from Palms to Passion

The crowds preceding him and those following

kept crying out and saying:

"Hosanna to the Son of David;

blessed is the he who comes in the name of the Lord;

hosanna in the highest."

Matthew 21:9

Today is Passion Sunday, now combined with, and sometimes better known as Palm Sunday. The Passion of Christ is read following the reading of Matthew noted above. The Sunday School illustration of Jesus riding on a donkey as he enters Jerusalem, his way lined with cheering people who create a carpet of palm fronds and robes for him to pass over (no pun intended!), is burned in my mind. I’ve always loved Palm Sunday, although I suspect that as a young Sunday School pupil, my interest was more in the donkey and the palm trees rather than the earth-shaking theology being played out in that simple event, so long ago. As a kid, what I saw was truly an oh-so-fun triumphant entry—how amazing to get to ride on a donkey and have a crowd of fans waving and yelling out a welcome. The irony of the utter humility of the King of Kings riding on a donkey, rather than on a steed, a rag taggle of humanity instead of a mounted legion surrounding him, the complete absence of dignitaries, trumpets, and royal reception, completely escaped me. 

From palms to passion. The link between these passages so close in time, yet so far apart in action escaped me as a kid. I did not get that the crowd that enthusiastically greeted Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, days later, called out, mob-like, for his crucifixion. I didn’t want to believe it, and still wish to believe that there were simply a few bad eggs in the crowd who were easily swayed. That the rest were loyal friends to the end; friends that somehow deserved the passion of Christ. However, I since have learned that crowds are incredibly fickle; easily blown by the wind of emotion and situation. That I, as well, can be driven by that wind; that all-to-often the amount of sleep I have had, the level of back pain I am experiencing, the number of dishes that have gathered in the sink, the race I am losing to complete deadlines, the wait for the computer to update … all conspire to blow me away from my center. At times, the sudden, overwhelming wind of despair, stress, grief, loneliness, helplessness can pivot me around like the Dalmatian weathervane we have on our gazebo. Would I have been one of the bad eggs in the crowd if the wind had blown the wrong way that morning so long ago?

I lately have been reading Joan Chittister, O.S.B. In this reading that I would like to share here, I again was reminded of how our patients are our teachers, even in this struggle to abide in the center and not be swayed with the fickle wind that blows around us all.

We are surrounded by people who struggle through terminal diseases and live years beyond any reasonable prognosis because they refuse to give up. They simply go on as if life were normal. They simply insist on living … There is, in fact, no struggle that does not develop to the point where a person must choose between the fact of defeat and effects of quitting. Everyone is defeated sometime. Many then simply quit the fray. But the really strong, the really committed, do not. They decide instead whether or not the mountain is worth the climb. And if it is, no amount of wind can force them from the face of it. They endure for the sake of enduring. They live to finish what they began. Endurance is not about being too stubborn to give up on the impossible. Endurance is about having heart enough to keep on trying to do the possible, even if it is unattainable. We nurse the dying through years of disability. We begin projects for the poor even when they don’t begin to make a dent in the problem of poverty. We hold on against opposition for the sake of the principle of a thing. Those endure who seek to do what is deeply important to them, no matter how difficult it may be (Joan D. Chittister, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope).

The wind that blows our Dalmatian weathervane back and forth and all around will continue to blow, the weathervane will continue to spin. Instead of being afraid of the wind of emotions, sorrows, memories, and physical annoyances that blows through my day, I am learning to see this wind from a different perspective. The palliative and trauma patients that I have nursed over the years have taught me how the essentials, the core of life is clarified by illness, pain, limitations. Perhaps the lesson in the crowd is that the wind blows and we are given the terrible gift of seeing what is truly at our core. Thank God we are not alone when we see ourselves for the fickle cowards we can be—for in that split second of truth we are given the choice that the thief on the cross was given; we may cry out, again and again, “Jesus, remember me!”

Blessings on your journey as we walk with Christ through this Holy Week.