Somehow, we have already made it to Palm Sunday. Perhaps your Lent has been long, full of suffering and even forced hardship, or perhaps it has gone too quickly, and you feel you have failed to really enter into this penitent season. Wherever you find yourself this final Sunday in Lent, you can be assured that the Lord longs to meet you right where you are.
Today marks our entrance into Holy Week and the recognition of our full participation in the crucifixion of our dear Lord. We will stand shoulder to shoulder with our families and brothers and sisters in Christ and say the words, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” We will acknowledge together our sinfulness, our littleness, and most importantly, our need for a redeemer.
Yet, underneath these difficult words, underneath the cries of the Psalm soon echoed by Jesus – “‘My God, my God why have you abandoned me?’”- there is great hope. We must enter into these solemn days, and realize that every Sunday we are reminded of the reality of Christ’s glorious Resurrection and his triumph over death. The darkness will not prevail.
The Gospel today is familiar to us, and yes, your children will make swords out of their palms and whack each other with them when you want them to be listening, and they will moan at just how long they have to stand, but we can remind them (and ourselves) that it is important we hear this story every year, that the gravity of this Passion story fills our hearts and minds.
Listen also to the words of Paul to the Philippians and marvel at the profound reality that the son of God “humbled himself becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). Why did he do that? So that at his beautiful name, every knee would bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord! That is what we do today. We stop amidst the chaos, hurt, joy and sorrow of our lives and marvel at what Jesus did for us. We take the disappointment in ourselves at our failed Lenten resolutions, we take the burdens for our children, for our marriages, for the world, and we lay them at the foot of the cross because there is literally no burden we can carry that he did not carry first, that he did not bear in his scourging and in his death.
It has been a long Lent in our home, and the burdens have been unexpected and heavy. I always marvel at the way the Lord makes my Lent what it is supposed to be, that he chooses the perfect suffering and the best way to draw me to himself. It truly is a gift to suffer with Christ. The older I get the more I recognize just how true that really is. This week, as we walk with Christ into the Garden of Gethsemane, may we stay awake; as we follow him to his scourging, may we recognize that we inflict the wounds; and as we walk him to his crucifixion, may we pick up the cross and relieve his burden, just as we recognize that we are the ones driving the nails into his precious hands and feet. May we beg the Holy Spirit to change us, to transform us. With total humility, may we recognize that we are Judas; we are Peter; we are in desperate need of what Christ offers us on the cross.
Suffering may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. All of our burdens are made light because we know that Easter Sunday is coming, and it cannot be stopped. Death and evil will be defeated; the devil will lose. The stones will cry out if we remain silent, so let us not be silent. “The Lord God is my help, therefore I am not disgraced; I have set my face like a flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame” (Is 50:7).