Always we begin again.
As we celebrate Palm Sunday a second time now distanced and on Zoom St. Benedict’s words have been at the forefront of my heart and mind. Always we begin again. And so here we go, beginning Holy Week with Palm Sunday again - not necessarily the way we would want to, but the way that is right and good given our desire to keep everyone safe. Now even though this online gathering may not be ideal, nonetheless, we are invited today to enter into the story of Jesus. We are being call to pay attention to it anew. For always we begin again.
And in beginning again, we start with a parade. We hear the familiar story of Jesus entering Jerusalem riding on a colt surrounded by people laying their cloaks and palm branches before him shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” Then from that triumphal entry we fast forward three chapters in the gospel of Mark and several days in the timeline and the story turns. Now we are in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is praying. Initially distressed, agitated, and deeply grieved, through prayer he is given the resolve to follow the path set before him. The path that includes arrest, interrogation, persecution, and forced movement. Gone is the triumph. This is no parade. It is a death march onto Golgotha where Jesus will die.
The story runs the gamut from mountain top experience to the darkest depths of despair. And as we reflect on this, don’t we see in Jesus’ story the reality of our stories and lives? For don’t we all know what it’s like to live with the tension of victory and defeat, joy and sorrow, life and death? Rarely in this world is anything or anyone purely all one thing or another. All good or all bad. All right or all wrong. All positive or all negative. Even as we reflect upon the past twelve months, I’m sure that each one of us can come up with a long list of unwanted losses and at the same time unexpected blessings. And God in Christ has been present to us through it all.
This Holy Week gives us the opportunity to be present to Jesus as he goes through it all. And in being present to the uncomfortable tension of the highs and lows of his life we are more able to fully know his presence in our own. A presence and a power that is unlike anything else we experience in this world - One that truly is all good, all merciful, all forgiving, all love.
Which is a lot to take in in one Palm Sunday service or one Holy Week or even one church year. That is why we return to it over and over. We have been here before. Some of us have years of Palm Sundays under our belt. And, God willing, we will be here again (hopefully in person!) next year and the next and the next. Each time letting God’s love and passion sink more deeply into our lives and into our souls so that we might experience new life in Christ. So what are we waiting for?
Always we begin again.
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