There is always a festive feel to Palm Sunday. The Gospel reading with its exuberance of Jesus entering Jerusalem at the head of a parade evokes warm, positive feelings. We build on that in worship by distributing palm fronds, lifting our voices in joyous song, and by offering prayers of hope. At the same time Palm Sunday evokes darker emotions. This is the beginning of Holy Week and we are aware that Jesus will soon be betrayed and crucified. Feelings of anger, grief, resentment, sadness, disillusionment are all swirling, along with the feelings of beauty, joy, happiness, and hope. This is quite a season for the church year! The worst thing we can do with this story of the Passion is to make it flat, a paint-by-the-numbers kind of story where we don’t feel anything because we all already know how it turns out. The pastoral task is how to make this story fresh even though we have read this book before. I will seek to bring the story alive by asking the question: What’s the Purpose of Holy Week? We can easily think Holy Week is our obligatory time for remembering how badly Jesus was treated—and feeling some guilt about all that. But the actual purpose is to help us remember what it means to be human beings made in the image of God. We are creatures filled with so much promise and possibility, but we get lost in ourselves and challenges of life. By walking with Jesus we are invited to wake up to who we really are—and a one part of that is waking up to the range of emotions within us.
To help us wake up I will read a contemporary version of the Palm Sunday story at the beginning of worship, our church school will help us sing the passion story in all the bright colors of human emotion as they dance with bright streamers and we sing “Lord of the Dance”, and I will reflect on the deeper meanings of Holy Week for our lives in my sermon. Whatever happens on Sunday it won’t be flat or by the numbers—for the Spirit of God is swirling in our midst helping us to stretch and grow.
Many of us had great fun at the showing of “Noah” at the Beacon Cinema on Thursday evening followed by an inter-faith discussion. There were a range of reactions to the film but the overall sense was that it wasn’t a paint-by-numbers version and did offer some remarkable insights into our common journey to be faithful in a troubled, broken world. This was organized through the Council of Congregations and may lead to future shared film experiences.
Finally there is a lunar eclipse coming this week on early Tuesday morning before dawn. If you’re an early bird check it out. Also Mars is in the sky all night. Which one is it? We’ll have to talk. See you in church. Peace.