He is risen! That’s worth shouting about

‘As Jesus was now 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, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”’

Will the stones need to shout?

At the end of the Palm Sunday gospel reading, we hear a conversation between some of the Pharisees in the crowd and our Lord Jesus.

The Pharisees seem to be very worried that everything happening in front of them that day was proclaiming Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth, as the long-expected Messiah. They knew the story of the Scriptures. From the dawn of time, when the man and woman had rebelled against their Lord God in the garden, a curse was spoken over humankind and on the serpent, but there was also a promise: one would come who would ‘strike the head’ of the serpent.

The prophet Zechariah had foretold, ‘Your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey’ (Zechariah 9).

We can hear the struggle of these Pharisees in the crowd. They would have heard stories of the miracle worker from Nazareth. They saw the crowds and heard the cries. They see the man on the donkey and conclude that this man could be acclaimed as the promised Messiah!

So, even though they politely refer to Jesus as ‘teacher’, they still call for the crowd to be silenced.

How does our Lord respond to that?

He makes a declaration about himself and the unstoppable work of salvation that is unfolding. He says, ‘If these were silent, the stones would shout out.’

Who can make the stones shout?

It is the Lord of creation. It is the maker of the stars and sea. It is one who can raise the dead. When the Lord responds with his message, ‘the stones would shout out’, he is pointing to his incarnation as ‘Immanuel’ – God with us!

This Easter Sunday is one of those moments in the worldwide Christian calendar when Christians of both the Eastern and Western traditions celebrate the resurrection of our Lord on the same day. (This is simply a historic disagreement about the means to calculate the date for Easter Sunday each year. But, serendipitously, the dates sometimes match.)

Our sisters and brothers of the Eastern tradition have an inspiring way of pointing to the gospel of the Lord’s incarnation as ‘God with us’. They paint icons of the face of our Lord Jesus, and around this head they write three letters in the Greek language, which spell out ‘Ho Oh N’. This means ‘the being one’. It is the Greek translation of the name given by the Lord God to Moses from the burning bush when Moses asked, ‘Who will I say sent me?’

With their letters around the painting of the head of our Lord, the Eastern Christians are declaring ‘Jesus is the Christ’ and at the same time, ‘Jesus is the great I AM who is and was and is to come’.

On Palm Sunday, our Lord tells the Pharisees that even the stones would shout out. The Lord of all creation could command that!

As we follow his journey to the cross, we are reminded that he is trustworthy and true and will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He will take upon himself our sin and exchange our sin for his righteousness so that we would have peace with God. We are baptised into his death and are raised with him to walk in newness of life. There is nothing we can add to this work of salvation.

We are not told that the stones on the roadway ever shouted. Of course, they didn’t need to. The church has been shouting the gospel as we are sent by the Holy Spirit to the ends of the earth. You and I are the continuing voice of those who sang praises to the Lord of the cross and empty grave. Each year on Easter Sunday, we gather with the joyful shout, ‘He is risen indeed, Alleluia!’

God bless your faithful witness to all that our Lord has done for us. God keep you in the joy of salvation to the glory of God and for the blessing of the world.

Prayer of the Church

‘Lord Jesus Christ, as we remember your journey into Jerusalem to face the cruelty of the cross, give us voices to shout your gospel with boldness and conviction – to join with the church of all ages in the faithful cry: Hosanna in the highest! Amen.’

In Christ,
Bishop Paul Smith
Holy Week 2025