Between noon and three

This sermon was preached on Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025, at. St. Mark’s, Berkeley. Our Holy Week preacher this year, the Rev. Canon Justin White, will arrive on Monday of Holy Week and preach Maundy Thursday through Easter Day. He was originally scheduled to preach Palm Sunday as well, but in the meantime was appointed chaplain of Merton College, Oxford, which has a major Passiontide Festival on the weekend of Palm Sunday. I’m delighted the task falls to me instead, and I’m looking forward to his arrival tomorrow!

Collect (Palms): Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Collect (Mass): Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings (Palms): Luke 19:28-40, Ps 118:19-29 

Readings (Mass): Isaiah 50:4-9a, Ps 31:9-16, Phil 2:5-11, Luke 22:14-23:56

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

You probably know the old Christmas carol, Good King Wenceslas, or at least the first verse — something about snow, and the feast of Stephen, and a poor man gathering winter fuel. You may not know the rest, though, or the origin of the carol. The legend is medieval, and 10th century at that. But the carol is actually wholly Victorian: freshly written by the prolific translator John Mason Neale, he wanted his carol to have the air of antiquity, so he made it sound as medieval as possible, with his chosen rhyme scheme and the way he told the story.

The story goes: Wenceslaus looks out of his castle on a cold, snowy feast of St. Stephen, notes a poor man gathering wood, and decides to bring him some Christmas cheer. The king orders his page to get supplies for a feast: “Bring me flesh and bring me wine / Bring me pine logs hither / You and I will see him dine / when we bear them thither.” So we bounce along. But it’s a long, cold walk, and the page starts to lose heart. Wenceslaus tells him to place his steps into his own footprints, whereupon he finds himself miraculously warmed.

It’s exactly the sort of happy, implausible story we expect at Christmastime, so we don’t generally dwell on it too much. But if you set aside the obvious difficulties for a moment, the story is actually a wonderful meditation on the Incarnation: for Wenceslaus it’s Christmastime and good to be the king, until he notices one of his subjects struggling. Then he leaves his warm castle and, carrying supplies, walks a very long way to the man’s hovel, in order to shower him with royal attention and fellowship. Is this not what Jesus does for us when he becomes flesh?

If this carol is a meditation on the Incarnation, it’s also a meditation on Christian life. What are we to do, but follow where our Lord leads? Where he leads was obvious for the good king’s page: the poor man’s hut was under the mountain, we’re told, at the edge of the wood near St. Agnes’s fountain; Wenceslas himself goes in front as they walk. Today it’s often harder for us to know where Christ leads, but still he goes in front, and following him is still our task, trusting that he brings warmth and fellowship to all he visits.

Today is not Christmas, however, today is Palm Sunday. And as our collects have both expressed, today we “enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts whereby Christ has won for us life and immortality;” we pray for the grace to “walk in the way of his suffering,” and also to “share in his resurrection.” Our liturgy today begins a week-long series of dramatic, sacramental “re-enactments” whereby we relive the principal events of Jesus’s passion and death: his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, his last supper, betrayal, and arrest, his trial, his crucifixion, and culminating finally in his resurrection.

It’s worth asking, why do we do all this? Dramatic re-enactment may be a beautiful thing, but it also takes a lot of work, along with the blood, sweat, and tears of a lot of people. The liturgies of Holy Week are more arcane than what we usually offer (if that’s possible), and much more difficult for visitors and newcomers to understand let alone to participate in. Meanwhile attendance is never what we’d wish. So it really is fair to ask, why go through all the effort, year after year? Who is it all for, what difference does it make?

Well, for one thing, when Jesus said to his disciples at his Last Supper, “Do this in memory of me,” the church took that command seriously. We do still today. Why did they want to keep his memory alive? Because they loved him, because they believed him when he said he was the Son of God, and because they saw in his resurrection not just his own vindication but a revolution in the cosmic order of things. And they felt that staying near Jesus, even if only in memory, helped them live in his new kingdom rather than the old.

So, if all this re-enactment helps to bring the past forward into the present, helps us keep in touch with the Lord we love, then our living memory also helps us to cast our present lives forward, into the new kingdom whose doors he opened, and on whose throne he now sits. Our living memory, our sacramental re-enactments, help us to locate our lives in Christ’s Easter victory. His suffering and death are not without purpose: they are the tools of our enemy the devil; Christ takes them up himself in order to defeat the devil at his own game.

Why is this important? Because, to return to Good King Wenceslas, it really is winter out there! I don’t need to tell you how great is the number and variety of forces arrayed against us: not just tariffs and political chaos, not just so many cruelties and depredations on the vulnerable, but the loneliness epidemic as well, the monetization of the internet and especially social media, reducing relationships to “likes” and truth to memes, not to mention the affordability crisis, and the ongoing loss of confidence in many pillars we once took for granted, plus countless private griefs and challenges.

In such a maelstrom, it’s clear life has a hard time taking hold, and if we don’t gather what fuel we can, we’re liable to freeze to death. So you and I are like the peasant in the carol, which by the way ends before Wenceslas and the page actually arrive at his dwelling. I’m not sure they arrive at Christmas at all, I think they arrive now, in Holy Week: Here in the Lord’s passion and death, our king arrives with his own flesh and wine, to make a feast with us in the midst of winter’s icy howl.

Or perhaps we are the page, dragged out of a perfectly warm castle by a boss whose whimsy we’re sure is going to get us killed one of these days. Really, bring flesh and wine and pine logs halfway across the kingdom in the middle of a winter storm? And on foot? For one single peasant? Even if we love our king, surely it’s more important to take care of ourselves, to address more pressing needs, in any case to turn back from obvious folly, else we perish. No, keep following, he says, just put your feet in my footprints.

So, against our better judgement, we do, and, lo and behold, there is warmth in the king’s footprints: He steps in snow and ice, the surface is still frozen, the wind whips as badly as ever. But when we place our feet where his have been, we find the very earth has warmed, and life returns to our numbed limbs. Do you hear what I’m saying? When we walk the way of his suffering, winter may still be raging all around, but where our feet touch earth, there is life, and health, and peace, while death and fear flee away.

Of course Wenceslas and the page must eventually arrive at the peasant’s cottage; however long it takes, they must finally have their pine log fire, finally have their feast of flesh and wine. But remember where he lives: under the mountain. When Jesus is sealed in the tomb, he enters the realm of the dead, to bind its tyrant and lead all its captives free. There under the mountain he celebrates communion: the king has brought his feast, all share his bounty and his fellowship, and where he has stepped flowers grow over tombstones, and dry bones put on flesh.

Are you and I the peasant? Are you and I the page? Are we the dying and the dead? This Holy Week, I invite you to put your feet where Christ has stepped, to walk with the Church the way of his suffering, to enter upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby he has won for us life and immortality. There is warmth in this earth: it received his body for burial, but found itself delivering him up again to a new life that shall not die. So may our winter turn to spring, and our darkness to light.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.