Have you ever driven down a road thinking you were heading to one destination only to wind up someplace else? It happens to lots of us. I learned that lesson many times in my moves to progressively larger and larger places. Growing up in a small town you don’t need directions because you just grow up knowing where everything is. Nothing changes very drastically or quickly. Then I lived in a college town which was also easy to navigate since everything centered on the campus and the students.
But then I moved to a real city – Los Angeles – where streets like Wilshire and Sepulveda stretched for miles across the entire county. I’d go somewhere for a job interview or to meet a client and I would get directions like “when you see downtown, go east on the Pasadena freeway.” No one told me that the Harbor Freeway, the Arroyo Seco Freeway and the Pasadena Freeway were the same freeway.
Now this was in the days before GPS and Google maps. I kept a Thomas Guide – remember those? - in my car. But what good is a map when you don’t know what road you’ve gotten yourself onto in the first place?
So one of the many things I learned during my formative Los Angeles days was to give myself extra time just to get lost and find my way again. Because often I thought the road was taking me in one direction when in reality I was headed in another direction altogether.
And that brings us to today, to Palm Sunday. I have to wonder if the crowd that day on that first Palm Sunday wasn’t a little like that also. We know today’s story so well so that it is easy for us to think, just like those in Jerusalem long ago, that Palm Sunday is taking us one place when we’re really on another road – a road we might not have chosen, a road we might not have planned on. Perhaps an unwelcome road. That’s the point of what we do today.
We began outside waving palm branches. Like the crowds when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, they were ready for change. Oppression weighed heavily upon them, like the Egyptian captivity from which their ancestors had been delivered. It was Passover week and emotions were running high. The people were hungry for deliverance from another tyrant, from the Roman empire.
Here is Jesus who had healed people, fed people, raised them from the dead, rebuked Pharisees, confounded theologians and captivated the hearts of the people. So when they saw him, they took him for the triumphant king who had come to free them. And they took up the cry, the one we echoed – “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosannah in the highest.”
But the road Jesus was on that day was not going to take him to a castle or a fortress. Today’s passion gospel reminds us of where that road led. The road to Calvary is a composite of humanity’s most difficult moments, a litany of things that harden our hearts, that live rent-free in our heads and separate us from God.
I’m holding in my hand a nail. It’s also a reminder of where the road led that day. I invite you, as you come up for communion today, to take a nail from this basket. Carry it with you this week, during Holy Week, in your purse or pocket. And let it represent for you that thing that you need to leave at the cross, that thing you need to hand over, to let go of and just hand over to, that missing piece that you believe might make you whole – like a broken relationship that is in need of reconciliation. Perhaps with someone in your family, at your workplace or maybe even here in church.
What is that thing in your life that you need to leave at the cross? What sharpness do you hold onto that causes pain, sorrow or grief?
I invite you to grab hold of one of these nails today. And come back on Good Friday and pound it into the cross that will be here. At the altar. The cross of Jesus Christ. He knew where the road was taking him that Palm Sunday so long ago and he stayed with it anyway. From the gates of Jerusalem, through the streets of the city, into the halls of judgment. Down the dark alleys of hatred out to the other side to the place of the skull. He traveled it then and he travels our own roads with us. And he promises to stay with us. That is the road of this week.
So I invite you to take a nail and hold onto it all this coming week. Feel it’s weight, it’s grit. It just might poke you a few times. It might feel colder and harder than you thought it could. Hold onto this nail. Let it live with you this entire week.
And then bring it back on Good Friday to pound it into the cross and leave it here, leave it all here. And wait for Easter morning. Amen.
