"The Good News Is...Inspiring Us to Act" (March 29, 2026 Sermon)

Text: Mark 11:1-11

Preaching: Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing

Power rarely looks the way we expect it to. We start with prayer and Mark 11’s Palm Sunday scene, then sit with an uncomfortable truth: we often fail to recognize what we most need. We miss grace when it is right in front of us. We overlook beauty when the world feels too broken. We ignore our bodies asking for rest because urgency gets mistaken for faithfulness. 

Palm Sunday pushes back on every version of leadership that relies on spectacle. Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey, surrounded by ordinary people and borrowed things, while the crowd cries “Hosanna,” meaning “save us.” In Mark’s Gospel, that moment becomes a recognition test. Can we see God’s power when it arrives as humility, service, and vulnerability rather than aggression and domination? Can we follow a king who moves toward the cross instead of around it? 

We also lean into the verbs that drive the story and refuse to let us stay in the bleachers: go, untie, bring, spread, shout, follow. We talk about untying what has been bound in our lives and communities, bringing what we have in practical care, spreading mercy in quiet daily ways, and letting “Hosanna” become public witness that rejects cruelty and “us versus them” thinking. If you are walking into Holy Week asking where Jesus is showing up now, this one is for you. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review, then tell us: what will be your Hosanna?

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Transcript

Prayer And Scripture Reading

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Let us center ourselves with the prayer of illumination. Holy One, if we've heard this story before, the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem riding on a donkey, then help us to hear it again. And if we've never heard the story before, if we've never heard the story of Palm Sunday or the cries of Hosanna, then give us the wisdom to follow along. Give us the wisdom to hear these words. Give us the wisdom to take them into our hearts. Give us the wisdom to act on their truth. We are listening. Amen. Our scripture lesson today comes from Mark chapter 11, verses 1 through 11. When they were approaching Jerusalem at Bethage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples 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 written. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, Why are you doing this? Just say, The Lord needs it and we'll send it back here immediately. They went away and found a colt tied near a door outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, What are you doing? Untying the colt. They told them what Jesus had said, and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road. Others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David. Hosanna in the highest heaven. 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. Holy wisdom, holy word. Thanks be to God.

When We Miss What Matters

Power Arrives In Humility

The Verbs That Demand Action

Retrieving Your Truest Self

Holy Week Questions And Blessing

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Friends, let us pray. Amen. Sometimes I just don't recognize the things I should. I don't recognize grace when it's right in front of me. I don't see beauty when I'm overwhelmed by the world's brokenness. I don't notice my body telling me to rest because I've been conditioned to live in a constant state of productivity. Sometimes I just don't recognize the things that I should. But God's Spirit has a funny way of tapping me on the shoulder in unexpected moments. Moments when the holy disturbs my stubborn, sterile routine. Throughout Mark's gospel, the disciples consistently fail to recognize Jesus for who he is, despite his parables, his sermons, his miracles. After Jesus calms the storm in chapter 4, the disciples ask, Who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him? In chapter 6, after Jesus feeds the multitudes, Mark tells us that they didn't understand what had happened and that their hearts were hardened. And then two chapters later, in chapter 8, Peter comes so very close when he says, You are the Messiah, only to recoil when Jesus makes clear that this Messiah must suffer, be rejected, and die. Again and again they miss it. They argue about who is the greatest, they shrink back from Jesus' predictions of suffering. They even try to stop someone else from casting out demons, doing good in the world in Jesus' name, just because that person wasn't part of their club. Sometimes the disciples just don't recognize the things they should. But after all of these missteps, Mark gives us a recognition scene, an aha moment, a moment that invites the disciples and us to see what has been in front of us all along. Because we too often prefer a Messiah who comes with drones instead of a donkey. Palm Sunday asks us whether we know how to recognize power when it arrives wrapped in humility and service and borrowed things, cloaks, cults, leafy branches. In previous Palm Sunday sermons, I've mentioned that this ritual, this Palm Sunday parade would have been easily recognizable to any inhabitant of Jerusalem. Such pageantry was common when the Romans celebrated another military victory. And in those familiar scenes, the acclamations of occupied people may have been more coerced than celebratory. A Hosanna, if you will, with a scowl when the Roman guards turned their backs. But the Hosannas in today's text, the Hosannas we've already heard today in worship are full-throated ones. Hosannas that come from a deep place of longing for an alternative to the fear-fueled domination of their Roman oppressors, or just simply freedom from that which we fear in our current lives. So, on the one hand, this pageantry would have been easily recognizable for the Jews in Jerusalem. But Jesus puts his own unique spin on this act of political theater. Instead of a horse, he uses a donkey, a big, hardy working animal, as Miss Kim just put it. Instead of soldiers, he's followed by a ragtag group of outcasts. Instead of marching to victory by the standards of common thought, he's marching towards his very own death. He recognizes what's about to happen. But then the question still becomes do we, do the disciples, do we still miss Jesus when he shows up in service instead of spectacle, in mercy instead of might, in courage without cruelty? This begs the question: can we recognize Jesus when he doesn't look like the kind of power we've been taught to trust? Because Palm Sunday is not just a parade to admire, it's the moment when Jesus shows us what kind of king he is and asks us whether we are ready to follow a Lord who rides towards the cross instead of around it. Mark asks us to follow Jesus in order that we may recognize him. On Palm Sunday, no one gets to stay in the bleachers. The text gives us a feast of verbs that pull us into the story. Go, untie, bring, throw, spread, shout, follow. Mark's gospel does not hand us a static portrait to admire from a safe distance. It gives us stage directions and invites us to move. I began this sermon with a confession. And sometimes I fail to recognize the things I should, or at least the things that I need and want to recognize: rest and beauty and mercy. Grace, beauty, and rest were the three things that I named, and Palm Sunday reminds me that I am more likely to recognize Jesus when I step into those verbs myself, when I try them on for size. I am more likely to recognize grace when I extend it to others. I am more likely to recognize beauty when I do my part to help make it. I am more likely to recognize the holy of rest when I refuse a life ordered only by urgency, and I help make Sabbath possible for somebody else. So, what does that mean for us, here and now, to join the procession of Palm Sunday? I think it means making the verbs of this story your own. Remember those verbs. It means that we go where Jesus sends us, even when the path is inconvenient, even when discipleship asks something of us. It means we untie what has been bound. We help each other free ourselves from the habits and patterns that continue to cause so much chaos in our country. Fear, isolation, prejudice, indifference, the lie that someone else's pain isn't my problem. We untie not a cult, but what has been chained down by despair, and we do this by showing up, by speaking out, and becoming vocal advocates for justice in this city, in our neighborhoods, in our schools, our families, our workplaces, our churches. It means we bring, we bring what we have. The disciples brought a cult. We bring our real lives. We bring our time, our attention, our courage, our bodies, our prayers, and our witness. We bring casseroles to grieving families. We bring meals to Greensboro Urban Ministry. We write cards to people who are going through radiation treatment. We bring comfort to the bedside, tenderness to the hurting, and steadfast love to those who feel brushed over and lost and forgotten. It means we spread mercy. In the story, the people spread cloaks on the road. So now we spread mercy along the paths that other people walk every day. We spread it through the meals we share, the care we give, the ways that we protect one another through illness and hardship and the quiet acts of compassion that this congregation is so, so great at, that make the road gentler for someone else to travel. It means we shout Hosanna, not just with our lips, but with our lives. Our Hosanna's become their own public witness. Our cries of save us, which is all that Hosanna means, is save us, turn into a refusal to accept a world ruled by cruelty and domination and us versus them thinking. Our Hosanna's transform into advocacy for a shared life where justice is not a partisan exercise, where mercy is not seen as a weakness, and that the common good is still worth fighting for. It means we follow Jesus in ways that challenge the usual political ideas of power because Jesus did not come with the tools of domination. He enters with humility, he arrives with vulnerability, and he brings peace. And if we follow him, we may sometimes seem a bit strange to the world that has linked strength with aggression and leadership with domination. And perhaps it also means we retrieve something. But the disciples retrieved a cult, but we are called to retrieve the truest parts of ourselves, the parts that are buried sometimes beneath resentment, numbed sometimes by rage or hidden under the weight of toxic individualism. Palm Sunday invites us to retrieve, to rediscover the selves that God made you and I to be merciful, courageous, and communal and alive to grace. Sometimes I don't recognize the things I should, but when I hear Scripture call me into these verbs of recognition, go, untie, bring, spread, shout, follow. I find myself changed. Not always in really big, dramatic ways, sometimes in much more subtle ways that are no less holy. Grace finds my attention because I'm learning to look for it in concrete places. Beauty will catch me off guard, and suddenly I have a Hosanna to offer. So as we begin Holy Week, maybe the question before us is this where will you recognize Jesus? What will be your Hosanna? What will be the moment, the nudge, the holy interruption that moves you from recognition to action? Because Palm Sunday is not just about waving branches for a Savior long, long time ago. It's about recognizing the one who is still in our midst right now, still coming toward us in humility, still calling us to follow. And when we do, when we take on those verbs go, untie, bread, spring, shout, follow, we just may discover that the Jesus we almost missed is the one who's been leading us all along. In the name of God, the creator, redeemer, and sustainer, may all of us God's children say. Amen.