It is noteworthy that the Gospel appointed for Palm Sunday is not the story of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which we normally associate with this day. It is the story of the passion of our Lord.

Throughout this Holy Week, right up to Good Friday, our thoughts should be centred wholly on the Cross — and on the Crucified. Paterson Smyth remarked that the world in miniature is seen around the Cross that first Good Friday. In St. Matthew's account, we are introduced to some of the principal characters of the passion story. They represent different kinds of people, but they are not really unusual sort of people. In fact they are people very similar to ourselves. It was people like us who crucified the Lord of Glory.

At the start of the story, we meet with the chief priests. They appear a number of times in this passage, always in an unfavourable light. It was they who:

Their moral sense was utterly dead. They had no interest in justice, only in legal quibbles. These chief priests were wealthy and educated men and yet wealth and education did not bring them to God.

In Judas Iscariot, we see a man who had enjoyed amazing spiritual privileges but who, gripped by greed, sinned against the light and became the tool of the devil. Judas stands before us as a striking illustration of the fact that "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil". In the case of this man, it led him to sell his Lord for a few bits of silver. It drove him away from the source of life and brought him at last to a suicide's grave.

Pontius Pilate presents a pathetic picture of weakness and cowardice. Mastered by the fear of others, and concerned primarily about his own security, he put expediency before principle and weakly bowed to the will of the people. He desperately tried to shelve his responsibility, to evade a decision, to wash his hands of the whole business. Nevertheless his share in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is indelibly recorded in the Church's creed: He was "crucified under Pontius Pilate".

Barabbas was the "notable prisoner" whom the Jewish crowd chose to be released instead of Jesus. Barabbas was a Jewish nationalist who had unsuccessfully struck a blow for freedom from the Roman yoke. He represented the kind of Messiah the crowd wanted: a political leader, a military chief, a popular hero, not a saviour from sin.

What of the people of Jerusalem who made this choice? Why did they ask for Barabbas? "Because they had a false idea of what constituted true greatness. It was force against patience, mere Physical courage against moral courage." So writes J. Masterman. He adds: "People still reject Jesus Christ for the same reason. The one who says that 'God is on the side of the big battalions', who ignores the moral forces of the world, is choosing Barabbas rather than Christ."

The Roman soldiers who mocked our Lord and finally carried out the grim task of execution, represent human brutality and callousness. This part of the story is certainly not out of date. Our more refined age, as we are sometimes tempted to regard it, can easily outmatch these ignorant soldiers in sheer bestiality. In becoming more civilised the world has not become less cruel.

The cry of dereliction from the Cross reveals Jesus as the sin-bearer. "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?". Here we are in the presence of an impenetrable mystery. It is the mystery of how "the one who knew no sin" could be "made sin" on our behalf. It was for us he died. He paid the price of our sins, even though that price involved the bitter spiritual anguish of the loss of God's presence. He died in order that he might restore the relationship between us in our sin and God in his holiness.

The Roman centurion in charge of the crucifixion was convinced from what he had seen that Jesus was no ordinary man, certainly no criminal. He began to understand that he was in some sense a divine being. And so at the Cross he made the great confession of faith. "Truly this was the Son of God".

Just what he meant by that we do not know for certain. But we know what we mean when we utter those same words today: The faith we confess is "faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me".

As we journey with Jesus this week to the foot of the Cross and to the empty tomb, may the reality of the crucifixion and the resurrection change your lives and strengthen your faith.

AMEN.