Palm Sunday
Holy Week is not the retracing of history but the living of mystery anamnesis… not simply taking us back to the times of the upper room or Calvary… but rather recalling not only what once happened to Jesus but what is now happening among us as a people called to conversion, gathered in faith, and gifted with the spirit of holiness.
They celebrate God’s taking possession of our hearts at their deepest core… What Jesus is doing, and desires to do in each of our lives… Keep this in mind throughout this week… this is not history… it is mystery -> Jesus is literally doing something in your life right now… right here…
In our lives… we may have experienced hurt, we may have experienced betrayal, we may have experienced tragedy… perhaps we have harbored anger, resentment, bitterness, regret, sadness…
These emotions… these feelings… these experiences can bring darkness into our lives… they can make us feel we live under a cloud… we may find we feel stuck there, our souls feel chained and heavy.
Today Jesus was welcomed into the city of Jerusalem, by those who envisioned him to be the one to free them from the yoke of Roman rule and taxation.
How quickly they turned on him.
- Even the men Jesus had invited to be his closest associates betrayed and denied him… Judas sold him out for 30 pieces of silver…
- Perhaps you have poured great energy into a relationship only to be betrayed… a child… a spouse… a parent… a sibling… a friend…
- How deeply the dagger thrust is when it is driven home by one who we have loved, and who has led us to believe they loved us…
- Peter professed multiple times his willingness to die rather than be separated from Jesus… and yet when the time came, he denied even knowing him…
- Perhaps you have had someone who said they loved you… someone who you have given and sacrificed so much for… and in a moment, they abandoned you… they prefer their own comfort rather than stand with you in your need… they let you down…
- How numbing it is to be given such cold treatment from someone who was so close to us…
- To be abandoned and alone in our darkest moments… that is what it means to say: “My God, My God… why have you forsaken me”
Going through something like this… can lead a person to die on the inside…
- I invite you to call to mind these moments in your life when you have felt most betrayed… when you have felt most forsaken… most abandoned…
- What has this done to your life?
- Are your wounds still raw and open… perhaps they have healed but the scars are still there, and now you are protective, you don’t trust… you don’t laugh or smile as you once did… something has been taken from you…
Jesus came to take all of that upon himself… Though he was in the form of God… he emptied himself… becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
- Jesus the Christ has come to draw upon himself all the violence and disfunction of our fallen humanity… “I gave my back to those who beat me, my face I did not shield from buffets and spitting… The Lord God is my help, therefore I am not disgraced… I have set my face like flint…”
We can either accept this invitation to give our struggles to Jesus …or we can stay stuck in our pain and our wounds. The first leads down a road, probably long and with many ups and downs, but which in the end brings renewed freedom… the other will bleed us dry and slowly sap us of the will to live… and leave us bitterly disappointed…The choice is always ours… Will we give it all to Jesus… or hold onto it and take it with us?