Good morning…
Tomorrow marks the beginning of Holy Week in Christian churches across the globe, commemorating Jesus Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem for the last week of his earthly life. The next day the huge crowd that had arrived for the Feast heard that Jesus was entering Jerusalem. They broke off palm branches and went out to meet him. And they cheered:
Hosanna!
Blessed is he who comes in God’s name!
Yes! The King of Israel!
Jesus got a young donkey and rode it, just as the Scripture has it:
No fear, Daughter Zion:
See how your king comes,
riding a donkey’s colt.
The disciples didn’t notice the fulfillment of many Scriptures at the time, but after Jesus was glorified, they remembered that what was written about him matched what was done to him (John 12:12-16, MSG).
Palm branches were waving in the air before falling like confetti on the painful path set before this young Jewish rabbi named Jesus. I met a springtime poem this week and for some reason it reminds me of Jesus not giving up on the eternal love of God.
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“Instructions on Not Giving Up” by Ada Limón
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
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Patient, plodding, Jesus grows through whatever hardened humanity did to him, be it praise, insult, murder. Again this year he returns to the strange idea of continuously living in God’s abundant love despite the mess of us.
“Fine then, I’ll take it,” Jesus seems to say, as a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm. “I’ll take onto myself all of the pain of this world. For each of you, I’ll take it all.” God’s love expressed through Jesus Christ never gives up on us.
This springtime Holy Week, might the eternally greening love of God really get to us?
…Sue…
