When I engage with a new story or concept, very often it takes me a while to fully understand it. I need to roll it over in my mind a few times before I feel like I comprehend the subject. This makes me a terribly slow reader, but it also allows space and time to grasp the meaning of the words relayed and the intent and subtext of a work. Before I went to seminary and became a priest, I taught preschool, and I saw this play out in the brilliantly in the simple ways in which a child wants to immediately have you read the same book over and over and over again. Still to this day, I think I can recite the modern-day classic, The Gruffalo, which you may know if you’ve read to kids or grandkids in the last 20 years or so. While it can become frustrating to read and reread the same work, I think that there is true wisdom in a child’s exclaim of “Again!” after hearing a good story.
There is something like this in our Holy Week practices. We hear the same stories over and over again and we know how they will end, but each year on Palm Sunday, we again raise our palm fronds as we imitate the people’s cries of “Save us!” even though we know those same cries will soon turn to “Crucify him!” And later this week, we will walk through the garden where Jesus asks his friends to stay awake while he anxiously prays for the cup to pass from him, and we will prayerfully listen and pray, even though we know that they will fail him and fall asleep. And every Holy Week, we again read about the Last Supper, even though we already know it is Judas who betrays him. There are no spoilers for the stories of Holy Week, yet we return to them again and again.
One could ask that since we know how it ends, why do spend so much time on Palm Sunday reading the whole story of Jesus’ last days? I think it’s because to skip the raising of the palms and shouts of the crowd in support of Jesus neglects a particularly painful aspect of the crucifixion. And on the same account, to skip to the resurrection without the pain of the cross negates the searing truth that death has been destroyed. These seven days before we get to the empty tomb are vital not only in our understanding of the resurrection, but also in how we are able to embody our faith.
The gift of Holy Week, into which this congregation invites you, is that we get to hear the story again, and even though we know the ending, it does not negate the telling, or the hearing, of this story again. This week, I wonder what it would look like to engage with the stories from exactly where you are, not from where you wish you could be. Maybe things feel good and in alignment or things feel off and wonky or maybe somewhere in the middle, no matter what, I ask that you engage with these stories and let them speak to you as you hear them again. This week, I ask that you question any assumptions that you may bring to both the crucifixion and the resurrection and see what our sacred stories teach us. And as we travel together throughout Holy Week, I pray that there may be a sense of wonder at the long difficult walk to the cross and anticipatory joy of the coming hope of the resurrection and that you engage with these stories you’ve heard hundreds of times with the energy and excitement of a child exclaiming, “Again! Again!” until the hope of the resurrection comes for us all. Amen.
A sermon delivered to the people of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Corbin, Kentucky for Palm Sunday on March 29, 2026.
Becca Kello 