What do you want to hear? What words, what images will strengthen your resolve, heal your worries, calm your fears?
I ask my husband those questions as I prepared to write the devotion for this week, the week preceding Palm Sunday and the Passion of our Lord. I expected him to say something about the Son of God, the offspring of the most high, choosing to be present to evil in a way that stands in opposition to it.
Instead he said, a vaccine.
I think he meant a vaccine for Covid-19 - which is what we all want. A cure. A miracle, a return to life, school, work, movies, restaurants, sports, vacations, holidays with family and friends. A vaccine, now.
I’m pretty sure the disciples wanted a vaccine too – a holy protection against the return to Jerusalem and what most of them were sure of. They were walking into a place filled with evil intent, with fear, with a kind of certainty about the fate that awaited the disruptor named Jesus.
I want a vaccine too.
Except there is only one way through life and that is through it. There was only one way to go to Jerusalem, that was to go to Jerusalem. There is only way to get to Easter and that is through Palm Sunday; the entry to the city of Jerusalem, Maundy Thursday, the last supper and the arrest in the garden, Good Friday, the trial and crucifixion and death of Jesus, to get to the resurrection.
Sure, we can celebrate the resurrection, celebrate Easter, but I invite you to go through it with us. In a time when we are confronted with our own mortality, our own Jerusalem, our own search for a cure.
Beloved I miss you all. I miss worshiping in the nave, seeing the altar guild and the ushers, struggling to produce a perfect bulletin, worrying about the stuff priest’s worry about. I’m not sure what will happen or when it will happen as it pertains to the pandemic in our midst, except to say all along the way God is here. Then as now, God is here. I felt it last Sunday at our coffee hour on zoom. I feel it as I, with the Iain and the staff work to produce worship that connects us to you and to God. Honestly, there are the days I would like to fall asleep and wake up when it’s all over, yet I know, I believe these days are binding us one to another, all the while reminding us that the love of God is stronger than death. This is the hope we hold in Christ Jesus. Hosanna in the highest.
The Liturgy of the Palms
The Liturgy of the Word
Rev. Alison +
