Fr Z<\/a><\/u> has a nice piece on how and when that\u2019s done now in many parishes; H\/T to Deacon Greg Kandra for the link), and standing for what was known by all as The Long Gospel. Then a week later, out of order but appropriately for the beginning of Holy Week, we had Palm Sunday with its glory, laud, and honor and waving branches. So whiplash instead of vertigo, and over a more prolonged period.<\/p>\nBut this morning I stood in the lightest of rains\u2013heaven joining with the holy water sprinkling\u2013as the palms were blessed and the Gospel read and we processed into church singing Hosanna. Then the quick and terrible shift from high to low, heralded by those two most moving readings, Isaiah\u2019s suffering servant and Paul\u2019s sublime hymn to the kenosis, the self-emptying, of Christ, threaded together with the premonitory wail of \u201cMy God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\u201d<\/p>\n
The part that gets me, though, is the way the communal reading of the Passion\u2013the not-so-long Gospel in Mark\u2019s version, which we read today\u2013forces us to Be There. I hate, literally hate, having to join in the chorus of \u201cCrucify him!\u201d I hate the way it sounds\u2013by which I mean, familiar. I hate how easily I slipslideaway from joyful palm-waving to jeering self-interest. And I hate how that few moments\u2019 silence in which we kneel threatens to swallow the universe. Palm Sunday guarantees that when we are asked, 5 days from now, \u201cWere you there when they crucified my Lord?\u201d we have cause to tremble, tremble, tremble.<\/p>\n
I had the privilege of being part of Palm Sunday in another, more joyful way today. After Mass, I zipped over to Sugar Creek Presbyterian Church, and in a parking-lot quick change worthy of Superman\u2019s phone booth, transformed myself with skirts and scarves into Tamar the Tea Seller, part of the Jerusalem Marketplace reenactment that my friend Wendy Symonds runs every year as an intergenerational Christian formation event. (I was standing in for the usual tea seller.) Adults portray various merchants and craftspeople of Jerusalem, while parishioners, especially the children, rove from booth to booth. We remain in character and ask all we meet if they have news of Jesus. I had some amazing conversations\u2013children who argued whether he was riding on a donkey or a colt, one young man who professed to be the boy whose loaves and fish Jesus had multiplied, and a couple of men who tried to get me to agree that Jesus should overthrow the Romans. (I told them I never mixed politics and commerce.) \u201cI haven\u2019t seen him yet,\u201d one young girl confessed, \u201cbut I\u2019m going to keep looking. And if I find him, I\u2019ll bring him back to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
This day begins a week in which the world finds Jesus and brings him back to us, over and over. We are joyful palm wavers and gossipy tea sellers, Passover pilgrims, owners of colts and renters of party rooms, and as the week goes by we will be more and more those jeerers and spitters, deniers and runaways. And the silence of Golgotha will deafen us.<\/p>\n
So on this Palm Sunday night I step back a little from the all-too-human pageant ahead, and reflect on a handful of silent inanimate objects that leapt out at me from Mark\u2019s Passion account this morning. Three jars, three cups, three lengths of cloth, a mini-retreat to take myself through this holiest, most harrowing of weeks.<\/p>\n
Three Jars<\/b><\/p>\n
When he was in Bethany reclining at table in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil, costly genuine spikenard.<\/i>
\nAt whose table will I meet Jesus this week? What grand, foolish, generous gesture will he call out of me?<\/p>\n
\u201cGo into the city and a man will meet you, carrying a jar of water. Follow him.\u201d<\/i>
\nWhere will following the water of my Baptism lead me this week? Who will God send to meet me?<\/p>\n
One of them ran, soaked a sponge with wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink . . .<\/i>
\nFor what is my soul thirsting this week? How will I respond when life gives me only bitterness to drink?<\/p>\n
Three Cups<\/b><\/p>\n
Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it.<\/i>
\nWhere will I find communion this week? Will I remember to give thanks for the shared cup?<\/p>\n
\u201cAbba, Father, all things are possible \u00a0to you. Take this cup from me, but not what I will but what you will.\u201d<\/i>
\nWhat cup am I pushing away? Where is my Gethsemene, the place where God\u2019s will becomes my own?<\/p>\n
They gave wine drugged with myrrh, but he did not take it.<\/i>
\nWhat addictions and distractions survived my Lenten discipline? What will this week ask me to face without flinching?<\/p>\n
Three Lengths of Cloth<\/b><\/p>\n
Now a young man followed him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked.<\/i>
\nHow will I be remembered as a follower of Jesus? What is the last piece of my old self to which I am clinging, that threatens to keep me captive to the world?<\/p>\n
They clothed him in purple and, weaving a crown of thorns, placed it on him.<\/i>
\nWhom do I robe in scorn and ridicule? What things to which I give allegiance are really thorns, piercing my spirit?<\/p>\n
Having bought a linen cloth, he took him down, wrapped him in the linen cloth, and laid him in a tomb that had been hewn out of the rock.<\/i>
\nHow have I prepared myself to be buried with Christ, so that I may rise with him? How am I weaving my soul\u2019s eternal garment?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Palm Sunday, if you take it seriously, can really blow you away. The swoop from the high of Hosanna to the silence of Calvary is akin to those thrill rides that pull your stomach out through your nose. I\u2019m not much for those anyway, unless I\u2019m trying to convince my son I\u2019m not a wuss, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1086,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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