Palm Sunday is a subversive one. It tells a story that on the surface looks like one thing but underneath is deeply moving the needle, pointing to a vastly different reality.
Jesus comes to Jerusalem and is met with people who treat him like a king. The Caesars - the seat of power and money which then and now were thought to be signs of God - would come to town with fanfare and palm branches, his wealth on display, his cruelty to enemies on display, his benevolence to his supporters on display, his power on display.
But Jesus chooses a donkey to come to town, accompanied by women, the diseased and healed, and the poor. It’s a choice.
There’s this part in Luke’s gospel where after the hoopla of Jesus’ coming to town - with the palm branches, the hosannahs, the donkey, Jesus gets a glimpse of the city. And he weeps.
“As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” Luke 19: 41-44
And this is a part of the Palm Sunday that we don’t talk about that often. Because it’s about people -his people - not getting it. It’s about the people who say they love him, who have been following him, supporting him, maybe even donating to his cause, saying they want what he is offering - just missing the point.
And that’s a confrontation with our assumptions, and ourselves we don’t really want to engage deeply. So we move on. We don’t tell this one to the kids.
But the weeping - the deep sadness, even despair, at how clueless the people he loves are. It gets me.
Why does it make him so sad? Who are they hurting with their simple hope? Themselves? Others? Are they forgetting their neighbors? Their enemies? The least of these in their simple hope?
Is it because they are working towards something that will not work for them? Is he worried about their wasted time? Wasted effort? Wasted resources? Wasted hope?
Or could it be that he is aware that they will miss God if they keep looking for power? If they keep looking for power to give them what only sacrificial love can?
Are we aware that we will miss God if we keep looking for power?
And is it breaking the heart of God?
I do not know enough about everything to be able to say where for sure God is and is not. It is a bad game to play although we can and should name some obvious things - ahem, like how watching the amount of people who seem to think a tawdry, fraudy cruel man is their new persecuted Jesus is horrific.
But I do trust this story. Where it goes next is as much a part of Palm Sunday to celebrate - or just get out of the way of - as anything. In Luke, after the palms and after the weeping, Jesus headed to the temple next and in with holy fury, flipped some tables. He went to the religious places that had forgotten their calling to welcome. And he turned over the money making tables that had overtaken the place - calling what should have been a place for all to pray, a den of robbers - where plots to make money took precedence. Where a casual cruelty to the humanity of people who hope had taken root and called itself righteous. And He dismantled it.
And to enter Palm Sunday, even while we smile indulgently at the kids waving palm branches in the aisles at church, is to enter a question these stories ask.
Are we missing the God that comes to us because we are looking in the wrong places?
Because this has got to be the question of our christian culture now if we want to follow the one who embodied compassion. It has got to be the question if we want to live well with the one who said give it all away and then follow me. The one who never made anyone the butt of a joke or the site of hatred but called them to a better way.
It has got to be the only question we ask as we enter Easter season - with its total reversal of expectations and reordering of priorities - Are we missing the God that comes to us because we are looking in the wrong places?
From the Headlines–thoughts from a news story that I can’t stop thinking about
This week another school shooting and the arrest of the former president and the Vatican’s recusal from its responsibility to the effects of the Doctrine of Discovery appropriately gets attention.
And at the same time I can’t stop thinking about this story.
The Southwestern United States is having a megadrought -a drought that lasts longer than twenty years. A desert region with higher temperatures and lower precipitation in these last years exacerbated by increased migration into that area but poor water resources and management to handle it all have made it the worst megadrought since 800 AD. 1200 years.
One of the stories around this megadrought is that as the reservoirs shrink to unprecedented levels, things long hidden are being revealed. Ancient settlements, sunken boats are being found, untouched land. And the remains of humans, long dead from malice and accident, are surfacing.
Unprecedented in our millenia, these times are revealing things we would rather not see. And I cannot stop thinking about how a crisis reveals true things. About people. About what we’ve done. What we’ve not done. What we’ve valued and what our undervaluing of the land and creation’s systems will cost us.
This story stays with me because of how it is such a visceral reminder of consequences of choices. And that’s a confrontation we do not love.
In parts of the American Southwest, authorities are having to make water decisions that will affect real people now. Where do they cut the flow of water off? There’s just not enough water to provide for all the humans, all the agriculture and animals that live there. That’s the choice that this megadrought crisis has revealed. God have mercy.
But crisis also reveals true things about our world, and the bigger story. About God - if we are hearing, seeing, awake like Jesus told us to be.
A Prayer for Being Confronted by Things We’d Rather Not Be
God, what is being revealed about ourselves and our ways in our times is…ugh…
We say pretty words and ignore the ways we betray creation.
We say powerful words and are ok when they are used against others.
We forget that you wept, not rallied.
That you chose to be close to the ground not gilded in luxury like a God.
That you have no qualms about overturning corruption even when it makes your own people look bad.
You do not miss the point of all of this faith and are ok with acting on that.
Be with us this disturbing Sunday.
Help us to not shy from facing what we’d wish we could forget.
Be with us this confronting Sunday by letting us know your tears.
Don’t leave us in the disruption for too long without your voice though - we won’t make it.
Help us to prepare for Holy Thursday and your meal that sustains us.
Image: An illumination of Jesus weeping over Jersualem from the evangelistary of Otto III, produced at Reichenau Abbey, ca.1000 AD (via Wiki Commons).