Holy Week
begins with Palm Sunday, a time to reflect on the extremes within us.
The same
crowd who greet Jesus as King and Lord and sing “Hosanna!” shout “Crucify Him!”
barely a week later. It is a reminder to us all of the potential for both good
and evil present within our hearts… just because we are crying out hosanna in
this moment does not mean that we may not fall and find ourselves crucifying
Him in the next… Palm Sunday in its two Gospel passages sobers us… and gives us
a vision of human reality, our reality. Beginning in joy and ending in sorrow
it reminds us what happens when we try and shrink God, try and manipulate Him
into what we want Him to be, or even worse into what we want Him to want us to
be. The crowds shouting Hosanna do exactly this. They are good people, God
fearing people even, and that may be their problem; they fear but they do not
love. Love expands our understanding, fear shrinks it. In their fear and anger
their understanding is limited and so they want God to submit to them, to
follow their plan. They want Jesus to be their conquering Messiah, a warlord
who raises an army and frees the chosen people from their Roman overlords. They
don’t want what God wants to give; not a warlord Messiah but a suffering
servant who frees, not just a city or a people from physical domination and
slavery, but the whole cosmos from the slavery of sin and evil; They do not
want it, but they receive not a king upon a throne, but a lamb upon a cross.
Yes, “Hosanna!”
can turn to “Crucify!” so easily, so quickly. It can do that in my heart, in
your heart too. Anytime we try and shrink or constrain God to our plans, our
way of thinking, or our agendas, no matter how worthy or good they seem to be,
this is what happens…
So what is
our way out of this mess? Jesus shows us… In all of the chaos of palms and
processions He is simply Himself, silent, still, present. He submits to the
Will of the Father and empties Himself so that we may be filled… In the house
of the High Priest, before Pilate and even on the Cross He is simply following
the will of the Father and so is serene, secure, still. He is the still-point
of pure love around which the world, the cosmos turns and in His stillness He
opens for us an ever expanding vision of God, an ever expanding vision of Love.
Let our Holy Week begin and be blessed by uniting ourselves with the Stillness
of the Saviour and allow Him to call us to the simple acceptance of the will of
the Father for us whatever it may be, the divine vision for us that never
shrinks us to shout “Crucify!” but always gives us an ever-expanding vision of
Love that causes us to sing “Hosanna!” We may not even know what it is for us
in our lives as yet, but we can be certain that as long as we allow Christ to
be the still centre of our being we will pass into the flow of the Divine Will,
into the flow of Love.
(Pic is by James Tissot)
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