March 28, 2010
Palm Sunday (Year C)
Reflection on Luke 22:14-23:56
The shouting is over. The crowds are hushed, they realize their complicity and wonder what happened? What happened? We were just singing hosannas and waving palms! What happened?
How many times in life is that true? As we look at the wreckage we have made, we look back and say, “How can this be?”
They slowly packed up their things and made their way away from the hill, away from the evidence, away from the One who had given them hope, who had spoken to their hearts.
The shouting was over. The crowds beat their breasts; the friends stayed close, in shock. One man came to claim his body and put it in the tomb, a new tomb. No one had ever been in a tomb quite like this before. Aren’t all tombs like that? New, but hewn in old rock, created, to mold us for the forever of . . . of? For what? We do not yet know.
Time in the tomb!
In Holy Week we do not spend a lot of time thinking about being in the tomb. We are absorbed in the things of making liturgy, washing feet, walking stations, preparing for the vigil, preparing for the Easter, personally we are cooking or making brunch plans or thinking about treats for our children. We spend the week in anticipation; we expect and we know what is coming – what we know is told to us,
And yet, when do we ponder what it was like for Jesus to be in the tomb?
If we are honest, we know that much of our own lives is spent in “tomb time,” a time when the shouting is over, the breasts are beaten. Tomb time: a time when we have watched, lingered in horror. And then, we enter that tight, dark place of not knowing because there is no other place to go, and in it we find the freedom of resting in God’s tender care. We wait and we rest in that not knowing.
We might, on occasion, think we know the end of the story. We like to skip to that place we expect, with bunny rabbits and feasts (and my personal favorite, chocolate!). But in life, our lives, we only get there in God’s time, and for now, for this moment, and for however many moments God requires it, we are in the tomb. We expect, but we do not know. We hope, but we do not know exactly what that hope will bring. We trust, but we do it in the darkness of the tomb. We prepare for Sabbath by doing nothing but being in the tomb. Waiting. Hoping. Trusting.
My friends!
May the time we spend in liturgical tombs this week be filled with the fruit of holiness, and when resurrection comes, which it will in God’s time (even if not in sync with the liturgical calendar exactly on the next Sunday, the 4th. of April, at 8 or 9 or 10:30 AM), when resurrections comes, may we be rested and ready for the ride! May we know with hindsight that the time in the tomb was time well spent. May it be time to us, as time in the cocoon is to the butterfly.
Amen.
The Reverend Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd