Another take...

If you're a member of our congregation and if, you read my post in this week's newsletter, you may think I'm having a hard time getting past Palm Sunday. You may be right!

From time to time I read a blog by Nadia Bolz-Weber called The Sarcastic Lutheran where she has a refreshing take on God and Christianity. Her sermon on Palm Sunday was about the fact that many go to church on Palm Sunday and then again on Easter Sunday but skip all the Holy Week stuff.

"...It seems reasonable to me that people choose to go from the Big Parade to the Empty Tomb and skip the stuff that makes them uncomfortable: stuff like how Jesus ate his last meal with the people he loved most, all of whom (perhaps like me) would betray abandon or deny him, that these friends (perhaps like me) couldn’t even stay awake while he prayed in the garden, that the crowd (perhaps like me) would strike and taunt him for not living up to their expectations, that the people would (perhaps like me) shout crucify him! And twist him a crown of thorns, that passersby would (perhaps like me) shout “for God’s sake, save yourself”.  Because we would save ourselves.  And the fact that Jesus got himself killed in a totally preventable way never once showing enough self-respect to fight back or get himself off that damned cross…well maybe he had it coming."

and then a little later:

"...So don’t go from glory to glory and skip the cross, because as Christ’s broken and blessed body you move into this week with only one certainty:
that as you enter it, you do so in the company of a self-emptying God who pursues you and saves you with relentless, terrifying love and who ultimately will enter the grave and the very stench of death in order to say even here, even here I will not be without you. Hosanna in the highest indeed. Welcome to Holy Week.  Amen."

Take a few moments and press the link on Palm Sunday and read the entire sermon. Powerful words of truth...and then think long and hard about attending the Maundy Thursday or Good Friday Tennebrae service with a congregation near you.