PALM SUNDAY 2017

Life is a balancing act.

Sometimes we are up and sometimes we are down.

Sometimes we are feeling great and sometimes we are feeling yucky and sickly and fluey.

Sometimes we feel we are on top of the world and sometimes we feel down, 6 feet under, grave, grief, buried in work and cave in’s and we are dead.

Sometimes everything goes right: the bread falls jam side up and sometimes we take the jam out of the refrigerator by the lid and the jar falls to the floor—jam side out all over the floor.

Life is a balancing act.

Ups and downs.

Good days and bad days.

God days and devil days.

Sin and grace.

Light and darkness.

Mountain highs and Maryland misty morning lows.

Grey foggy April non-budding yet leafless days and the bright colored days of October when the leaves and the woods “ache and sag and almost cry with colour!” (Edna St. Vincent Millay).

If we can relate to all those feelings, today Palm Sunday is our day.

If we can relate to all those feelings, Holy Week is our week.

If we can relate to all those feelings, Jesus is our person—the one we want to talk to this week, the one we want to walk with this week.

Holy Week: the holiest week of the year. Spring, but almost spring—with lingering winter on our backs. Hints of warmth, but the cold “winter of our discontent”  still creeping through our walls and windows and under our doors. (Cf. Shakespeare's  King Richard the Third, act I, sc. i, l. 1)

Palm Sunday 2017. Jesus!

Let us walk with Jesus.

Hosanna in the highest coming from our inner “bare ruined choirs”, but strains of “Behold the Wood of the Cross” being practiced in a back church room at another piano. (Cf. Shakespeare’s  Sonnet 73.)

Palm Sunday, 2017. Jesus!

Palms in our hands as we march across center stage, but in the corner of our eye, we spot the cross standing there off stage—ready to be picked up in the third act: Good Friday.

Palm Sunday, 2017. Jesus! Joy of Men and Women’s Desires!

Spy Wednesday, 2017. We betray one another at times.

Holy Thursday, 2017. We wash each other’s feet—we have words with one another—we eat with one another—we try to pray with one another—too often we fall asleep—we run from each other even though there are signs of “peace”.

Good Friday, 2017. We sulk and silent each other—we convict each other without a trial—we beat one another—causing headaches and crowns with thorns—we weep on our inner streets as we see those we cursed and spit at and worse, laid such crosses and burdens on, and even far worse, we move towards Calvary with. Darkness, death, temples and chapels and monasteries and churches ript in two.

Holy Saturday, 2017, Silence! Tomb time! Grave! Grief!

Easter Sunday, 2017!

Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, 2017!

Whoever knows all this is our human story, Palms Up!

Amen!

It is us!

It is the Lord!

It is the story of divinity entering humanity, so humanity can see and enter divinity. This is our call! This was our fall—our fall from grace—in the garden.

We are made in the image and likeness of God!

Yet we bomb and gas each other to death.

Look at Jesus.

Look at Jesus in the garden.

Look at each other!

Paradise can be regained!

With Jesus!

Let us march together Disciples of Jesus!

Easter us, O Lord Jesus!

“Marana tha!” [Book of Revelation 22:20 - next to last verse in the New Testament.]

Come, Lord Jesus!