Holy Week: Stuck on Palm Sunday

It is Wednesday of Holy Week and I am still stuck on Palm Sunday. The triumphal entry happens every year and every year I am like, what the HECK DOES THIS MEAN?!?! This year was no different. Only this year was a little different. The week before I stood at the pulpit and told these people who have been traveling with for a few years that I would not be taking another appointment in the North Georgia United Methodist Church. In non-methodist speak, I will not be a pastor in a traditional church setting after July 1.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but ultimately I have begged for a full time appointment. I have asked that I not have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. (I drive a used minivan and we live in the house we bought when the last bubble busted, I promise we aren’t fancy.) Every year I am put off for another year, and I couldn’t do it anymore.

So there I was, at the beginning of Holy Week watching Jesus go into Jerusalem and everyone was excited and happy and so sure about where this was going to end, and that is not where it ended. I know that you aren’t really, as the preacher, supposed to posit yourself as Jesus, but I will say that it has been a balm to my soul to know that Jesus gets it.

Jesus, who attempted to show the crowd in every way he could think of, that he WAS NOT the person who they were desperate for. He wasn’t the king they wanted. He had come to conquer, but not in the ways they were hoping for. How easy is it for us to make Jesus into whatever it is we want Him to be, not what He actually is. And God. And even each other. How often do we come to a thing and project what we are sure we need, and not what actually is? And what are we missing when we will not see the things that are?

Jesus was about to defeat death. But that wasn’t what they wanted. Sometimes that isn’t what I want either. Isn’t it wild, how humans are just still…the same. We want things the way we pictured them, even if there is something else waiting.

This week, I am praying that I would see these stories in a new way. That I would see Jesus in a new way. That I would see myself and my call and the way that Jesus is ready to reign just a little more clearly. If you feel like maybe there is something here, I would love for you to subscribe either free or paid. It seems I am being called back out to pastoring over the internet primarily.