“the good news is… inspiring us to act” was preached at First Presbyterian Church of Allentown, PA on Sunday, March 29, 2026.
You canhear/watch this sermon here, starting at 26:45.
You can listen to a podcast version of the sermon here.
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Scripture
text:
Mark 11:1-11
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Nine
years ago I was ordained on a Palm Sunday. It has become a fun and beautiful
tradition to share that with you, or remind you of it, every Palm Sunday, so
thank you for playing along and letting me celebrate a special day in my life
with all of you. Ha. But I also want to talk a little more about that journey.
LGBTQIA+
ordination became possible in our denomination in 2011. I was nineteen.
Same-sex marriage became legal in our denomination in 2014 and in our country
in 2015. I was twenty-two and twenty-three, respectively, and in my first two
years of seminary. While in seminary, I was also honestly reminded by
professors that, as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, I would have to work so
much harder and be so much better to be considered an “equal” pastor alongside
my straight peers. This has and continues to be true also for women.
In my
final step toward being certified and ready to receive my first call, after I
had finished all my requirements, I was asked to publicly apologize to the
Committee on Preparation for Ministry for my “homosexual lifestyle.” And a good
number of you know me well enough to know that I refused. I very much love this
side of who I am. I was approved by one vote. A single vote carried the weight
of whether I would be ordained or not.
In 2017 I
was ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament in my home congregation in
rural northeast Colorado, in the same church that taught me people like me
would be punished by God.
In 2018,
our denomination voted to affirm the full welcome, acceptance, and inclusion of
LGBTQIA+ people, especially transgender and non-binary individuals. And in
2019, God led me to you and this congregation.
I tell
you all of this because I am thirty-four. Eight years ago people like me were finally
affirmed by our denomination. Eleven years ago people like me were allowed to
get married. Fifteen years ago people like me were allowed to be ordained in
our denomination, not all Christian churches, but ours. And today LGBTQIA+
rights, especially rights for transgender people, are still be debated.
What is
half of thirty-four? Seventeen. For over half my life, at the age of
thirty-four, I did not have the same rights as the majority of people in this
room. Friends, there are also people in this room who are LGBTQIA+ in their
fifties, sixties, and seventies. For them, less than a quarter of their life.
My very
presence in this pulpit is because of prophetic political words spoken from
God’s pulpit. Words spoken before I was ordained and before I was even born.
And that is true for all the pastors – Pastors Stephanie, Kathryn, Moufid, and
Abraham – women and immigrants of color – in this church. Without prophetic
political words, without public witness, our Session and our Board of Deacons both
would lose the gifts of over half of their members. In the church: women would
be told to serve their husbands. People of color would not be allowed to
worship with us. And we definitely would not worship in Arabic or Chin-Burmese.
I say all
of that because Palm Sunday is personal for me, not just because I was ordained
on this day, but because Palm Sunday is the day Jesus enters the city in
public. People see him. People hear him. People respond to him. Something
happened in the crowd that day. One commentator says Jesus’s message here is
“public and provocative.”[1] And it is!
In Mark’s
Gospel, Jesus enters Jerusalem with great intention. He sends disciples ahead.
He tells them where to go, what to find, what to say, and what to bring back.
They find the colt, untie it, answer those who question them, and bring it to
Jesus. Cloaks are thrown over the colt. More cloaks are spread on the road.
Branches are cut and laid down. People move ahead of him and behind him. Voices
rise. The Gospel of Mark tells the story in such a physical way that it is
right to call this embodied faith.
And it
happens in Jerusalem during Passover. Passover was the story of liberation of
the Israelites from slavery, so everything about this moment is alive with
questions about power.
Jesus
enters that moment on a humble colt, and the crowd greets him in royal language,
quoting the Psalms. Something kingly is happening here, but, as one scholar
writes, Jesus arrives with “a heavy dose of tension and irony.”[2] The crowd recognizes
something real, yet the shape of Jesus’s reign is already different from the
power they have learned to expect.
Jesus is
making a public claim, but he is making it in a way that reveals the character
of God’s kin-dom. And our Reformed tradition has never taught that public life
is outside the concern of God. John Calvin wrote that civil magistracy is “holy
and legitimate,” even “the most sacred and honorable in human life.”[3] Which means the issue the
Church must address is how authority is used in public life.
Palm
Sunday reveals a Savior whose authority is exercised through justice, mercy,
truth, compassion, and love.
And once
we hear Palm Sunday that way, “Hosanna” begins to sound different too. It’s a
prayerful plea: “Lord, Save us!” And in this moment the crowd is not only
welcoming Jesus but are also bringing their needs and concerns to him in
public. Their cries carry longing and hope. They cry out because the world is
not yet the world God desires it to be.
And that
cry of Hosanna isn’t just a word. The crowd’s prayer takes visible form. They
take off their cloaks. They spread them on the road. They cut branches. They
arrange their bodies around Jesus. A public witness to the good that they
believe will come! The people do not have the whole picture yet. But they have
seen enough of Jesus to respond with what they have.
That has
often been true in the life of the church as well. Public witness rarely
arrives at a moment of perfect clarity and universal agreement. More often it
comes because some people are willing to act on what the gospel has already
made clear enough. For example, clear enough to ordain women and queer people.
Clear enough to know that slavery and segregation are sins against people of
color. Clear enough to bless those who once
were denied dignity.
And I
think we have seen glimpses of that even in our own public life this week.
Yesterday, people gathered in No Kings rallies, bringing their bodies and their
voices into public space because they believed something had to be said out
loud about power, accountability, and the danger of any ruler asking for the
kind of loyalty that belongs to God alone. I am not bringing that up because
the church exists to echo every political movement around us. I am bringing it
up because Palm Sunday gives us a theological lens for recognizing why public
witness matters at all.
Another
example: this week Ms. Rachel, who has become one of the most beloved educators
of young children in our country, said in an interview, “It’s political to
believe that children are worthy of love and care, and that every child is
equal, and that our care shouldn’t stop at what we look like, our family, at
our religion, at a border.”[4] That line names something
many of us already know. There are moments when love gets called political
because love has expanded to include those it once excluded.
And if
any of us wonder whether people who care for children should ever be part of
that kind of public witness, I think of Fred Rogers. Many of you still carry a
connection to him through The Rev. Dr. Bill Barker, a former pastor of this
congregation. In 1969 on his tv show, Mr. Rogers invited Officer Clemmons, a
black man, to cool his feet in a small wading pool at a time when public pools
still carried the wounds of segregation. And when Officer Clemmons stepped out
of the pool, Mr. Rogers helped dry his feet with a towel.[5] That moment was a moment of
public witness.
A crowd
throwing cloaks into the road before Jesus. People gathering in public because
they believe power must be accountable. A teacher for toddlers insisting that
children deserve love and care no matter what border contains them. Mr. Rogers
sharing a pool and a towel with Officer Clemmons at a time when our country was
still trying to keep human dignity segregated. None of these moments are
identical. But all of them help us see that public witness can be courageous
and deeply embodied without losing tenderness.
So this
is where Palm Sunday leaves us. It leaves us with a Savior on a colt, a crowd
in the street, and a cry for salvation hanging in the air. Jesus comes to the
people to expose what kind of power we trust and what kind of kin-dom we long
for.
And that
is why the story does not end with the parade. Jesus enters the city, and the
whole week begins to move. Before long he will overturn tables, share bread,
pray in anguish, stand before violent power, and die on the cross. The
procession into Jerusalem is only the beginning of a much deeper revelation,
because by the end of this week Jesus will show us, with his whole body,
exactly what kind of Savior he is. He is the Savior who receives the cry of
“Hosanna” and then walks all the way into the suffering that cry contains. He
is the Savior whose throne will be revealed as a cross with a crown made of
thorns.
We cry
“Hosanna” with honesty. We enter this Holy Week ready to see, once again, that
the good news is not only that Jesus came to save, but that Jesus came and will
come again to show us how to live, how to love, how to serve, how to bear
witness in this world. Our Savior is here, and with him, the promise of God’s
kin-dom.
Amen.
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[1] Matt
Skinner, “Walking the Palm Sunday Path: A Lenten Sermon Series for 2026,”
Working Preacher, January 21, 2026, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching-series/walking-the-palm-sunday-path-in-lent-a-sermon-series-for-2026.
[2] Ira
Brent Driggers, “Commentary on Mark 11:1-11,” Working Preacher, March 28,
2021, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sunday-of-the-passion-palm-sunday-2/49620.
[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008), 4.20.4.
[4] “Ms.
Rachel Fights to Close ICE Facility That Detains Children,” Variety, March
2026, https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/ms-rachel-ice-facility-detains-children-dilley-texas-1236696574/.
[5] Fred
Rogers Productions, “Officer Clemmons / François Clemmons,” Mister Rogers,
accessed March 26, 2026, https://misterrogers.org/articles/officer-clemmons/.
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