Sermon transcript:
There’s a tiny haiku poem that’s been living in my head lately:
“My barn having burned down, I can see the moon.”1
On first hearing, it sounds like a story of simple resilience — something collapses, and beauty appears. But if we stay with it a little longer, we realize it’s both harder and truer than that. The poet, Mizuta Masahide, really did lose his barn. That wasn’t just poetic metaphor — it was livelihood, stability, loss of tools, grain, maybe animals, years of labour gone.
When Matthew tells this story — Jesus entering Jerusalem to the shouts of “Hosanna!” — he’s writing from a world in ashes. Every Gospel reflects both Jesus’ story and the community telling it. When Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ palm-strewn entry into Jerusalem, his readers are looking back from the ashes of their own burned-down world. The Temple in Jerusalem — the center of God’s dwelling, their barn of faith, identity, and national life — had been destroyed by Rome around the year 70 CE, crushing a Jewish rebellion.
So when Matthew retells the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem, it’s not through a lens of triumph, but trauma. The people hearing this Gospel would have known the smell of smoke, the ache of displacement, the fear of being forgotten.2
We know something of that feeling, too. The sense that the structures that kept the world predictable are cracking. Our world feels like the barn is burning down. The world order that emerged after World War II — built on the hope of lasting peace and cooperation — is faltering. Democracy itself feels fragile. Prime Minister Mark Carney said as much in his viral speech at Davos, Switzerland3: He described how the liberal economic world we trusted — free markets, shared prosperity, international law — was always more fragile than we wanted to admit. And now, facing the burn marks of that order, the Prime Minister spoke of “nation building” as our response — but a nation building cast mostly in terms of economic competitiveness and defence readiness.
Important, yes — but incomplete. Because fear, insecurity, and despair are not economic and defence problems alone; they are spiritual ones. As systems falter, people lose not just jobs and stability but a sense of meaning, belonging, and trust. And many of us are wondering: if the structures we trusted are burning, what do we see now? Just a smouldering heap, or is there something hopeful being revealed? Maybe that’s exactly why we need this Palm Sunday story — a story about a people watching their world collapse and yet discovering that God is still moving.
The people’s pain is real — but Matthew wants his community to see that God hasn’t abandoned them. So he reaches back to the words of the prophet Zechariah: “Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and riding on a donkey.”4 It’s no coincidence. It’s a thread of continuity — not denial. The memory of Zechariah — born amid hopes of restoring Jerusalem after its devastation by another empire and the exile of its people — becomes, for Matthew’s community, a reminder that God will not abandon the ruined city. It’s Jesus that carries Zechariah’s hope into the present moment of Matthew’s story.
He carries that hope defiantly and vulnerably — two parades approached from opposite sides of the city. Matthew doesn’t mention this — he doesn’t have to; his audience would’ve known. Historians tell us that on the other side of town, the governor, Pontius Pilate, would ride in with Roman cavalry: armour, power, intimidation. A flexing of Rome’s muscle just before Passover — the largest gathering of Jews in Jerusalem every year.5 On the other side, Jesus rides a donkey — humble, almost laughably small next to empire’s procession. But his purpose is anything but small.
He’s moving toward the very city that will reject him. And yet he rides on. Quietly, faithfully, even tenderly. He’s moving straight into danger. Straight toward confrontation. Straight toward heartbreak. Here the English language falls short, and we need the help of an ancient Hebrew word — hesed6. Hesed — that ancient Hebrew word for God’s steadfast, covenantal love. It’s the love that doesn’t turn away when the world burns. The love that stays. The love that keeps walking toward us even when we’ve given up.
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is ḥesed in motion — God’s enduring mercy taking to the streets, vulnerable yet unyielding. He doesn’t crush the empire; he outloves it. Love that shoulders cost. Love that marches into suffering, not around it. This is not denial of the loss — it’s love walking directly through it. The barn is gone, yes. But now, in the open night sky, God’s steadfast love shines clearer than ever. What’s gone can’t be replaced easily. Yet something unexpected — something luminous — has come into view. It’s as if Matthew says, “Yes, the barn has burned. Feel that loss. But also, look up — God’s story isn’t over.”
And so, we return to our own world, standing among the smouldering remains of old certainties. What can we see now that the barn is burning? What if — amid fear and despair — Jesus is again entering the city? Not in obvious triumph but in humble persistence? Not in control, but in compassionate solidarity? The task of faith, then, is a hopeful one: not to rebuild the barn in panic, but to lift our gaze and see the light God reveals in its absence. It is to live in the trust that God’s hesed, God’s steadfast, unwavering love is still marching, defiantly, yet humbly and vulnerably into our lives and our world. That’s not a sentimental hope; it’s a resilient one. Because it doesn’t ask us to rebuild everything overnight — only to notice that God is already at work among us.
Did you pay attention recently to the release of the world happiness rankings?7 For the eighth year in a row, Finland is ranked the happiest country on earth. Finland, a relatively small country that exists next door to an authoritarian behemoth who for, other than a short period in the nineties, lived and lives under the threat of annexation by its neighbour. Sound familiar?
Yet their response has not been economic or self-defence alone; it has been people-centred. They’ve embraced something countercultural: when threatened, they invest in one another. They strengthen trust, fairness, education, care. They recognize that security comes not only from weapons or wealth, but from community. That’s ḥesed in human form — God’s steadfast love made systemic. A spiritual answer to a spiritual crisis. What’s gone in the world order is gone, the devastation is all too real. But there is Finland sitting just above the smoldering ashes. Sometimes it’s only after the flames that we can truly see how much light there’s always been.
As we move into Holy Week, we remember that Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem leads to the cross. The barn will burn down. The barns of this world — our systems, our illusions, even our certainties — will burn. But ḥesed remains: God’s steady, stubborn love, still moving toward us, still lighting our way. May that hope see us through in the week ahead.
Amen.
Rev. Joe Gaspar
1 Kristen Groseclose, The trouble with “Welcome to Holland”, https://smithkingsmore.org/the-trouble-with-welcome-to-holland/.
2 Warren Carter, Commentary on Matthew 21:1-17, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/triumphal-entry-3/commentary-on-matthew-211-17-3, April 2, 2023.
3 Davos 2026: Special address by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/01/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/, January 20, 2026.
4 Zechariah 9:9
5 John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach about Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem.
6 https://www.hebrew4christians.com/Meditations/Chesed/chesed.html
7 https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world