The four gospels each have rather distinct approaches to reporting Jesus' pilgrimage to Jerusalem for his last Passover observance. The lectionary directs us to the account of the palm processional reported in Mark's gospel. It is very tempered compared to that in the other gospels. To be sure, multitudes of the faithful were making their Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem. For some this was an annual trek and for many it was a-once-in-a-lifetime experience. In keeping with Matthew, Luke and John, the church has expanded Palm Sunday into high drama. One gospel added children, another the palms, and these three have Jesus and his entourage triumphantly winding through the streets of the holy city. Have you ever thought that while for most of the people it was a parade, part of the religious ritual, for Jesus it was more like a funeral procession?

Mark's processional with the Jesus on a colt is impressive enough, but the account is very restrained. Mark follows the crowd and processional only as far at the gates of the city. Only Mark has Jesus enter the city alone and go into the temple alone. Only in Mark does Jesus simply enter the holy of holies and took one last "look around at everything" before returning to Bethany to prepare for the last days of his life -- one last look before letting go.

An experience with my mother helped me to understand Jesus' quiet moment taking a measure of the place he loved so much. At the end of the Thanksgiving festivities before her death, I watched as my mother had one of her grandsons wheel her back into my daughter's dining room. Without a word, she slowly and quietly surveyed her beautiful hutch and her treasured cherry wood table that sat 18 people. The season of her nourishing her family and friends now over, and the accoutrements of her wondrous hospitality safely entrusted to her beloved granddaughter, she died peacefully a few days later -- one last look before letting go.

Back to Mark's narrative and the problem we have in this season: we are looking back in time through the filter of Easter Sunday to Holy Friday and Palm Sunday — we have the disadvantage of knowing how the story ends. It is a disadvantage because it too often lets the church treat Palm Sunday as an "Easter before Easter." The danger of our view is that it encourages people to diminish the suffering and death that were and are necessary for resurrection and new life; to move straight from Palm Sunday to Easter, bypassing the very uncomfortable reality of the cross.

Thinking about the pilgrims, there had to have been as many motives and reasons as there were people lining the route into Jerusalem waving palm branches and shouting loud hosannas. Some got it, truly grasped the nature of Jesus, his presence, passion, and purpose, his ministry and mission.

Some saw Jesus as the galvanizing political liberator who could drive out the Roman occupation government. Some were excited about Jesus because they hoped his charisma would bring down the strict religious hierarchy, liberating spirituality from orthodoxy and transforming legalism and ritual into soul-fullness.

Some shouted their affirmation for a magical, mystical miracle worker who healed, fed, comforted, confronted, and brought the dead back to life. And then there were the usual curiosity seekers who just loved parades and characters, but had no investment in Jesus or religion.

If there was a common thread in the diverse motives of the religious pilgrims it was the tenacious trust and enduring hope in the pilgrims that God would somehow act to redeem and save Israel. Relative to Jesus' birth, people had longed for a divine warrior but were unprepared for an infant messiah. Now, at Passover, they wanted the adult Jesus to liberate them from political and religious oppression, but they were unprepared for the reality that his purpose was to ultimately defeat death and free humanity from its power. For that liberation to occur the palm and funeral processions had to make a three-day stopover on Holy Friday before there could be an empty tomb on Easter morning.

So here we are, in church on Palm Sunday, baptizing Isabel Soja and welcoming 12 new members. We know how the Jesus story ends, but the choice is ours how we will journey through this holy week and whether we will pause for or pass by Holy Friday. This week affords us a sacred period in which to follow the example of Jesus: to survey and take stock of the temple of our souls.

This week, at points between palm processionals, the last supper, the Roman trial, the brutal cross, and the grief before discovering the empty tomb please pause to know, to really touch the one in whose presence you live each day. Use this mystical time to experience afresh the cost of Jesus' sacrificial love. Know again, as if for the first time, why you choose to be his disciples.

Try not to pass Holy Friday and the cross in a frenzied or indifferent dash to Easter -- particularly not now, now with the whole of humanity in the grip of the death instinct at work in the world. Bring Holy Friday into this death instinct so that the forces of death are matched by the power of God to bring new life.

Most importantly, take time each day this holy week to know what in you needs to be resurrected, gifted with new life. Know anew the place in you that needs to move from the art of dying to the art of living. I invite you to take some time now in silence to go to that place of needed resurrected new life, sit with it, and promise it that soon its tomb will be empty.

Prayer: Fresh wind of the Spirit: traverse our path from palms to passion bestowing your blessings:
awaken and resurrect
love and life
grace and goodness
passion and peace. In Christ's name. Amen.