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Palm Sunday Sermon
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Good morning, and happy Palm Sunday. I greet all of you gathered here this Palm Sunday in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are grateful to God for the opportunity to celebrate Palm Sunday 2025, and I want to share with you why this day matters so profoundly for our faith and our nation.
This morning, we began our day differently. We walked around the city of Nairobi with purpose and prayer. We went to Nairobi University to pray for our education institutions, because education is an equalizer that gives us hope and a future. We visited the central police station to pray with those who enforce the law, reminding ourselves that enforcing the law must honor God and not harm the people of Kenya. And now here we are in the cathedral to declare the Prince of Peace in our midst—in our nation.
Today is a great day in our worship calendar. We are commemorating Palm Sunday, the Sunday that comes immediately before the holy week—the week of passion. In one week, Christ entered Jerusalem as a Prince of Peace, and that week ended on Good Friday when the same crowd that welcomed him led him to be crucified outside the city walls. Yet in his coming, it was God's plan that he would come to suffer with us, bear the pain of sin, and take it to the cross so that we may have peace.
This is a moment when history and worship collide together. Palm Sunday marks the day when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the city of peace, to bring her true peace—not with a sword, but on a donkey. Not with armies, but with tears in his eyes. Not with chariots of war, but with a humble animal. He entered the city to offer peace, not demanding praises.
To understand the weight of that moment, we must remember what Jerusalem was like at that particular time. They were about to celebrate the Passover—when they remembered God's deliverance from Egypt, the land of captivity. Every year, Jewish people and devout believers would gather in Jerusalem to offer remembrance and worship, coming to share their meals and their lives together, and to commemorate that day when they were delivered from captivity in Egypt.
The city of Jerusalem was full beyond capacity. Many people gathered in cities nearby, including Bethany, which was about three kilometers away—a distance they could walk without breaking the law of Moses regarding the Sabbath. These were the teams who heard that Jesus was going to enter the city gate and enter Jerusalem as the Prince of Peace.
But we must understand the broader context. Because the celebration drew crowds and attention, and the Roman Empire was watching, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate entered the city with his soldiers and horses, coming through the west gate. It was a spectacular sight—a display of imperial force to crush anyone who might bring messianic hope and to make their statement through their presence.
In the same week, when Pontius Pilate was already in the city with his might, Jesus enters by the east gate as a lowly servant. He comes not on a war horse or in a chariot of war, but on a donkey—not even a full-grown donkey, but a small one, so that nobody would mistake that he was coming to take over any political power. He came without soldiers, with only himself and a small group of people around him.
It was a collision of kingdoms. The Roman mighty empire was colliding with God's Messiah and the kingdom of God. It was a tense moment. Nobody knew what was going to happen in the city with Jesus inside and Pontius Pilate the governor also inside the city.
The religious leaders chose to be aloof. They only taught the law of Moses and did not believe in the Messiah and Jesus Christ. They watched with anxiety. They did not want to be part of it; they just wanted to watch the happenings of the day.
The people waved branches, crying "Hosana," which literally means "save us now." They understood the Messiah was coming to save them from the political oppression of the Roman Empire. They wanted a liberator who would free them economically and politically. But the kind of kingdom Jesus was bringing was different from their understanding.
It was a whole consummation of God's kingdom—one that liberates ultimately and fully when its full time comes. Jesus came as a humble savior to save us through the cross by dying for the sins of the world. The liberation he had in mind was not political liberation, but the liberation of our souls.
And so the parade that gathered missed the mark. My sharing today is about a parade that never enters the heart. The parade welcomed Jesus on the streets—yes—but did not open their hearts to him because they did not believe in him. It was the same crowd which, after just one week of encounters inside the city and in the temple, was shouting, "Crucify him!"
So brothers and sisters, today I ask you: Where are we welcoming Jesus? Is it in the streets where we walked around? Is it in the entry of this church? Is it in sitting in those pews and listening, but not opening our hearts to him? Which door is open today for the Messiah King? Are those the west door of the cathedral or the north door or the south door or other entry points into this sanctuary? Or are we also opening our hearts for him to come and reign and rule us?
Jesus chose the donkey intentionally. It was the mount of peace. Jerusalem stood on a mount of peace, not of war. The very word "Jerusalem" ends with "Salem," which means peace. It sends a message: this kingdom would not be built on bloodshed, but on brokenness; not on manipulation, but on mercy.
God have mercy on us.
A question now echoes for all of us whom God has entrusted with leadership: Are we like Jesus, deliberate in the message we send to those who follow us? What message are we giving when members of parliament fight in parliament, holding insults and fists instead of reasoned debates? What will we say when funeral services and church altars become platforms for tribal drums and political warfare? Where is God in all this?
What happens when guns are drawn and worshippers are sent scattering in a place they are supposed to worship—dispersed from those places where they seek peace? Our clarion call, even as a nation of Kenya, is to reason with our Savior, not with our own personal interests.
What kind of witness is it when we use schools and the places of our young children as places where we hurl insults and wage war—weaponizing words? What is our future? When we fight with force, our children see us as rebels. Yet they ask us: where is our future? What should we say as a people, as leadership? Where are we?
I used to work in community development, and when we did community needs assessment, there was a tool we used called "scanning the environment." We would walk around the environment, listen to mothers as they drew water at water ponds, listen to elders sitting under shades playing games, listen to the children in their play. Then we would gather what we called "generative themes"—the things being spoken by everybody in everyday life.
I think our leadership needs to scan the environment—to go to the villages and listen to the community's generative themes: What are people talking about? Why will people not rise in anger against anybody? We need to ask ourselves: why is our nation angry? Why, at any slight provocation, do we see people display unexplained anger? Why, when ships were crashed by a vehicle, were people angry enough to want to chop off policemen's hands? Why is there such anger among us?
We need not answer this politically. We need to go deeper and ask: why are people angry in this nation? And it is only then we can have the discussion that Jesus brought to us through his entry into Jerusalem—to bring peace, not war, so that we avert anything that makes us confront each other.
This is not a time to not listen to one another. This is a time to ask deeply: what is ailing us? What is paining us? This is not what we see displayed in everyday life around us. What we see is confusion cloaked in ceremony, confusion cloaked in noise without direction, and power without purpose. We see purpose twisted so that people amass wealth for themselves at the expense of those who have nothing.
Bringing the nation together means listening to generative themes from everyday life and asking ourselves: how do we answer them? We have a big gap between the haves and the have-nots in this country. If we are not going to address it, then we have not addressed anything in our nation.
Not how do we crush those voices in a world craving spectacle and praise. Jesus brought a difference. Jesus came with substance. May we borrow a leaf from the salvation Christ brought to our world. He is still the same today. He will not be weaponized for political gain. He is still here to give us hope when we are hopeless. He will not serve as a mascot for tribal pride or selfish agendas. He comes to conquer the soul, not merely the system.
May Jesus conquer our souls, not the systems. But we also need good systems.
In our villages, drums are a language. They announce joy and stir our feet to join the celebrating ones. They summon hearts. A visitor could not be lost in the market because when a drum is sounded, he knows the direction and gets his bearing.
But not everyone needs the drum. Take one of our domestic animals—the dog. The dog does not need a drum when there is a feast. He has very good senses in his smell. He knows where the slaughter has happened and he follows. Before we arrive, he is always around every kitchen and every slaughter place because a scent has led him there. Perhaps they are better than us.
Do we have a sense of discernment? A scent that discerns when we are about to say wrong things? A scent that enables us to discern when we are about to make a wrong decision and take a wrong turn? The dog's scent always leads him to where the slaughter has happened. Who will be leading us? Where is the scent?
This is what I propose: Because on Palm Sunday the drums were loud, the cloaks were laid, the branches were waved, but many missed the seat at the Savior's feet. Why? They had a different expectation. If we are only to put our expectation in the right place, we shall have a spirit of discernment.
They saw the parade but did not purpose to join the parade with their hearts during that Palm Sunday with Jesus. They followed the crowd but not the Christ. They sang "Hosana," but they did not let him enter their hearts.
My proposal is this: Let us allow Christ's path to enter our hearts. Let him mold us. Let his love govern us so that we can love each and every one another with the love of Christ. That we do not want to see anyone lose their lives just because of our negligence, because we do not care, or because we have the power to crush them.
When we shout in the church and sing ululations, let us begin with the heart. Are these ululations genuine? Are we shouting for Christ because he saved us, or are we just shouting because a crowd is shouting? Let us differentiate between when we are just following the crowd and when we are following the King Jesus.
The kind of parade that never enters the heart is the thrust of my message. That crowd that followed Jesus into Jerusalem with "Hosana" did not open their hearts to him. They wanted a different kind of king. They had a different expectation. But when the king came, they never understood him. Even the Bible says his own disciples never understood until everything was over. When he went to the cross, that is when they began to know and note that he was indeed the king being prophesied.
Yes, many of us will be seated in our pews in our churches, attending services and prayer rallies. But is the heart open? Or are we here to enjoy the music and the gathering? Let this Palm Sunday be a moment of self-introspection when we all turn to ourselves and ask: Is Christ entering me truly, or am I just part of the crowd?
Is he going to govern my thoughts, my actions, my decision-making processes? Is he going to be the one I anger and ask the right question first before I make a decision? If we all do this, even when commands are given, we have to ask Jesus: Is it the right command? Am I going to cause atrocities that break your heart, or am I going to mend lives? Am I going to make people bleed, or am I going to attend to their bleeding hearts?
As I conclude, may the Lord help us, because we have a bleeding country. We need to seal those bleeding points, not open them up for more bleeding. The Lord will be with us. The Lord will continue to be with us in every aspect.
Jesus still rides towards us, not to impress us, but to invite us. Not for a parade, but for a transformation. Let us not just welcome him with palm branches. Let us open the gates of our hearts. Let this not be a kind of parade that never enters a heart. Let this be a parade that allows Jesus to reign and rule in our hearts and give us a future and a hope.
In the name of God the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
