Sermon preached at Evensong on Palm Sunday 2026

It might seem rather strange to begin by talking about poker on Palm Sunday. And don’t worry, this won’t last long.  The phrase ‘upping the ante’ is one commonly used in gambling, as the players outbid one another in their scale of bets. It has entered the English language as a colloquial way of noticing when someone really raises the stakes in a conversation or situation, or intensifies their commitment. The parable we heard read as today’s second lesson (from St Matthew’s Gospel) takes place the day after the first Palm Sunday, and its context is the Temple. Jesus has ridden into the Holy City on a donkey, his procession an expression of servant power a genuine counterpoint to the arrival of hundreds of Roman troops who have also entered Jerusalem to guarantee the Pax Romana: a fragile law and order at Passover, the most febrile time of year, then as now, as our Christian siblings in the West Bank and Jerusalem know today in an intense way. By this time, Jesus has already cleansed the Temple, by removing those who were buying and selling animals for sacrifice, along with those money-changers who were profiteering from their business. He has already had an argument with the chief priests and temple elders about authority, and now this. Using language embedded in the prophetic tradition with its image of the vineyard, Jesus sets up another layer of critique which increases the crescendo of witness and activity which will find its final apex in his crucifixion just a few days later. His original listeners would have been very familiar with Isaiah’s image of that unfruitful vineyard which yielded only wild grapes. By using this parable, Jesus is ‘upping the ante’ in an extraordinary way. There is no ambiguity here, no longer any wriggle room. This parable is an articulation of what has been happening, and of precisely what is about to happen. The chief priests, Matthew tells us pretty bluntly, realized that he was speaking about them.

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants is a sharp text which reveals exactly how St Matthew, from his own Jewish perspective, understands what has been going on in his own peoples’ rejection of Jesus. Note, though, this judgement is addressed not to the people as a whole, but specifically to their leaders. These are the people who have a responsibility for care and influence over the people, they are the Temple professionals, they are the establishment. And whilst Jesus’s condemnation of those who have attacked the Lord’s messengers and killed the prophets is very clear, and the language direct, it is also clear that the crowds in today’s scene, recognise Jesus’s own prophetic identity. In the days that follow, his Jewish followers will begin to recognise him as priest and king, as well as prophet. Intimately familiar as they were with their own scriptures, how they must have mused on that verse from Psalm 118, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.’ We know that was a verse beloved of much of the early Christian commentary, and in this parable it is one which Jesus uses to speak directly of himself. No wonder the temperature is rising almost to boiling point.

The Palm Sunday story and the events surrounding it – especially these parables, and the cleansing of the Temple – are about politics and religion. It is impossible to disentangle the two. Anyone who offers an entirely political reading of these events will miss the profound theological truths about what God is doing here in terms of redemption and fulfilment, and anyone who offers a solely religious or cultic reading of these events, will miss the sharp critique of power and its abuse which is very near to the heart of the passiontide story. This is important. Christ pronounces judgement on religion which has become a kind of politics, and on a politics which is quasi-religious in what it demands. Christ is insistently setting limits in this scene, challenging the settled assumptions which underpin this kind of politics and this kind of religion. It is impossible to get away from Jesus’s critique of the religious leadership of his day which is clustered around the Temple and its worship, and the collaboration of that religious leadership with an oppressive ruling Roman power. He articulates very clearly how those responsible for ensuring the worship of the people have been unfaithful to the Covenant through their rejection of him and his message. But the biggest mistake we might make when reading this parable, would be somehow to think it is simply addressed to ‘them’ and not to us.  

Since his entry into Jerusalem, Jesus has been the visible enactment of Psalm 118, that ‘stone which the builders rejected.’ Our task is to be faithful to Christ as that cornerstone, and to notice how easy it is for us religious people to fall into smug patterns of insularity and superiority, either through self-satisfaction or through lethargy. These final days of Jesus’s journey towards his passion and death offer a searing critique of both strands of power. Jesus dies as a victim of religious and political collusion. Both religious and political streams of power believe themselves to be the settled form of a status quo, so much that it is actually very difficult to separate them. Their interests collide in Jesus, the High Priest who will make his own complete self-offering of love at the heart of the world perhaps in the only way which a bloodthirsty humanity could understand. We should be deeply suspicious of any religion which sees itself principally as politics, and of any politics which imagines itself as a kind of religion. Similarly, a nationalism that thinks it is religion, or a religion which is tempted to nationalism will always end up becoming an idol, drawing attention away from the stone which the builders rejected.

Jesus’s behaviour in and around the Temple is raising the stakes to an almost unimaginable level. And simultaneously, the all-encompassing nature of his message is getting clearer and more distilled by the moment. His healings and teaching on the shores of the Sea of Galilee have led to this; his ministry amongst the excluded and unloved has led to this; his constant warning against power which oppresses or colludes in oppression has led to this. Both politics and religion receive their corrective in the person of Jesus, and his presence in the Holy City will thoroughly reshape both. No wonder the earth itself will quake on Good Friday.

Our task as Christians is to learn a better and deeper faithfulness to Christ, Prophet, Priest and King. If we want to use such language, that is both a religious and a political task. In both the realms of religion and politics we can betray Christ, and in both these realms, we can serve him. This Holy Week our churches and any society which claims to be Christian might ask whether we follow Jesus to the Cross or whether we chase him there? The challenge set before us is whether we go as disciples following their Master and his Gospel, wherever that journey might lead, or whether we pursue him there alongside the rest of the bloodthirsty crowd seeking power and might at any cost? That is a religious question of great depth. It may also be a political question of great complexity. But near the heart of the answer for all questions surrounding religion, politics and identity in Holy Week is the simple assertion of the psalmist, ‘The Stone that the builders rejected, has become the cornerstone.’