Palm Sunday--What One Woman Saw

Friends, Would you come with me today? Across time and culture, beyond distraction and schedules that enslave us? I send this dramatic monologue to you today——the words I will speak this Sunday in our service. Maybe they will help us enter into that day?

I was there that day.  There were so many people there---- but it wasn’t that. Jerusalem, what a city it is for people and crowds!! And it wasn’t even the procession, the parade.  These last two years-----there have been so many parades, trails of stumbling, lisping, broken, drooling people  rolled, pushed, carried, slung hoisted to him. Yeshua.  No one would dare to believe  in healing----except it was happening. To EVERYONE! Even the sorriest among them . .. .

 Everyone became like----new born!  Legs straightened and muscles strung right.  Women who were mute----now they are singing and adding a little dance too!!  And crippled men are running and leaping!!

 So—yes, we’ve been watching these  parades for many months now.

 

But this time--- they finally saw WHO he was! Everyone ran to pull down branches from the trees.  Whih means----Victory!  Triumph!  When was the last time we were victors of anything?  And we all took off our cloaks, our outer robes---and just laid them at his feet and at the feet of the donkey he was riding.

We knew what we were doing because ------Finally we all saw it.  He was the king!!   He was the one we’ve been waiting for since . …..  since we were a people.

 

And the singing!  Everyone was happy! We are not ----we have not been happy people. But this day!

“HOSANNA! HOSANNA!”

Children singing and old men, my grandpa,  the young mothers----everyone!  Cheering laughing shouting! Hosanna. And you know what “Hosanna” means, yes? It means, Please Save us! Save us!

 Finally----a king to lead us! To lead our people. We can be a nation again—not servants and slaves to the Romans …

 And we said---we turned to one another, all my friends, my neighbors, my cousins, we were all standing and shouting together, and we said, “We will follow him anywhere—- even into battle!” 

 But we didn’t.

We could not guess what would happen next. And if we had, no one would have been there that day. But I saw it. How those same people---not all of them, but some of them---my neighbors, my relatives, my  uncle and cousins----they were there just days later. How many days?  They were shouting again. Just yelling this time—not singing, and not waving palm branches but waving their fists and shouting——

CRUCIFY HIM!!

How did this happen?? From  O Save Us Our King, Our King!

To   CRUCIFY Him,  blasphemer!

HOW? 

But maybe I know.  They wanted a king, a MAN king who acted like a god.

 They didn’t want a king who WAS God.  

 They never really wanted God at all.

I wonder how many of us want God to enter our world and become king over our lives? We think, foolishly, that we will give up too much.

But here is what I know now: that day of singing and celebration and triumph was true.

And real, more real and more true than anybody every knew: 

"Ho-sanna!! Praise to the King! O Save us!!" we shouted.

And then very quietly,

through lashes, fists and nails  

  He did. 

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