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.
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