Palm Sunday 2013

Palm Sunday 2013

(Luke 19:28-40) Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

The duality of joy and sorrow on Palm Sunday. Split souls tend to make split decisions.

Souls lost in separation see the world in terms of dualistic conflict.

Souls lost in separation create a world of dualistic conflict.

On Palm Sunday the crowds in Jerusalem greeted Jesus as the conquering hero. They knew he had the power. They knew God was on his side. They declared him to be the rightful king of Israel. They believed they had picked the winner and they wanted to show their support to gain his attention, his favor and his rewards. They were happy beyond imagination.

Others in Jerusalem were not so happy. Everyone who worked for the Temple was not happy. The Sanhedrin (the religious court) was not happy. Many of the religious teachers and students in the dozen or so sectarian schools weren’t happy. The wealthy businessmen were not happy. And, the Romans were not happy.

In the world that human beings create, a winner requires a loser.

The people who greeted Jesus with shouts of “Hosanna! - Praise the Lord- claimed the status of winners. And, they knew very well that there would be losers. Part of the joy of victory is the defeat of your opponent.

Jesus embodies unity. He is the union of humanity and divinity. He is the balance of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, profit and loss. The balance point is love. It is the steadfast holy unconditional universal love that is God.  There are no winners and loser in this love. There is only love. Love is the origin of our species. Love is the meaning, purpose and destiny of our species.

Very quickly, many people find their joy at Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem turn to sorrow. Within days, it becomes clear that Jesus is doing nothing the crowds expect, desire or demand. They begin to abandon him. One of the inner circle surrounding Jesus does a quick calculation of the situation and chooses to save his life by betraying Jesus.

By Thursday night those who fear Jesus perceive his strange behavior as their opportunity to strike. They arrest him and condemn him to death. His followers run away. The crowds who had shouted: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord now shout out “Crucify him!” At the end, only his mother and her two companions and a teenager named John remain loyal to him.

What went wrong?

From a human perspective Jesus failed to work within the world system the human race has created, maintains and extends. We create a system of wealth and poverty, rewards and punishments, power and submission, winners and losers. From a human perspective Jesus failed to live within the system and to use his power to be a winner. In that failure he became a loser.

From God’s perspective, this was the only way to solve the underlying problem that defines our species.  This underlying problem is separation. We chose separation from God. We choose separation from each other. We perpetual separation in the way we think, feel and make choices.

Separated souls are split souls. We spilt ourselves, our institutions and our societies into units of competition and conflict. Split souls issue split decisions.

Split decisions are based on a single question: what’s in it for me?

On Palm Sunday many people looked at Jesus from that question and answered it with two words: money and power.

On Good Friday virtually all people looked at Jesus and answered the same question with two different words: pain and death.

Jesus didn’t love the people on Palm Sunday any more or any less on Good Friday. Jesus just doesn’t have love. Jesus is love. That love is proceeds from unity with God and accomplishes the Great Mystery of what the church calls salvation.

Salvation is the reunion of a separated soul with God.

The basis of reunion is not grounded in the duality of righteousness and unrighteousness, of perfection or imperfection, of rewards and punishments, of winners or losers. The foundation of reunification is Divine Love incarnate in Jesus Christ.

As a man, Jesus could experience the full extremes of joy and sorrow we as a species create. He could and did experience pleasure and pain, light and darkness, life and death.

During this Holy Week observe how Jesus does this. Pay attention to the emotional reactions and demands of his followers and his enemies. Ponder how Jesus as a man experiences this terrible conflict born of separation. Contemplate how Jesus as God is the resolution of this conflict.

The Great Mystery of Faith is for us to shout out the Palm Sunday acclamation in the midst of duality, in the midst of please and pain, of joy and sorrow, of life and death,.

This Palm Sunday acclamation: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” enters into the world of dualism human beings create. This acclamation becomes distorted, diminished and misunderstood in the context of conflict. This acclamation is rescued, redeemed and reformed in the triumph of Love we will celebrate on Easter Sunday.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Praise the Lord!