Palm Sunday, 2025: A Gospel for a Torn Moment

Today’s post is from guest contributor Dr. Nicolete Burbach, a theologian whose research aims to help the Church navigate its difficult encounter with transness.

You can find the readings for Palm Sunday by clicking here.

What can be said of today’s Gospel reading? We are confronted with the full chaos and complexity of a story that encompasses not only Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but the mysteries of the last supper, the agony in the garden, Christ’s arrest and trial, Peter’s betrayals, the scourging, the crucifixion, and finally, Christ’s death and burial.

Like the disciples, I am overwhelmed by the task of having to make sense of all of this. But there is something strangely familiar about this feeling. A glance at the news paints a picture of a world in agony, trembling in its own Gethsemane at what is to come, or writhing upon the many crosses of our age, or hanging dead, in darkness, all hope seemingly lost. Ours is a time of uncertainties, fears and anxieties. A time that demands explanation, and yet seems to constantly defy it.

Writing as a trans person, I am conscious of the way our story follows the Gospel particularly closely in this: we had our own triumphal entry in the first years of the 2010s, slowly growing in acceptance to the point that trans life became possible in a way it had never been before. And then everything fell apart.

Here in the UK, the media turned against us, institutions were captured by those who see us as enemies, and public opinion degenerated to a position of hostility. Ideological capitulation to the far right and allied groups has made transphobia the policy of all our leading parties, while the courts have allowed themselves to become a stage for punitive misgendering and targeting for harassment. In the US, where I imagine most of my readers live, transphobia was a cornerstone of Donald Trump’s recent presidential campaign, and his victory was quickly followed by a slew of cruel transphobic executive orders.

Like the disciples in the Upper Room, we gathered with our loved ones. In a gesture we hoped was Christ-like, we swore that we would always be there for one another, whatever happened. It was certainly disciple-like, because we are still learning the full weight of that promise.

Now our legal protections are being challenged, if not actively stripped from us. Our rights to recognition, to healthcare — both children and adults – and to privacy are being trampled. These actions are  often on the basis of biased advice given a credence that is repeatedly denied to us, and heedless of the injustices involved. 

We are waiting for the soldiers to approach. For immigrants, with whom we are not only united in bonds of affection and solidarity, but among whom many of us are counted ourselves, the soldiers have already come. They are taking people away. 

The authorities are giving us up for mockery and scourging, throwing trans women into men’s prisons to be assaulted and raped like the first century victims of brutal Roman ‘justice’. They are torturing us in immigration detention camps. They shamelessly posture in front of their victims, parading their cruelty. Those who should stand by us have turned against us. 

People will die. People are dying. Crosses stand on the hillside as a testament to the violence of the state. Darkness covers the earth. The bodies are taken down and buried. It is all that can be done for them.

There are vital differences between the disciples’ situation and our own. Although we can see Christ in the people being crucified today, they must not be sacrificed. Our responsibility towards them goes beyond a mute and passive witness, lamenting their fate at the foot of the Cross, having stood by while the nails were driven in. It is every Christian’s duty to defend the people being snatched off the streets, thrown into detention, or denied the rights and resources they need to live. This means more than simply talking about it. Resist arrests and deportations. Identify the organisations opposing these injustices in your area, and join them. Work with humility, silently, so that you give nothing away that may harm your cause.

But also know that this fight will be a long one. And in this vein, today’s Gospel leaves us in desolation. It offers no consoling conclusion to either its story, or our own. Yet there is the smallest hint of what is to come; a tiny gesture of violence swallowed up in the horror of the Crucifixion which nevertheless speaks beyond itself: the veil before the Holy of Holies, the centre of the Temple, the axis of the world, is torn apart. It is as if the shadows behind rush out to swamp the earth – but this is also a kind of illumination: God is nearer to us in this moment than He has ever been in the history of the world. He is there, hanging on the Cross.

Today, we remember the Passion. And in this, we remember God’s nearness to us, not in spite of the dread and darkness of our time, but simply in it.

This consolation only goes so far. The Gospel still ends with the body cold and broken in the tomb. Likewise, the bare fact of God’s closeness does nothing to bring us out of this darkness. Nevertheless, in the figure of the rent veil, we can glimpse the true nature of the Crucifixion itself. From Christ’s torn body flows the promise of salvation; one that binds up the whole world in God’s justice. A promise that every scourged body will be lifted from the Cross, every harm redressed, every brutal regime overthrown.

If our current moment seems shapeless and uncertain, it is because the edges are frayed, like a riven cloth. It is because it is torn and lacerated, like the gaping epidermis of a pierced body. It is a moment rent open by violence. But this opening is onto something more than violence.

Because those bodies, hanging on the Cross, or lying broken in the tomb: one day, they will rise.

—Dr. Nicolete Burbach, London Jesuit Centre,  April 13, 2025