The challenge of Palm Sunday is fighting the impulse to skip ahead. But we’re invited not only into a bittersweet day but a whole week which challenges how we see the hope of Christ in our lives.
We arrive at Jerusalem with Jesus expecting hope and fear
Palm Sunday B | John 12:12-16
Where do we come in? We entered this space through a door. But we don’t think of this space like our home and those doors like our front door. No, this is a different space for us, isn’t it?
These big, wooden doors are a kind of gate to a holy place, a bit small for a city, but a common place of gathering. We don’t come for a show, only; we aren’t patrons. Pilgrims, perhaps, making the sacred journey, a pilgrimage to a holy temple. The place in which we hope to encounter God.
And the Temple isn’t just the holy spot, the place with the altar, it’s the extended gathering spaces, the marketplace, the front porch. A place full of people from all backgrounds and experiences.
That’s the funny thing about pilgrimages and spiritual journeys. They always start out from a place of selfishness—a personal desire to encounter the divine—and they end up connecting us with people entirely unlike us searching for the same thing.
We meet fellow travelers on the road, like the strangers who become friends along the Camino de Santiago.
These solo journeys are almost never solo very long. We walk in to see how not alone we are.
And those of us born into the church, carried along the pilgrim’s path, we enter the temple every week of our lives, hardly knowing the difference. Of journeys which were never embarked alone—we’ve always had other pilgrims traveling in front of us, beside us, behind us.
What did we hear?
Perhaps this is why this arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem was always going to be so different. Because it would always be different.
We walked together into our temple to hear this story today. But how do we hear it? Not just as ourselves. But as Christians? Or like those first proto-Christians nearly 2000 years ago heard it? Which hearing is ours?
What if we heard it like a people who have been reading through these gospels all together? What comes of this story right after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead?
How then, do we come into Jerusalem, to this Temple with Jesus this morning in great celebration and anticipation when we know what is on the horizon?
If we’ve been reading along in Mark rather than John — we get both gospels this year — we’ve heard Jesus say three times already that he’s going to Jerusalem and when he gets there, he’ll be arrested, tried, and killed. Then on the third day, he’ll be raised.
Did we go along, like Peter, James, John, and the other disciples and pretend like this is normal? Like he doesn’t mean it. Even though this man controlled a hundred demons at once and silenced a storm at his command!
When we walked in with our hosannas and palms, what else did we bring? Did we bring in both our anticipation and our dread? Or are we already skipping ahead?
Can we hear?
Where do we come into this story?
Are we willing to hear it like we’re those disciples, expecting the unlikely victory?
Can we hear it like those hearing the story decades later, from people who knew people who knew Jesus himself? Where do they find themselves in this story — those first people hearing it fresh? Maybe knowing what will happen next; maybe not.
Imagine suspending, not our disbelief, but our foreknowledge! Imagine that all we have to go on right now is that Jesus said he was going to die in Jerusalem, his disciples didn’t believe him, and we have walked through the gates, following our beloved on a donkey.
Here we are behind him, watching and waiting. What’s really going to happen here?
Do we trust our faith tradition? It seems to expect the new David will come with an army, on a horse, to liberate the people from this oppressive empire. So Jesus is already fooling with that script.
Or do we trust Jesus? He’s telling us that this glory isn’t what we think it is.
Like those first hearers, we’ve been put in the strange place of deciding between our church and our Christ.
Slow down
Maybe we can’t all pretend we’re literally behind Jesus or pretend to be one of those 1st-Century followers hearing the gospel for the first time. Maybe we’re here. We’ve come to celebrate this day with joy and fear.
And maybe we are already planning what we’ll wear next Sunday. Or maybe we’re making the mental checklist of all we have to do this weekend: this Thursday, Friday, Saturday; before we even get to Sunday.
Some of us are jumping straight to the cross or the resurrection. We want to go from this dark celebration at the beginning of Holy Week to the light one which kicks off Easter.
Maybe that’s where we are.
But maybe hold off skipping so far ahead. Just for a few more days.
Sit in this strange entrance into the holy city, into this beautiful temple with your fellow pilgrims. Reflect in the coming days on how Jesus spends those first days after arriving in Jerusalem: how he challenges the authorities, challenges the traditions, and challenges the empire.
Reflect on how Jesus loves the world enough to invite us into transforming it. To see the way we let one another down and impose unhealthy expectations on each other.
Or how we fail to see our fellow travelers as pilgrims, too.
Reflect on the fear and greed, and hatred which build and center on Jesus. Not from the pilgrims, but the priests.
The road has brought us here, through these big, wooden doors, to this blessed temple for worship in love, hope, and expectation.
But please don’t skip ahead. Don’t race to the end. Stay here and take this week day by day. And we’ll be here, with fellow pilgrims, seeking, and hoping, like Peter, to change the story’s end before we get there.