Palm Sunday: The King Who Comes to the Hungry and Suffering

A Pastoral Reflection for Mission Presbytery

Dear Friends in Christ,

As Mission Presbytery enters Holy Week this Sunday, we will gather to remember Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

In some worship services children and adults will parade waving palm fronds singing the opening hymn,

“All glory, laud, and honor

to you, Redeemer, King,

to whom the lips of children

made sweet hosannas ring.”

Over many years of pastoring, this has been the standard hymn in all the congregations I have served. Since it will be my first Palm Sunday at Mission Presbytery, I definitely look forward to this ritual.

We will re-enact the story of Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday in a world where kingdoms still clash, where nations still wage war, and where the cry "Hosanna - Save us!" echoes with desperate urgency all the way from Sudan, Ukraine, the Middle East, and countless places of unspeakable suffering.

Here at Mission Presbytery, we also hear those calls from our own siblings in Christ who do not have the proper documents and are hiding in fear in our midst. “Lord, save us,” they cry out to the Lord.

In Matthew’s Gospel, the crowds are ready for a king, but this king arrives on a donkey. Not a warhorse. Not a chariot of power. A humble beast of burden. The prophecy Matthew quotes emphasizes this stunning reversal - a king who is explicitly "humble."

Yet on this Palm Sunday, we cannot ignore the reality that confronts us with moral urgency. Unfortunately, the Russo-Ukrainian War continues into its fifth year.

In the Middle East, we are in the fourth week of military escalations which threaten further devastation. And in Sudan, for the last three years a humanitarian catastrophe has been unfolding away from our eyes with a deadly silence that haunts our Christian and human conscience.

According to the United Nation World Food Program, more than 21.2 million people are facing acute hunger. As war ravages and hunger mounts, women and children pay the highest price.

These are not mere statistics - they are God's beloved children, each one an image-bearer for whom Christ died. Families are being torn apart by conflict. Mothers watch helplessly as their children waste away. Villages are reduced to ash.

Here at Mission Presbytery, we are facing an affordability crisis. Our own siblings in Christ face rising costs for basic necessities. As the price of gas rises, everything else seems to be costing more. People are crying out, “save us” from imminent economic ruin.

The crowds that welcomed Jesus on Palm Sunday shouted "Hosanna!" — "Save us!"

But Jesus's entry was a big challenge to every kingdom built on power, domination, and the logic of violence that leaves the vulnerable to starve. Later in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus would say the famous and familiar Matthew 25 words: "I was hungry and you gave me food... whatever you did for the least of these... you did for me." (Matthew 25:35, 40)

The king who comes on a donkey is the same king who sees the hungry, the displaced, the dying - and calls us to see them too. Not as distant abstractions, but as his own body. The least of these are our brothers and sisters, they are our siblings in the household of God.

Here is what Holy Week demands of us:

The crowds' "Hosanna" was incomplete. They wanted salvation from Rome's military dominance. But Jesus came to save us from something deeper: from the very indifference that allows children to starve while we debate geopolitics.

He came to save us from the hardness of heart that permits humanitarian catastrophe to fade from our awareness.

As we walk toward the cross this week, we walk with the starving of Sudan. We remember that Christ was born in poverty, fled as a refugee, and died abandoned and hungry. He knows hunger. He knows displacement. He knows what it means to be utterly vulnerable and dependent on the mercy of others.

This Holy Week, let us pray:

• For the courage and success of peacemakers in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, and everywhere war rages

• For leaders with wisdom to choose negotiation over escalation, food over weapons

• For the forgotten people of Sudan - that the world will not look away, that aid will reach the dying, that peace will come

• For our own hearts - that we might truly see Christ in the war-weary, the hungry and the suffering, and act with urgency

• That we would repent of our complicity in systems that allow the vulnerable to suffer invisibly

The resurrection we celebrate at Easter is not distant hope. It is God's bold declaration that suffering does not have the final word, that the hungry will be satisfied, that the last shall be first.

But resurrection faith also demands that we live now as people who feed the hungry, who work for peace, who refuse to be silent when our siblings in Sudan - and everywhere - cry out.

In the midst of all these warring madness, we at Mission Presbytery continue to worship and trust in God. The closing stanza of our Palm Sunday’s opening hymn proclaims our praises and prayers to God,

“As you received their praises,

accept the prayers we bring,

for you delight in goodness,

O good and gracious King!”

May we at Mission Presbytery have the courage to follow a king who comes to the suffering world with healing hands and an invitation to us: "Feed my sheep. Care for my people."

In Christ's urgent love,

Rev. Bobby Musengwa

Transitional General Presbyter