Palm Sunday Sermon - Peace Talks: The Stones Will Cry Out
Written and delivered by Hannah Shultz, M.Div. for Emory’s University’s Beloved Community on Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025
Mark 11:1-11 (New Revised Standard Version, updated edition)
1 When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. 3 If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this: ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’ ” 4 They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, 5 some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6 They told them what Jesus had said, and they allowed them to take it. 7 Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. 9 Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”11 Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple, and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
Luke 19:28-44 (New Revised Standard Version, updated edition)
28 After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.
29 When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, 30 saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ” 32 So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They said, “The Lord needs it.” 35 Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. 36 As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. 37 Now as he was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, 38 saying,
“Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!”39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” 40 He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.
41 As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, 42 saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”
Palm Sunday is one of the church holidays that stands out to me most from childhood.
Every year, as the prelude to the service began, the kids were tasked with running through the sanctuary, handing out palm leaves to the adults and enthusiastically waving ours around. We sang “Hosanna in the Highest” and paraded up and down the aisles.
In my mind, amid the somber season of Lent, this marked the beginning of the celebration of Easter. The Gospel writers paint a joyous picture of Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. Arriving at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sends his disciples ahead to find a colt and bring it to him. The disciples return, and some take off their cloaks, laying them on the colt so that Jesus can ride it into Jerusalem. Others run ahead, lining the road with cloaks and palm branches—laying a modest path upon which Jesus will walk. The disciples have formed a makeshift parade—literally with the clothes off their backs and the boughs of branches from nearby fields. They surround Jesus and sing and dance with all their might as they make their way into the Holy City.
The disciples have been following Jesus for months – traveling with him from town to town—watching him perform miracles, heal the sick, bless the outcasts, and welcome strangers. They are beginning to believe what he has been telling them about who he is. And now, here they are in Jerusalem with Jesus to celebrate Passover. This is a time to celebrate. As Jesus enters town, the crowd begins to sing a familiar song from Psalm 118: Hosanna! Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the lord. Hosanna in the highest!
Although the crowd’s shouting is very much one of praise, these words written by the psalmist, sung at the feast of the tabernacle, were meant as a cry for help. In verse 25, the psalmist calls out for God in the midst of hard times, saying, “Save us, O Lord. O Lord, give us success!” The Hebrew phrase that translates to Hosanna in Greek literally means “Save, we pray.”
Hosanna—God save us!
As the crowd is dancing and singing joyfully in the streets, the Pharisees approach Jesus and order his disciples to stop. Jesus responds by saying, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Even the stones beneath our feet, the building blocks of our temples, the hot core of the earth itself, would cry out. I think, perhaps, the stones know something that the disciples don’t. The stone’s cries are ones of lament, of sorrow, of yearning.
Hidden behind the jubilant hosannas are pleas from the earth for God to make the world right.
I think we know a little something about crying stones. This spring has brought severe storms and tornado outbreaks across much of the Midwest and South, taking down trees and homes in its path. Wildfires have ravaged southern California, forcing evacuations and burning over 13,000 acres. Devastating floods in Hungary, Brazil, and Greece have turned streets into debris-laden streams and left cities submerged in mud. At the end of March, the earth itself raged and shook, striking Myanmar, collapsing buildings, and displacing communities.
This is not how we were meant to live on the earth that God gifted to us.
Throughout scripture, we learn that God loves the earth that God creates and calls humanity to share in this task. God’s first act is to create the heavens and the earth—God sweeps over the void and brings about light and life, declaring it very good. Out of the chaos, God forms order and beauty. Then, God creates first light, then sky, sea and dry ground, and vegetation in all forms. God creates the sun and the moon, the stars, sea life and birds, large and small animals. And after everything God says it is good. God blesses the goodness of the earth six times before he even creates humans. God spends the longest time with the rest of Creation. This is a God who takes joy and delights in what he has created. And then God creates humans and calls us to do the same. Made from the dust and dirt of the earth itself, God breathes his breath of life into us and places us in the garden of Eden to care for it.
We have fallen far from our very first call. The once-vibrant, flourishing garden has been picked apart by centuries of consumption and expansion. We see the marks of overproduction in the trash that piles in our landfills, in the empty spaces where trees once stood, and in the smog-filled sky. We so quickly traded in our hedge clippers and garden trowels for bulldozers and machines until God’s Creation has become unrecognizable.
Now the stones are crying out for God to make it right…for justice…for peace…for salvation.
The Hosannas that the disciples shout as they dance into Jerusalem affirm their belief that Jesus is the savior and that God will deliver them to eternal peace. They cry:
Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!”
But what the disciples are missing here, as they so often do, is that peace cannot just be thought about in eschatological terms (terms relating to end times). Only in Luke’s account of this day do we get insight into Jesus’s emotions as he approaches the city. Luke tells us that as Jesus came near and saw Jerusalem, he wept over it, crying out: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!”
The multitude of disciples is singing of peace and glory in heaven, but they fail to recognize the things that bring peace to an earth crying out in pain.
Throughout scripture, Jesus’ life is a testament to a different way of living in the world. He is a king and a leader, but one with humility. Born in a manger, he entered the world not in a palace with trumpets and fanfare but to the sounds of bleating donkeys and the earthly scent of hay and oil lamps. As he started his ministry, he brought alongside him not the high priests or royalty, but fishermen, tax collectors, and religious revolutionaries. He preached about a reordering of the world—where the first are last and the meek come out on top. He flips social conventions—healing lepers, listening to outsiders, and challenging religious leaders. Even his triumphal parade into Jerusalem is humble—arriving on a colt, with palm leaves and cloaks as adornment.
For all the time that they have spent with him, the disciples still don’t understand that they are to be part of this societal transformation—that bringing peace and justice to their city, in the here and now, is part of the Palm Sunday story.
The crowds that sang and waved palm leaves on that day over two thousand years ago were part of a kingdom movement. As we cry out with our own Hosannas today—God Save Us—we too are called to be part of the inbreaking of a new kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. Bringing peace and justice to our city, to our world, is part of our story as well.
I can’t help but feel the weight of the times that we’re living in. What happens when the things we thought we knew about the world are uprooted? When there is grave injustice in the degrading of our environment, in our economy, in politics, and in global conflict?
What are the things that make for peace when it feels like the world is unraveling?
I asked my colleagues this question this week, and I want to share some of their responses.
Peace for who? One of them asked. We cannot have peace without making peace with our neighbors, our enemies, and the earth. We cannot have peace while hindering another's peace.
Many of them emphasized this point. They shared that peace requires listening deeply, focusing on the other instead of the self, having an appreciation for the plight of others, and a shared commitment to the well-being of all.
Peace is within each of us. It begins with unconditional love as God loves us unconditionally.
Another colleague said that “The only way that peace can be is if we are always pursuing it. As soon as we stop doing the things that seed the ground for peace, it's gone. Like breathing. We are in it so long as we are building it, but if we think we have arrived, or if we think it is somewhere in the future, it is eternally lost to us.”
This notion that peace is an active pursuit was echoed by another colleague who shared the following quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr:
“Peace is not merely the absence of tension, but the presence of justice. And even if we didn’t have this tension, we still wouldn’t have positive peace… If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated politically, humiliated and segregated—I don’t want peace. In a passive, non-violent manner, we must revolt against this peace. Jesus says, in substance: I will not be content until justice, goodwill, brotherhood, love— yes, the Kingdom of God—are established upon the earth. This is real peace. Peace is the presence of positive good.”
Peace takes courage.
To go against the grain, to defy social norms, to share light in the darkness. Peace requires us to stand up for what we believe in— to use our voices in protest—to walk in our own makeshift parades and protests with cardboard signs, shouting from the steps of the public square that there is a different way of being, of living, in the world.
To reconnect with the earth that we have grown so far away from. When was the last time you felt a blade of grass or considered the lilies of the field? What would happen if we went for a walk in the woods and let ourselves feel the moss between our toes and listened for the sound of the wind between the leaves of the trees? How much more intimately connected to the earth would we be? How much more would we want to care for it?
We have forgotten that we are the dust and dirt of the earth, and lost our sense of awe for the world around us. When the stones themselves are shouting, we should pay attention. And perhaps, if we paid a little bit more attention, we would fall in love with the world all over again. And who knows what could be birthed out of this love.
To care for Creation was our first and only call and remains the task set before us today. We are called to love the world, to be enchanted by it, to be alive in it, to want to save it for our neighbors and communities, and for generations and generations to come.
As we join in the disciples’ cries of Hosanna, may we sing along, praising God for the future that we know is promised to us through Christ’s death and resurrection. But may we also hear Jesus’ cries and join him in weeping over our city. And may we carefully consider his prophetic challenge to recognize the things that make for peace, for justice, and for righteousness—to reimagine and recreate a world that is full and flourishing.
I want to leave you today with a blessing from Jan Richardson that she shares in her poem Blessed are you who bear the light:
Blessed are you
Who bear the light
In unbearable times
Who testify
To its endurance
Amid the unendurable
Who bear witness
To its persistence
When everything seems
In shadow
And grief.
Blessed are you
In whom the light lives
In whom the brightness blazes –
your heart a chapel,
An altar where in the deepest night
Can be seen
the fire that
Shines forth in you
In accountable faith
In stubborn hope
In love that illumines
Every broken thing
It finds.
May we be a light in the darkness, shouting both our praises and our pleas for justice and peace. For if we don’t, the stones themselves will cry out: Hosanna—God save us.
