This Day
Today is a strange day. Today the church wraps together Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. What used to be the two Sundays preceding Easter is now just one. And it is the first time the Eucharist has been celebrated in this place since March 8 – almost a month.Palm Sunday for me has wonderful and joyous memories. My favorite part was the custom I developed at St. Mary’s in Honolulu. We would bless palms in the gathering room and then march in procession out the doors, through the parking lot, cross one of the major thoroughfares coming out of downtown, and sing as we passed McDonald’s. There was a dear little Japanese lady, Jane Oki was her name, it was her favorite too. One year we had a leading musician from the Hawaiian Waikiki scene playing his accordion as we sang and marched.
As Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, with people singing and waving palms, the city was an intense place. There many factions fighting one another, both figuratively and literally. Passions were sometimes at the boiling point. There was deep resistance and resentment over the government – Roman at that point. And the bitter rivalry between the different branches of Judaism was enough to lead many to sense that the end was coming near.
In our own time – it’s funny as I wrote that paragraph above, it seemed like most of it could have been written about our own time.
Time of Crisis
There have been Mob actions from time immemorial. On Palm Sunday we begin with one. The crowds were gathered around Jesus in his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. We know how that one ended, right?I continue to read and hear about the need to focus on facts over fear, calm over panic. It’s not always easy to sort out the difference. To separate the triumph of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, with shouts of joy and Hosannah – from the pathos, the passion, of the Lord abandoned, alone, dying.
Like the victims of Covid-19 we hear about. The people who die alone, whose loved ones say goodbye by phone or video, with no opportunity to hug or hold hands.
That’s Jesus at the end of today’s Gospel reading.
Speak to the people
The last two Sundays Mary Pat and I have watched, listened, sung, prayed with St. Paul’s in Morning Prayer. We have been blessed to be a part your life in Christ.There’s a sense in which this past month has been the most momentous in the history of this parish.
The church that gathers at St. Paul’s in Monroe – though you can’t gather at the moment – is one that prays and makes music together, in praise of the goodness of God and the love that binds. Even if it can only be 2 or 3 gathered together, you are faithful and joyful and caring and determined. What a story you are!
One of the things I have grown to know more and more deeply is that it matters what stories we tell about ourselves.
If this is our story, what does it say about us?
- Do we tell the story to demonstrate that out of catastrophe comes a new beginning?
- Do we tell the story to pass the blame around?
- Do we tell the story to make the case that we are resourceful creations and we will find a solution?
We have seen and heard the stories of inspiration and generosity: landlord who wouldn’t accept rent for this month, signs in chalk on the sidewalks,
What story do we offer in the midst of this time of pandemic?
Stories
We are living in an exceptional time. Fewer and fewer people are questioning that. I remember hearing the question and asking others: “Do you know where you were when JFK was assassinated?” I still do. I remember vividly the circumstances when I learned about the events of 9/11. I remember the moment I learned about the Challenger disaster.We are living through such a time. It’s not a moment. It’s an unfolding saga. Sometimes it seems like it is in slow motion. Sometimes it seems like there are an unfathomable number of things happening in flash of time.
Such times make us who we are. We are, as it were, formed by the catastrophes and events that happen during our lifetimes.
But also I would add by the stories we tell and retell. Some events get repeated from generation to generation and they are formative for the children and the grand-children – unto a 100 generations.
Such is the story we tell today, on Palm Sunday. We tell the story of Jesus’ death on the Cross on only 1 Sunday in the year. It’s too much – even at the length we have heard it today. It’s a story that takes a week to tell. We call it Holy Week.
This is in so many ways the one story that Christians have to tell. It is the story we tell over and over, year by year, century by century. We retell it because it is the one story the universe has to tell. It is the one story that says who we are as Christians. It is the story that forms and shapes us.
What is new for me
One of the things that has shifted for me in the past couple of weeks is that I have listened to blogs that I haven’t always taken the time to listen to. Sources of wisdom, insight, learning that I realize feed my soul. It’s been a little blessing in the midst of the upheaval we are living through.There was a surprising bit of learning last week. Krista Tippet was interviewing an Italian theoretical physicist. Carlo Rovelli is his name. It was said of him that: “Carlo Rovelli takes up vast ideas beyond most of our imagining, like quanta, grains of space, and time and the heat of black holes.”
Such thoughts may not be your cup of tea, but it was evocative and inspiring for me. In my own words I heard him saying that in the larger framework of creation, there aren’t really things there are only relationships. There isn’t really time as past-present-future, there are only relationships and what he calls “happenings.”
The only thing that matters is our connectedness. Whether it is by ones or twos. Whether in a convention center or monastic cave, we are nothing but our relationships to one another. Whether we are at the point of triumph with Hosannah’s and waving palms, or we are at the withering solemnity of a lonely, suffering, death, we are never alone and bereft. “No man (or woman) is an island.”
And the story is not over. It takes a week to tell. Holy Week. And the end of the story is an empty tomb and there,
Jesus said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Go and tell my sisters / brothers that I am going into Galilee. They will see me there.”
Notes
lectionary
Psalm 118:
28 “You are my God, and I will thank you; *you are my God, and I will exalt you.”
29 Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; *
his mercy endures for ever.
Philippians 2:5-11
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,A Prayer for Our Uncertain Times
May we who are merely inconvenienced remember those whose lives are at stake.May we who have no risk factors remember those most vulnerable.
May we who have the luxury of working from home remember those who must choose between preserving their health and making their rent.
May we who have the flexibility to care for our children when their schools close remember those who have no options.
May we who have to cancel our trips remember those who have no safe place to go.
May we who are losing our margin money in the tumult of the economic market remember those who have no margin at all.
May we who settle in for a quarantine at home remember those who have no home.
As fear grips our country, let us choose love.
And during this time when we may not be able to physically wrap our arms around each other, let us yet find ways to be the loving embrace of God to our neighbors. Amen.
- Submitted by Fr. Michael Graham, S.J.
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