Reflections on Palm Sunday

A cynical person might say that Palm Sunday doesn’t matter in the grand scheme because less than a week later, Jesus dies. A hopeful person might say that Palm Sunday does matter because a week later Jesus is alive, and Palm Sunday is a sign that those who celebrate and Bless Jesus are right. There are two ways you can look at the incident in the Bible we now celebrate on Palm Sunday—you can see it as the beginning of the end, or as the end of the beginning. It is the last time, at least according to the Bible, that Jesus is treated like a hero prior to his persecution and death. But it is also the beginning of a religious celebration we observe 2000 years later.

Last week, sometime between our church service on Sunday and Monday morning, our church furnace quit. It had had a long, hardworking life and it was the furnace’s time. You could say the timing was bad—it has made for a cold Palm Sunday. On the other hand, it could have been far worse—it could have quit during a week when the weather plunged to near zero at night, leaving the congregation with a dilemma about how to keep the pipes from freezing. Instead, the furnace brought us through another winter. The new furnace will probably be much more efficient, meaning we will spend somewhat less per gallon of oil to heat the building.
It seems like it has been one thing after another because maintenance of this building has been deferred for a very long time. This congregation has been through a lot over the years. In some ways this time is easy—when a furnace breaks, we know how to fix it. When conflicts between members arise and relationships break, it can be much more complicated to try and fix that.

It has been my practice in life to try and take the blessing in every good experience, and look for the lesson in every bad experience. On the Palm Sundays of my life, I have tried to go with the flow, soak it all in and stored it up in my memory banks, but too often, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop and ruin the good times. After the Good Fridays of my own life, I have looked to find lessons, hoping I can make changes and prevent things from getting so bad again. In all of this something has been lacking. I didn’t know what until I received my star gift in January. Star gifts, for those of you who don't know about them, are little paper stars with a word on them passed out on the first Sunday of the new year. The word is your gift for the year, a word that will serve as the basis of meditation in the coming year. My gift for 2007 is "hope." Too often, I don’t give hope much of a chance. I certainly don’t lead with hope, and I don’t like it when people try to get me to do it. Sometimes hope dawns, as it did for the followers of Jesus on Easter morning. But I don’t do very well at making hope my default mode, my starting place. That’s too bad, because when I get to the place of hope, I’m pretty good at it. I get inspired. I inspire others.

Today, on this chilly Palm Sunday, God is calling us to lead with our hopes and not with our fears.

We all know hope can seem misplaced, and even silly. We know that if we’ve ever seen American Idol auditions. But the hope of 16-year-olds who’ve decided to try and be a star this week is a far different thing from the collective hope of this congregation, which has gone through so much and endured so much and accomplished so much. If we don’t try, we don’t ever fail, but we don’t ever succeed, either. So this Palm Sunday, I’ve decided to lead with hope. I’ve decided to lead with hope because Palm Sunday is about hope. Even though the week that begins with Palm Sunday ends with Good Friday, the following week begins with Easter. I hope you will decide to lead with your hope as well today and every day.