Sermon for the Palm/Passion Sunday, March 29, 2026.
Last Sunday, in Bible study, we looked at the tearing of the temple curtain in Mark’s Gospel. Today, we heard about it in Matthew 27:50-51, as part of the description of what happened when Jesus died. “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.”
This is our sermon text.
The temple curtain separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. In 2 Chronicles 3:14, we learn what it looked like in the temple that Solomon built. It’s the same description of the curtain that the Lord had hung in His tabernacle in Exodus 26. “Then Solomon began to build the house of YHWH in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah… And he made the veil of blue and purple and crimson fabrics and fine linen, and he worked cherubim on it,” (2 Chr. 3:1a, 14).
I bring up Solomon’s temple because the temple of Jesus’ day was built by Herod the Great, the same wicked man who tried to kill Jesus as a baby boy. Herod’s temple was a renovation and expansion of what is called the Second Temple, built under Zerubbabel’s leadership, construction beginning in 538 BC. Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonians burned down the First Temple in 586, when they sacked Jerusalem and exiled the Jews. But Zerubbabel’s construction lacked the grandeur of Solomon’s. Herod the Great sought to remedy that.
It was Herod’s renovated temple in which Jesus taught. It was the curtain of this temple that was torn in two from top to bottom upon Christ’s death. The first-century Jewish-Roman historian, Josephus, recorded the details of the temple’s curtain. He writes, the “veil [was] of equal largeness with the doors. It was a Babylonian curtain, embroidered with blue, and fine linen, and scarlet, and purple, and of a contexture that was truly wonderful. Nor was this mixture of colors without its mystical interpretation, but was a kind of image of the universe; for by the scarlet there seemed to be enigmatically signified fire, by the fine flax the earth, by the blue the air, and by the purple the sea… This curtain had also embroidered upon it all that was mystical in the heavens, excepting that of the [twelve Zodiac] signs, representing living creatures.” (Jewish Wars 5, 5, 4)
The curtain was an artistic and theological picture of the heavens, which is why Solomon and Moses before him were told to include depictions of the cherubim, those spiritual beings that attend God’s Throne.
What we recently learned in Bible study is that the tearing of this curtain in Mark’s Gospel is directly connected to the tearing open of the heavens that occurred at Jesus’ baptism. The two events act as bookends in Mark. When Christ was anointed, the heavens were torn open, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, and God the Father said to Him, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased,” (Mark 1:9-11).
On the cross, our Lord finished His Messianic work. The Christ, the Anointed One completed what He was sent to do, showing in deathly detail why God the Father was well pleased with His Son—because He fulfilled the Law out of love for mankind (you!), sacrificing Himself in our place. He yielded up His Holy Spirit and breathed His last; at which time the temple’s depiction of the heavens was miraculously torn from top to bottom.
Christ’s baptism and crucifixion are overlapping events, the beginning and end of Jesus’ messianic mission. The book of Hebrews tells us what all this means for you and me. We’re not just discussing interesting theological facts.
Hebrews 10:1 says that the Law is “but a shadow of the good things to come…” The movable tabernacle God had Moses build in Exodus, with its Holy Place and Most Holy Place divided by the curtain, and the temple that Solomon built and Zerubbabel rebuilt, that Herod renovated and expanded, with all their sacred order and holy observances, they were not themselves the true form of what they conveyed to God’s people. Actual cherubim attend the throne of God. The curtain has images of these spiritual beings on it—pictures of them, shadows, if you will. The actual Most Holy Place is where God the Father is, where Jesus ascended to be, the throne where our Savior sits at His Father’s right hand.
Jesus saw the actual heavens torn open when He was baptized. The shadow of the heavens, as the book Hebrews describes it, tore open at Christ’s death, proclaiming the truth that we cannot see with our physical eyes, but that is nonetheless a reality. And this is that we now “have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is, through his flesh…” (Hebrews 10:19-21).
Christian, Jesus is our access to heaven. By His torn flesh and shed blood, the barrier that once kept us from living with God in the holiest of places has been removed. The curtain was a shadow of the actual thing that kept us from being in the presence of YHWH: our flesh.
Our sinful flesh.
Jesus took on our flesh and dwelt with us, being one of us in all ways except sin. He was a true man. Not a fallen man. True men have no sin. But He assumed all our sins upon Himself when He was baptized. He became our servant just as today’s Philippians passage says, bearing all of our sins to the cross where they were dealt with once and for all. The obstacle between God and us has been removed, torn open. The entrance to heaven has been permanently revealed in the tearing open of the flesh of Christ on the cross, and this means that just as Jesus entered triumphantly into Jerusalem on the actual, historic Palm Sunday, you will actually enter the True Jerusalem, the Heavenly Jerusalem, triumphantly with Christ on the Last Day. He has opened the way and given you access through Holy Baptism.
The sins of your flesh are forgiven. Turn from your sins and remember the truth: Jesus took your sins away. He took them from you to His cross, and there God tore them apart, from top to bottom.
This is why “God has highly exalted [Jesus] and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,” (Phil. 2:9). “Being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death on a cross,” (Phil 2:8).
Our King has come to us, righteous and having salvation did He, (Zech 9:9b). Because of the blood of His covenant with us, He has set us prisoners free from the waterless pit. He plunged you into the waters of life, baptizing you in the gurgling waters of Christ’s resurrection, saying to us, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem… Return to your stronghold, O prisoner of hope; today I declare that I will restore you double,” (Zech. 9:9a, 12).
Jesus did this on His cross, where He died for you. “Therefore,” as St. Paul wrote to the Philippians, “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father,” (Phil. 2:9-11).
Amen!
Tyrel Bramwell 
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