A Reflection for Palm Sunday St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Ahoskie, NC
April 10, 2022 Thomas E. Wilson Guest Celebrant
“Palm Sunday 2022”
The word “Ahoskie”, I am told, means “to listen”. Thank you for inviting me to be with you in Ahoskie to listen to what God might be saying in our hearts.
In Seminary, forty years ago, I had a Homiletics Professor who called preaching "making with the message". Usually I don't preach on Palm Sunday since the service is long enough as it is, but today I break that habit, and “make with a message”. I am retired and at age 75 - there are a lot more years behind me than before me. My death is closer than it ever has been. In fact, since the beginning of this service, I am now a half an hour closer to my death. I don't want to die. I don't know how or when it will happen - could be decades, years, hours; who knows? But it is a reality – as Simon and Garfunkel put it; “That's a fact Jack!”
Writer Dave Eggers, found out about death 40 years ago, when he was 21, when both of his parents died and he was left alone to raise his 8 year old brother. He wrote:
"On the one hand you are so completely bewildered that something so surreal and incomprehensible could happen. At the same time, suddenly the limitations or hesitations that you might have imposed on yourself fall away. There's a weird, optimistic recklessness that could easily be construed as nihilism but is really the opposite. You see that there is a beginning and an end and that you have only a certain amount of time to act. And you want to get started."
Last month Eggers turned 52 years old and after many successes and many mistakes, he is still writing and publishing.
In the same way. Jesus, on Palm Sunday, knows that his death is at hand. Like all of us humans, he does not know when, or how it will be, but when he rides into Jerusalem, he knows it will be just a matter of time. So how does that awareness change what he does and what we do? What are the things he chooses to do and on what does he no longer waste time? He makes choices like spending quality time with friends, healing of others, forgiving, speaking truth to power, telling people of his love for them, saying good- bye. He makes 10 commitments in his final week:
He reminds the community of who and whose they are.
He gathers his community together, washing their feet and feeding his friends with especial focus on bread and wine as outward and visible signs for when he will not be with them.
He reminds them that all human monuments will crumble.
He heals the sick and performs work of mercy.
He confronts the forces of hypocrisy in Religion and governments.
He stands up against injustice.
He is ruthlessly honest in dealing with his enemies.
He forgives outlandishly.
He is a messenger of Grace.
He trusts that all things, even death, are redeemed by God.
Anne Lamott wrote: “My deepest belief is that to live as if we’re dying can set us free. Dying people teach you to pay attention and to forgive and not to sweat the small stuff.”
We are now 37 minutes closer since the beginning of the service. “That's a fact Jack!” What does our remaining life look like to each of us?
Palm Sunday 2022
Getting on a donkey, riding for hours,
to say a few words, make some motions,
in the hopes of changing some notions
about how dealing with all the powers,
might bring a sense of meaning to lives;
that every moment is filled with touches
of the Holy; becoming dancers not judges,
before being consigned to dusty archives.
Couple of thousand years later, in same task,
being called to dance to the music of stars
by walking with others; healing some scars,
by singing, listening or daring prayer to ask
our lives might become beacons of light
to all of us walking in darkness into night.
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