Day: March 28, 2021

“Behold thy king cometh unto thee”

The joy of this day is equally our pain. We wave branches of palms and sing “Hosanna to the Son of David.” We hail a king who enters his royal city. There is joy. Everyone loves a parade. Palm Sunday, we might say, is Christ’s parade. There is a sense of euphoria that belongs to the celebration of liberation or at least its anticipation.

And yet, the one before whom we wave branches of palm and to whom we sing “Hosanna to the king”, we also shout “Crucify, Crucify.” We nail him to a tree. The one whom we hail as king we mock and deny his rule in our souls and so deny our souls as well. We cast him out of his royal city and find ourselves the outcasts of all creation. In every way we make the parade of this day a parody of his way. We confront a contradiction, a contradiction within ourselves, a contradiction which we hardly know or see until it is pointed out to us, until we are made to see what we will not see. “They [we] shall look on him who they [we] have pierced.”

This is what we do. We make a parody of God’s way. Yet God makes something more. He makes a procession of redeeming love out of our parody of his parade. We shall find that our first notes of joy and euphoria are more true than at first we thought or knew. But only if we enter into the dark hell of Holy Week and into the heart-rending pain of the Passion. Only in passing through the parody of God’s parade can we even begin to hope to come into the procession of his endless love which bursts forth in the Resurrection. And only then might our joys more truly begin. We go from joy to sorrow and from greater sorrow to an even greater joy. Such is Passion and Resurrection.

Yet, perhaps, this must seem all a bit too much. How is it that you and I are present at all in these events, whether singing “Hosanna” or shouting “Crucify”, whether hailing or mocking one who is and who is not a king? The intent of our liturgy – and this week is really one long liturgy, from Palm Sunday to Easter Day – places us in these events, in the midst of these happenings. But again, what does that mean for you and for me and how can that be? Because these events confront us with ourselves. We confront something of ourselves in the presence of God.

We confront the mysteries of sin and death in the greater presence of the God who is love and life. But only through the parade of his Passion. The events of Holy Week compel us to look at ourselves anew, not simply with some greater degree of psychological insight but in the increased awareness of the presence of God. We are drawn into love by repentance. We are drawn into worship by holy fear. We are drawn into joy by sorrow. But why?

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