Part 1
The Palm Sunday story begins happily enough. Cheering crowds line the way and run into the streets, waving and throwing down the tree branches to make a way for their hero. Who doesn’t love a parade with children dancing and chanting and singing, a victory celebration for and by the people who have been held down for so long? The nation had been enslaved by the empire and had waited for freedom, worked for it, longed for, compromised and paid a spiritual price…always trying to keep the faith and to make a way to freedom…and nothing changed but to get worse. Year upon weary year, nothing seems to get better for people enslaved–then and now. Still, their hope rises with every potential leader and the new political promises. With this one, too. Hadn’t he spoken of their blessedness—the poor, the meek, the sorrowful, the imprisoned, the forgotten, the children—that things would be different now for these oppressed people who are marching for their lives, and singing? Palm Sunday was a nonviolent protest. It was people marching for their lives, the Poor People’s Campaign. It was a hopeful day, indeed.

(“Hosanna/Heysanna” from Jesus Christ Superstar/Dance of the Palms)

Part 2
But the leaders, seeing the crowds of poor people and children marching and waving palms, knew what they had to lose if the masses were led by this man and so they said to Jesus, “Make your followers be quiet—disperse immediately!” But they did not. And from that hour, the leaders began to sow fear and discord among the people and sought to destroy Jesus, for they said, “See the entire world is going after him.”
For his part, Jesus gathered with some friends in an upper room to observe the Passover. After the supper, they went to a garden to pray but he was so deep in fear and sorrow–as he knew what lay ahead– that his sweat fell on the ground around him like great drops of blood.
Dr. King and Mrs. Rosa Parks said it was the same for them as the relentless death threats began to come—that the fear rose in them like a great tide. And yet, as they leaned into their desperation, they found their strength within renewed. Martin said, “I had the quiet assurance of the divine more than I have ever known–an inner voice saying, ‘Stand up for truth. I am with you, by your side.’ And I knew I had to do what was right.” Rosa said, “You may kill me, but we will not stop. If you kill me, only I will be dead.”
Jesus, too, found his strength and spoke from the shadowy garden: “Let us go to meet them. Behold, my betrayer is at hand.” So, after one of his friends turned him in, the authorities arrested Jesus on false accusations. The week that had begun so victoriously had changed. The tide had turned against him. The public is fickle. A mob mentality, threats, and fear, and the disappointment of more hard times can turn good people. It happens. As the shadows of the day lengthened, they shouted for him to be killed. After a sham trial that resulted in the death penalty, the authorities beat him, and then led him out to be crucified—the lethal injection of the time.
(Reprise: “Hosanna)

Part 3 (by Maria Rainer Rilke:) “Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of the shadow and the day. The meaning discovered there.”

Part 3 Then and now, every week is holy week. The shadow and the day are around us all the time. The children and adults and youth who are leaders and prophets and teachers and activists all over the world, see the injustices, the destruction, and the lies. They refuse to be silenced and they speak truth. They work and march and the suffering of the vulnerable ones is noticed. The Holy Week stories are repeated in human experience. Palm parades change over time, but they are forever when the people remember who they are and rise up. The empires everywhere are still threatened and send out their arsenals of distrust and divisions and doubt and destruction. Every week is holy week—with palm parades and hopeful children and marching feet for change. And the parades get crushed and the heroes betrayed for money and unjust trials result in state sponsored murder and the powers still believe that killing finally will destroy the people, that hate can crush love and life and hope. It is an old story.
In my life, in your life, in the life of the world, the sun sets and the shadows turn the world gray. But in every holy story, remember, in every legend of the hero, in all the myths, in our lives, in every sacred moment, the story does not end in shadows, weighty with death and the unrelenting despair and grief of those who remain. Remembering the Holy Week stories is to honor the life of Jesus and of all of us when we choose, no matter the cost, to walk in the ways of justice, love, and peace. We always are being invited into both the shadow and the day. To see the pain of brokenness, to look upon the death and the violence, and to see and to bring the day, moment by moment, in the large and small ways that we may. A most poignant moment of the Easter narrative is a part we almost never notice—it is the moment—while it is still dark when the women dare to come to the tomb to anoint the body, to honor what matters and in hope, to do the next right thing, no matter how large looms the shadow, no matter how heavy the stones of despair. It is our high calling, too, in the shadows and in the day, to offer and to receive the hope and light of the power of Love. Once Wendell Berry wrote, “A creed and a grave never did equal the life of anything. Do remember this: yellow flowers sprout in the clefts of ancient stones at the beginning of April.”

Amen.

Palm Sunday, March 25, 2018
Shelly Wilson