NOTE FROM PASTOR J R FOR PALM SUNDAY, APRIL 17, 2022
This Sunday is Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week. During Holy Week people of the Christian faith take time to recall or try to relive or retrace Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem through The Passion of Christ from Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane through Jesus’ crucifixion on Good Friday.
We should be mindful that the Holy Week events of 2000 years ago such as Palm Sunday have real significance for our lives today. Palm Sunday’s significance offers us HOPE. The reality is that if we figure to survive and even thrive in this world, we had better have HOPE. David E. Leininger reminds us that the ancients knew that. He asks,
“Do you remember Pandora? Mythology has her as a lady endowed with every charm…the gift of all the gods. She was sent to earth with a little box which she had been forbidden to open, but curiosity finally got the better of her…she lifted the lid and out from that box escaped every conceivable kind of terror. Pandora made haste to close the box up again, but it was too late. There was only one thing left…HOPE. That was the ancients’ way of saying how important hope is. Even when all else is lost, there is still hope.”
HOPE is what sustained the Israelite faithful from generation to generation. HOPE is what energized the crowd along Jesus’ parade route that first Palm Sunday. And HOPE is what is intended to sustain and energize us today for what lies ahead in our lives and not just the recalling or retracing the events from that first Holy Week. The birth of HOPE or the sustaining and energizing power of HOPE is “The Real Triumphal Entry” we should be experiencing in 2022.
This Palm Sunday is a good time to join us in-person for worship. You can still also join us by Zoom and Facebook livestream. My sermon will focus on “The Real Triumphal Entry,” based on Luke 19:28-40.
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