It’s Palm Sunday. The day when we remember when Jesus slowly rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. The crowd that gathered rejoiced that hope had come again and things would never be the same. But little did they know that before the week was over he would be nailed to a cross. So many waved those palm branches had threw down their palms and turned away. Why? Because they discovered that this was not the promised Messiah they had expected. Riding in on a donkey. The poor throwing their ragged clothes at his feet. First cursing a fig tree. Cursing? And if that was not enough he overturned tables and drove out the money changers from the temple. And that strange scene when his first act in Jerusalem was casting out the money changers from the temple. Upsetting the way things were.
So Holy Week begins not as they expected at all. No wonder the church early would call these days that followed the via dolorosa—the way to what? A cross. No palm branches there. No alleluias.
So this Holy Week I think back on my own Palm Sunday journey. How old was I when first Jesus marched into my life? Here at the center of my little life there came one who was goodness personified. But ever so slowly he did not do what I expected. I kept hearing the preachers talk about sin and judgment and the fires of hell and Jesus coming back when I least expected him. It scared me to death thinking I would be doing something secretively and he would catch me and I was be judged by an awful powerful God.
Little did I know my Jesus would change. Jesus became in time my friend. Jesus loved even me. But I did not know that he loved those with lint in their hair who work those twelve hour shifts. How he loved our church leader who divorced. He loved her? Later I discovered he cared deeply for those preachers who stood Sunday after Sunday not having a clue about those struggling black folks on the other side of our town. They shined our shoes, they cleaned our houses, they took our dirty clothes home and brought them back all clean and folded on a bus. But slowly I discovered he loved us all. Even the mean shift foreman and the broken man who stood on the street corner shining shoes and scaring us to death.
Slowly I learned that even the Catholics were his people. That all those other denominations, many well-heeled were in our camp. Like the spiritual went: “We didn’t no who he wuz.”
And even today there is so much about his Jesus that I still do not know. But I have come to see the crowd with the palm branches did not have the last word. Or those with folded arms and pursed lips that plotted his demise. Or the Pilates or the Herods and those that nailed the nails and gaped at the ragged figure caught between two thieves. And yet his arms were stretched out and even with all that pain and injustice he whispered forgiveness. And then that strange Sunday when a stone was rolled away and the world changed forever.
He still marches into my life. He still turns me topsy-turvy. He still pushes and pulls me in ways I do not want to go.
So this Holy week I try to remember among all the things of my tired life—sickness, injustice everywhere, losing this weekend the best and brightest I have ever known—old age and its complications there may well be a via dolorosa who knocked on my door—my own way of sorrows—that forces me to know deep in my heart just as that cross was not the end—there is so, so much more that I begin this week to remember. Faith which flickers so low sometimes—hope when comes and goes—and love that will not let me go even when I feel it not at all.
Bring holy week on with all its twisting hard days—stretching me yet again to know this old tattered story may be the best there is.
--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com
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