Day of Tears

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a young donkey, people lined the streets shouting “Hosanna!” which is a Hebrew expression of two words meaning “Save, I [we] pray.” As I said on Sunday, those shouts had absolutely nothing to do with being saved from sins. Remember the Jews were gathering in Jerusalem for Passover, the holiday that celebrated their liberation from slavery in Egypt. Once again, the Jews found themselves oppressed by a greater power, this time it was Rome. And Jesus rode into Jerusalem for every single one of those struggling, weary people who lined the streets. Jesus rode into Jerusalem to try and wake humanity up to a higher law… the law of love.

I keep feeling like 2,000 years later we should have learned a few things, we should have evolved beyond this deep-seated need for power and wealth. Humanity at this stage of the game should know better. We should be able to see each other as part of the whole, sisters and brothers on the same small planet in the middle of a huge universe just trying to live with meaning and purpose, loving and being loved, feeling safe and enjoying life.

But humanity in general doesn’t seem to get it. Today the streets would still be lined with people shouting “Hosanna! Save us we pray!” Again, not a saving from sins, but a saving from the systems of oppression and dehumanization. And still today, the needs, injustices and atrocities would be numerous.

Jesus’ execution and death were (and are) a stark reminder of how broken our world is. That some would kill an innocent man to maintain their power and control over religion and politics is unconscionable (but it wasn’t the first of last time it happened). On the flip side, it shows how powerful true love is… so powerful that it engendered enough fear to kill another human being.

Jesus’ greatest gift was that he loved until the end. He loved with non-violence, he loved with peace, he loved with forgiveness, he loved with integrity. True love is expansive, it is enlivening, it is embracing. True love opens us to broader perspectives, draws the circle wide enough to include everyone, brings healing and eventually brings wholeness. True, unconditional love is what completes each and every one of us.

John Shelby Spong once wrote that when we look at Jesus, we “see what life can be beyond our brokenness, our fragmentation, our ego needs, our defense systems, our security barriers. In Jesus I meet God and a vision of complete and whole humanity calling me to dare to risk my own security by entering life, knowing another, being known, loving another, being loved, being myself without apology, without boasting, and allowing others to be themselves.” 

It is appropriate that when we honor the night that Jesus was killed we feel weighed down with the brokenness of the world, with the suffering, terror, and hatred in the world. We’d like to rush on to the next chapter, put those uncomfortable, sad feelings behind us… but sometimes we have to sit with them a while, allow them to soften and change us, that we might be bearers of true love to the world.

In Peace,

Kaye