Preparing for Palm Sunday ~ Part three

 

“...new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.” ― Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark

 

New life in a tomb, that is where we are heading on Easter Sunday.  Just like at Christmas where God enters the world in the form of a vulnerable infant, born in a barn and laid in a manger; God still surprises Earth with Heaven on Easter Sunday by rolling away a stone and springing forth from the very place thought to have no life at all.

 

God of mystery and marvel.

God who cannot be contained or controlled or ever fully comprehended.

God who is still creating amid the midnight moments in our lives.

God who hears our, “Hosannas”.

 

Often, we turn God into a vending machine or a combination of a Superhero with Black Panther’s power and Storm’s ability to control the weather. (Apologies to any non-comic book fans out there).  We want God to swoop in and save the day.  Yet, God’s time has never been according to human time.  In story after story in Scripture, suffering was never eliminated instantaneously or immediately. 

Abraham and Sarah waited 25 years before Isaac is born.

God sent Moses with liberating love who must return to Pharoah time and time again.

The people wandered for 40 years in the wilderness before tasting the sweet honey and thirst-quenching milk.

The people were exile for 70 years before Isaiah’s vision of mountains brought low and rough places smoothed out to return to Jerusalem.

 

We are so caught up in fast-food, always on the go, keep up with us God mentality, that the slow ripening of the Spirit, we don’t have time for.  Hurry up, Holy One, we shout with our “Hosannas”. 

 

New life starts in the dark where a seed can take several weeks or months before a fragile green offering springs forth from the ground.  A baby spends nine months before entering this world…then another 18 years before moving out of the house ~ talk about time.  Jesus spent three years breaking open his life with liberating love before he entered Jerusalem for that last week.

 

Two years after COVID upended the church as we knew it, I still don’t claim to know what the future will be or bring.  I don’t know what new growth, new life, resurrection moments will happen from the midnight moments of the last few years. 

As we continue to prepare for Palm Sunday, what from the past is growing inside you?  Know that not all growth brings good fruit.  There are things growing in me, like frustration and fear, that still want to feed and fuel my life.  There are things growing in the soil of my soul that don’t nourish me, which is why a few weeks ago we handed the clippers of control to God to tend our garden within us and around us.

 

I invite you to continue to pray your, “Hosannas” today, letting that word sink and settle into the soil of your life meeting you in the holy darkness with a promise of new life.  Amen.