"Given for you. Given to you. Full of His forgiveness!" Palm Sunday 2026

29. March 2026
Palmarum
Matthew 27:46

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani. My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?

That is what this day is about, although it may not be apparent at first glance. Not the palms — though you carried them. Not the donkey, not the crowd, not the Hosannas. Those are the procession into the hour. The hour itself is a Man on a cross, crying out of abandonment, and you need to hear why that cry is for you.

Matthew writes his Passion the way a man writes a Bible commentary. He threads it through with quotation after quotation, allusion after allusion — the whole of Israel's Scripture pulling toward one Man, one death, one moment. He is not recording a tragedy. He is showing you a fulfillment. Everything that happens in these two chapters happens because it was written, because it was purposed, because the Lord of Israel set His face toward this from before creation's first word. And the thread running through all of it — the thread Matthew keeps pulling — is Psalm 22.

You heard a part of it in the Tract. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Psalm 22:1). You heard another part of it in the soldiers casting lots for His garments — “They part My garments among them, and cast lots upon My vesture” (Psalm 22:18). You heard it in the mockers, the priests and scribes and elders, wagging their heads: “He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him” — which is Psalm 22:8, word for word, flung at Him as a taunt. They do not know they are serving as the psalm's cast and crew. They hand Him His script. Everything they do to undo Him confirms who He is.

He is the King they will not have. And you need to know what kind of King that is, because you are always tempted to want a different one.

The King you want comes down from the cross. That is what they shout: Come down. Save yourself. If you are the Son of God, come down. And notice — they promise belief if He does. We will believe, they say, if you give us the spectacular exit. That is the god the human heart always wants. The god who vindicates himself in power and invites you to get on the winning side. That god is available in every religion ever invented. You do not need Calvary for that god.

But that is not your King.

“He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). He has the power — the same power that stilled Galilee's sea, that raised Lazarus, that multiplied bread for thousands. He does not use it. Not here. Not for Himself. His kingdom suffers violence, but does none. He holds His way. And you are the reason He holds it.

Bar-Abbas. That is the name Matthew gives you. Son of the father. A criminal. Released. The crowd chooses him over Jesus — and without knowing it, they speak the truest word in the Gospel: the Son of the Father takes the place of the guilty one, and the guilty one walks out free. You are Barabbas. Do not flinch from that truth. You are the one who should have stayed in the cell, and you are the one released at His expense. What is yours is His. What is His is yours. Most sinner. Most Savior. No distance between. No separation.

Dr. Luther says that if our hearts truly took this in, they would burst for joy into a hundred thousand pieces.

The soldiers put a crown of thorns on His head. A purple robe. A reed scepter. They mean it as mockery. But they crown a king. The sign Pilate nailed above the cross means it was contempt — THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS — but it tells the truth. He reigns from that wood. Not in spite of the cross. From it. By it. This is what His reign looks like: love that suffers all the wrong and is not overcome.

Three hours of darkness. Sixth hour to ninth. Darkness is not just noted for atmosphere in Matthew. It is the sign of judgment. The weight of everything wrong with the world — your betrayals, your cruelties, your cold indifference toward God and toward the people He put in your life — all of it laid on one body, under that sky, outside Jerusalem's walls, under Pontius Pilate. Extra nos. Outside you. Done for you before you were born, before you believed anything, before you did anything at all.

And then the cry: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew 27:46).

The Son who from eternity has known nothing but the Father's love cries out of abandonment. Real abandonment. He goes all the way in — to the bottom of the forsakenness, to the place where there is nothing left, no comfort, no light, no answer. He goes there, so you will not have to. He is forsaken so that you will not be. That is the exchange. That is the whole thing.

And then the veil tears.

Top to bottom. God's hands, not man's. The curtain that said you cannot come in — the Law's final word on the distance between the holy God and the sinful you — is gone. Not opened. Torn. The way is clear. Graves split open. Saints walk out of them. Easter breaks into Friday, because this death is not the ending. It is the beginning of the undoing of all death. Yours included.

You could not negotiate that curtain down. You know this. You have tried — the devotion that never quite felt like enough, the prayers that seemed to go nowhere, the attempts to be better that lasted until Tuesday. Lex semper accusat. The Law always accuses. That is what it does. That is all it can do. And so He tore it Himself. From the top down. So you would know whose hands did the work and that it has nothing to do with yours.

Now hear how the psalm ends. Not in the pit. Not in the cry.

“He has not despised nor scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; He has not hidden His face from Him but has listened to His cry” (Psalm 22:24). Heard. Answered. And then: “They shall come and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He hath done this” (Psalm 22:31).

You are that people. Born after. Being declared to. Here. Now. Today, Palm Sunday, March 29, year of our LORD 2026.

This is what the church does when she reads the Passion over you. She declares it. The Word does what it says. It puts you under the torn curtain, in the company of the saints who walked out of their graves, in the place of Barabbas. This is not a report on something that happened long ago to someone else. It is a delivery—to you, this morning, in this place.

But hear the distinction carefully, because it matters. At Calvary, forgiveness was won. There, at that cross, outside Jerusalem, under Pilate, in the darkness. That is where it was achieved. But Dr. Luther says: If you want your sins forgiven, do not go to Calvary. There forgiveness was won for you. But there it is not given out.

Here it is given out. His body — given into that darkness, crowned with those thorns, nailed under that sign — given into you. His blood — shed at Calvary for the forgiveness of sins, your sins — given into you. Not won here. Given here. Located here, at this rail, with these words, on this day.

“O My Father, if this cup may not pass away from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done” (Matthew 26:42). He drank it. All the way to the bottom. The wrath, the curse, the abandonment — nothing left of any of it. But the cup He gives you now is different. This one is His blood. Given for you. Given to you. Full of His forgiveness. Amen.

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin