Sermons

Stone Sunday

Today is a big day in our church year. It’s Palm Sunday. And Palm Sunday is important because it marks that we are entering Holy Week, the most sacred sequence of days in our Christian calendar, the journey to Easter. And we call it “Palm” Sunday because of the palms that the crowd puts down to create a path ahead of Jesus as he rides on a donkey into Jerusalem. 

But if you were listening closely to the gospel that Deacon Thom read, you may have noticed something. Think back or look at your bulletin. Did you hear anything about palms? No, no, you did not. In fact, the gospel of Luke is the only of the four gospels that doesn’t mention palms or branches in this story. But what it does have is stones. And so I carried a stone in the procession, and if I had written this sermon about 6 weeks ago before we ordered the palms for this week, maybe we all could have carried stones. But I will admit, Stone Sunday doesn’t have the same ring to it. 

At the end of the entry story which we heard today, the opponents of Jesus tell him to stop his procession into Jerusalem and to stop the people declaring him a king. Jesus replies with the last line of our passage, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out!” 

“I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out!” 

Stones shouting out is such a powerful image because stones are definitionally inanimate, solid, and unmoving. If I say, “You are my rock,” what I mean is that you’re an anchor. There’s a fixedness, a staticness to a stone. Of all the things that might shout out (the trees, the seas, the animals), stones seem the least likely. So, this image of the stones crying out has this poetic beauty. Of course, Jesus is a poet. If even the stones cry out, what else might happen? What else is possible? 

And here at St. Mark’s, we’re surrounded by stones, the bricks that make up our building, the paving stones in the courtyard, and the foundation laid for this building in 1888. And in a geographical sense, we’re all on the giant stones called tectonic plates. In fact, I learned in writing this sermon for Stone Sunday, that the layer of the earth that contains the tectonic plates is called the lithosphere. Lithos is the Greek word for stone. And it’s that same word, “lithos,” that appears here in the Gospel of Luke.

Scholars believe that the stones Jesus references here are the paving stones of the road over which the procession travels. I remember standing on stones in the Old City of Jerusalem when I traveled there with a group from St. Mark’s in 2019. These were stones that you could tell had a history. I looked down and wondered if these were the same stones that Jesus walked on. Now I wonder if those stones you can see and touch today are the same ones he imagined crying out. 

The religious authorities challenging Jesus in the story hear what his followers are saying. And what they’re saying is, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” These words, which Jesus ascribes to stones, are striking because they invoke a peaceful use for objects that could also be used in violence. When Jesus says, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone,” in another story, it is because stoning was a familiar practice in the Ancient Near East. But these stones are not for harm but for paving the path of peace. 

This king, who the people proclaim, doesn’t act like any other king of this earth. He doesn’t relish wealth and power. He doesn’t process into Jerusalem with a royal entourage of noble people. This procession honors a peasant man whose followers are peasants and nobles alike. All that he requires is what is at hand: the stones on the path, the branches in the trees, and the cloaks of those who travel with him. 

His message is one of justice, mercy, and peace. The crowd who travels with him has seen him heal lepers. They have seen him invite himself for dinner at the tax collector’s house. And the parables he tells, like the story of the Prodigal Son, which we heard from Lydia two weeks ago, seem to upend every conventional understanding about who matters. He preaches radical inclusion. 

Ultimately, it’s a stone that will testify to the resurrection, the stone that will be rolled away to reveal an empty tomb. This same Greek word, lithos, will be used to describe it. And in that way, the stones really do shout to us across the millennia. 

One of the great things about Palm Sunday is that it’s a second chance at Lent. Because you may or may not have come to church on Ash Wednesday or the first Sunday of Lent. You may or may not have taken up or stuck with a Lenten discipline. But you’re here now, at Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. And you can be with us this week as we walk the way of the cross. Get caught up in the story. Come along.

There’s a hymn in our hymnal called A Stable Lamp is Lighted. And it’s usually associated with Christmas because the first verse is about the birth of Jesus. But the hymn text covers the entire arc of Jesus’s life, and the second verse is actually about today, about Palm Sunday. I’d like to end with this. 

This child, through David’s city 

shall ride in triumph by; 

the palm shall strew its branches, 

and every stone shall cry. 

And every stone shall cry, 

though heavy, dull, and dumb, 

and lie within the roadway 

to pave his kingdom come.

Amen.