Readings: Luke 19:28-40 (triumphal entry) and Luke 22:14-27 (Last Supper)
It's tempting to try most of all to re-create these scenes in our worship -- like a Lent/Holy Week version of a Christmas nativity pageant.
In a nativity pageant, for the time of the pageant we suspend our connection with the present moment as we dress up and act like the shepherds, angels and magi, and like Mary and Joseph long ago. We re-create and dramatize a past event, and it's effective for teaching children the story. It can be a good way to engage their imaginations in telling and interpreting the story in new ways. But pageants also run the the risk of creating the impression that it's just an exotic, long-ago story that we dust off like a ritual.
Same goes for Palm Sunday. It's fun to have palm leaves waving, sing joyous songs of the kingdom's coming, and to remember the messiah's entry to the city 2000 years ago. It's a good way to remember and pass on the story, and we enjoy it.
But beyond this we also need to wonder what it means for today -- how this part of God's story is lived out not just in the sanctuary, but in the world today.
Does Jesus still today, as he did then, enter our city? Is there still, as there was then, variety of understanding and diversity of agendas among those who welcome him? Does he still, as he did then, need to spend time correcting our theologies and orienting us to the true way of God? Does the journey still, as it did then, lead to death and resurrection as the way the kingdom comes?
This Sunday in our worship we will remember the first Palm Sunday, and we will seek to grow in our openness to the coming of God's salvation today.
Readings: Philippians 3:4b-12 and John 12:1-8
In the reading from Philippians, Paul is writing about more than just a change in his theology (from his law-keeping version of Judaism, to the divine grace he comes to know in Christ); he is writing about a change in his whole life (from achieving and enjoying success and respect in society, to letting it all go for the sake of following and serving an alternative vision of what will make the world good).
Some around him no doubt are saying the change is for the worse -- that it has ruined his life because it has cost him his old friends and has landed him in jail (this letter is written from a Roman jail). But Paul says, "It's the best thing that happened to me, and I'm glad for the turn my life has taken. In fact, I hope I can continue this path; it will only get better."
Think of it this way. If Paul were here today it would be like he gave up a tenured teaching post and
position as head of the Department of Religious Observance at Hebrew U to
become an unpaid missionary to migrant workers, because that's where he felt God calling him ... or like he gave up a seat on the executive of the Jerusalem
International Religious Council for Preservation of the Faith where he could
shape public policy for all the kingdom, in order to apply (and not even always
successfully) to be one of a number of temporary teachers to a few Christian
congregations because that’s where he thought God was working … or like he resigned
a high-salaried, high-powered position as pastor of a mega-church, not to
become a $1000/hour religious consultant or a best-selling author on the latest
spiritual trends, but to become an unpaid itinerant street corner evangelist to
the poor and the outcast, because that is the way of Christ.
Like Mary in the Gospel story (pouring out her precious ointment that she had been saving for who knows how long), Paul doesn't hold back when he feels touched and moved by God in Christ. He happily sacrifices what is necessary to follow where his heart and soul tell him God is leading, and he rejoices in the new life he finds because of it.
In worship on Sunday we'll see if this says anything to us.
Reading: Luke 15:1-32 (Jesus' parables of a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost family member)
These parables are not, in the first instance, about forgiveness -- at least, no more particularly than anything (and everything?) about God's realm is about forgiveness.
It's tempting to think they are, especially with the third parable's perfect symmetry of a wasteful but penitent younger son, a loving and unconditionally generous father, and a moral but bitter elder son. But unlike other instances in the Gospels where Jesus responds to challenges to his practice and understanding of forgiveness (e.g. Mark 2:1-12; Matthew 18:21-22), in this case he is addressing a challenge to where and with whom he shares meals and makes community -- that is, who he includes in his list of "the righteous" and who he sees and treats as the heart and soul of God's vital people in his day.
The Pharisees and scribes are used to counting noses and checking attendance at the synagogue and in the temple to identify the righteous. They count these good folks as the moral majority of their time, and as the demographic whose needs and well-being they happily serve.
Jesus, however, grows into the habit of counting other kids of folks as friends and followers of God. His list includes "the sinners" who don't fit in to the synagogue-and-temple crowd. He sees them somehow as the heart and soul of God's new movement in his day. And he is content at times to by-pass synagogue and temple himself in order to spend time, share meals, and make community (common-cause) with them.
I wonder if at least some of them (who he likens to a lost sheep, a lost coin, or a lost family member, and who he celebrates finding and being restored to),were the "spiritual but not religious" people of their day?
If so, I wonder what Jesus, his choices of company, and his parables say to us who are spiritual and religious ... both in the church, and wanting to be where Jesus is?
