Scripture: Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 • Matthew 21:1-11 • Philippians 2:5-11
We are invited this week to see things as God sees them. Jesus' triumphant entry into David's City riding on a donkey and young colt over coats and cut palm branches contrast with the martial display of occupying Caesar's troops. A contrast in power.
More importantly , we see love as we have never seen it before. The very nature and essence of God is made manifest for all to see through the sacrifice, passion and death of his beloved Son. Sister Kym Harris, in her Exposition, contrasts the delights we see and experience in romantic love with the love of God through the sacrifice and death of Jesus, an unselfish gift of love, seeing us, and despite all of our weakness, flaws and sin.
The Rev. Kate Huey cites several authors, in her Passion Amidst Palms, who say that Jesus' death changed everything, especially how we see and experience God's love. Barbara Brown Taylor says that God brought divine love to life in the gift of God's Son, the one thing God had to give more precious to God than God himself. God said we no longer had to come to him - to the temple any more. God loves us so much that he now comes to us, wherever we are and whatever we are experiencing in our lives. In the passion of Christ we see that God loves us even in acts of betrayal, fear, weakness, denial and desertion.
In "Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday," Sara Miles tells us that Jesus willingly faced and absorbed all the hard truths of human violence, pride and weakness, and to love and stay with us anyway so that sin and death will have no more power over us. With her, let us pray that we may see how much we have in common with all of Jesus' beloved people. May we face the beauty and sadness of humanity, and not turn away. And that we may love and forgive in face of every hurt, betrayal, pain, sickness, mistake and failure. May we be Christ, be his love, to the world.
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