FPCA Lenten Devotions

Meditations for the Lenten Journey

During Lent, members of FPC-A Congregation have the opportunity to write devotions

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Lenten Meditation for March 31

The conversations we have with ourselves, and the questions that prompt them, can be just as important in shaping our faith as our conversations with other people. In the following sonnet, Malcolm Guite, a contemporary English poet and priest, challenges us to internalize the Palm Sunday story and guard against what we may find in our hearts when we ask, “Will I welcome him?”

Palm Sunday

Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,

The seething holy city of my heart,

The saviour comes. But will I welcome him?

Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;

They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,

And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find

The challenge, the reversal he is bringing

Changes their tune. I know what lies behind

The surface flourish that so quickly fades;

Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,

The hardness of the heart, its barricades,

And at the core, the dreadful emptiness

Of a perverted temple. Jesus come

Break my resistance and make me your home.

The poem warns of danger beyond the “fading” celebration. As the gospel narrative unfolds within “the seething holy city” of our hearts, the initial “easy feelings” may turn into “self-interest” and “fearful guardedness” as we consider the high cost of discipleship. Thus the holy temple at our “core” is at risk of becoming “perverted" into a place of “dreadful emptiness.” Will I really welcome Him?

Like the poet, may we take time on Palm Sunday not only to remember and celebrate Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, but also to pray that He will come into our hearts and make them His home through easy times and hard.

“Palm Sunday” is from Sounding the Seasons, by Malcolm Guite, Canterbury Press, 2012.

Bob White

March 31, 2023