Being Christian

            When I was a kid and sang in the choir, I used to hate Palm Sunday.  The gospel lesson seemed to me to be just about the entire bible.  We would sit there and listen to the priest read the Gospel until we were ready to fall asleep.  I don’t think that I ever really listened to it, I was so preoccupied with how long it was.

            Thankfully, these days, we do something else with it.  When I was the rector of Christ Church, we used to dress up and dramatize it.  I loved watching Judas come down the center aisle and throw the money at the feet of the Pharisees at the end of the Gospel.  The person who was selected to portray Jesus always managed to make Eli Eli Lema Sabachthani  sound like a cry from the depths.  I, in my vestments always seemed to be chosen to depict Pilate.  I loved it.

            It is easy to miss the point of Palm Sunday and the story that it tells.  Here is Jesus coming into Jerusalem on a donkey and feted by the crowd, hailed as the Messiah with palms laid at his feet.  How quickly it all turned.  At the end of the day, Jesus is arrested and delivered to Pilate to be crucified.  I used to teach the congregation how to take those large palm fronds and make crosses out of them to take home with them as a reminder of how quickly our cheers can be turned to taunts. 

            Maybe the Gospel is a bit long, but it needs to be to tell the story that we need to hear.  We certainly, like the people in Jerusalem, want a messiah.  But we want one who will do things the way that we want them done. 

            The Roman Catholic church has just elected a new pope.  Francis, named for the great Saint Francis of Assisi, has a mandate to clean up a battered church with scandal after scandal having wracked it.  The Romans are no different from the rest of us.  All of the churches, all of us, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant are hungry for Christian leadership that will reflect the power of the Gospel of Christ.  In his first days, Francis has mingled with crowds in the Vatican and has seemed to be the humble servant that we are all called to be when we assume the title Christian.  My prayers are that Francis will be the leader that we all need to show us a new way.

           But we are all in this together.  The wonderful assortment of people who attended to the election and the installation of the Pope testify to how wide the Christian message has been spread and how integrated all of us are in making sure that Christian values permeate this turbulent world.  How can each of us be a part of showing the world that the message of Christ is peace and unity?  That is what I want to pray and think about on this Palm Sunday.