, difficulties, identities and triumphs of God’s servants. Like most prophesy, the descriptions of God’s servants are polyvalent. That is, to the original audience—likely the Judean exiles recently returned from Babylon—these words would have been understood as good news. And when the early church began to grasp Jesus’ salvific ministry, these words found another fulfillment in describing the Messiah.
This year, I noticed the description of the servant who has the ear of a disciple, which has been opened by the Lord (4-5). The servant’s job is to be ready to hear what God is saying. And, this is a bit recursive, the first thing that the servant should hear is the song about the servant. The servant needs to hear about difficult discipleship, which is going to involve bodily suffering, while waiting for vindication and justice from the Lord. There have always been evil people who abuse others because they can. With a disciple’s ears, the servant hears a song directly from God about withstanding injustice and evil because the Lord will come with help.
The psalm appointed for this week is an important choice, because it essentially is a double movement. We only read a portion of the second movement, but if you’re going to include the psalm in worship, I urge you to read it in its entirety. The classic form is 1) requests for help (31:1-4; 9-13); 2) expressions of trust (5-6; 14-18); and 3) thanksgiving for deliverance (7-8; 19-24). Hearing the psalmist move (twice!) from urgent requests for aid to expressions of trust, to finally praise while still waiting for deliverance is helpful for framing the Gospel accounts of Passover and Jesus’ praying in Gethsemane. Letting us hear desperation turn to trust, turn to praise, helps us sense and feel the emotional rollercoaster that Jesus and his disciples were on.
For me, the core of the passion narrative is not the crowds at the triumphal entry nor the grotesque drama of the wicked Pilate toying with the crowds and condemning an innocent man to death. Instead, like in the rest of the Gospels, what’s most interesting is what Jesus does, not what is done to him. Jesus convened a meal and offered his body in the bread. Afterward, he offered his blood in the wine of the cup. There was no show. The bread and wine didn’t look any different. The power was in hearing the words that Jesus said to the disciples who had journeyed with him for years.
When Jesus went to pray in the valley, when he was arrested in secret, tried in a secret nighttime procedure, handed over to a callous empire that knowingly executed the innocent with the guilty, he had songs ringing in his ears.
Though frequently overlooked, Matthew includes a meaningful detail. Before going out to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray and await the temple soldiers led by Judas, they sang a hymn. Now, a generation before Jesus, opposing schools of Jewish law staked out positions on which part of the “Egyptian Hallel” (Psalms 113-118) were sung before and after Passover meals. But already by the time of Jesus in the latter parts of the Second Temple Period, another psalm had been added to many Passover celebrations—the “Great Hallel” of Psalm 136. If the disciples sang “a hymn” before they departed, as Matthew records (26:30), it was probably Psalm 136.
The refrain of each line of the psalm is “because his loving-kindness is forever.” The psalm reminds the hearers that God has created the world, delivered God’s people, defeated evil kings, taken care of the poor and given bread to all flesh—all because God’s loving-kindness is forever.
When Jesus went to pray in the valley, when he was arrested in secret, tried in a secret nighttime procedure, handed over to a callous empire that knowingly executed the innocent with the guilty, he had songs ringing in his ears. He knew Isaiah’s servant songs about enduring injustice because the Lord will bring deliverance. He knew the psalmic patterns of requests for deliverance leading to confessions of trust and shouts of praise. And he knew, as he was tortured to death to free humans from sin and death, that he did it because God’s loving-kindness is forever.
