Here in the midst of Lent's shadowy days, a splash of red arrives. Palm Sunday punctuates our days of purple with the colour of passion, of witness, of martyrdom.
In childhood this day was one for little white gloves and knee socks, though how we managed that in the early spring of the Canadian Maritimes, I don't recall. It had the tint of celebration, a rehearsal for Easter, and, in my memory, never a hint of what the day might cost.
Perhaps, because of this, for years the day was like a pebble in my shoe. Celebration was on its surface but deep red passion was at its heart. Finally, somewhere along the way, I fell deep, deep, deep within it and now its paradox and complexity flower with the beauty, and the unheeded loneliness of the Divine.
Because in all the 'triumphal' entry stories it is this 'alone in a crowdness' of Jesus that strikes me. Whether riding low, under the cries of hope and adulation for the king he wasn't, overturning commerce in the place of prayer, standing quietly breathing in the prayers of the sanctuary, or weeping over Jerusalem, the sense is of a cost, a witness, a healing that we must empty ourselves to know.
The sense is of a cost, a witness, a healing, that we must empty ourselves to know
There is also an even more profound love.
As Palm Sunday ushers us into Holy week there is the vividness of red. It calls our hearts to attention, to intention, to come close to the one who rides alone, "low down, close to our hearts".
Here are a few more Palm Sunday resources:
A Prayer, a Poem, a Practice
We Glimpse, O Love, Your Hidden Way (a hymn)
In The Crowd (a sermon)
