To listen to this post (and Bonnie snoring in the background, as well as some very zealous Northern cardinals outside my window):
This past Saturday, we drove nine hours from the Outer Banks of North Carolina back to our home here in West Virginia. After a week of sand and sun and unfettered time (and birds), we awakened Sunday morning to a heavy frost. Spring came to West Virginia while we were away, but we returned to a cold snap. I stood at the window and looked at my red tulips bent over with cold, my lilac bush shyly holding vulnerable buds, the cringing first greening of the hydrangeas. I tried not to think about spring without the scent of lilac perfuming the yard. I wished I had thought to cover the fledgling buds.
Sunday was also my birthday, and Palm/Passion Sunday at church. I had planned to go to church to wave the palms and parade around the church yard. It’s one of my favorite days on the church calendar. But when I got up that morning, my head ached and my body felt heavy with the nine hour drive from the day before and I didn’t want to leave our Bonnie-girl again so soon after our reunion. So, I filled the feeders and sat down to read the morning lessons, knowing full well what I was in for.
she was so happy to see us when we got home
For the life of me, no matter how many Sundays we’ve done it this way now, I cannot get used to the “Hosannas” and the “crucify Hims” all mingled together in the same worship service. When my boys were little, Palm Sunday was its own thing. We saved the hard stuff for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. It feels like spiritual whiplash to me, which is exactly what it was if you think about it, and maybe that’s the whole point—the fickleness of human nature, all the ways we pander to the crowd.
I felt off-kilter—strange. The Triumphant Entry and all the “Hosannas” I could handle. But not the scourging. Not the taunting. Not the betrayal and death. How to celebrate my birthday and fully enter into the Passion? How to hold celebration and anguish side by side? It required something deeper—something more than me.
I knew one place I could go was the Psalms.
Eugene Peterson says the Psalms are where we go to learn our language as it develops into maturity. The Psalms are fraught with humanity, giving breath to a plenary human experience. Psalm 31, which is part of the Passion readings, is a typical lament; a cry for help that moves toward a statement of trust and praise. In fact, a large portion of the Psalms could be categorized as lament. Scholars estimate from one quarter to one third of the Psalms fall in this category. And that word—Psalm—the Hebrew word for Psalm means “praises.” Does it seem odd to you that a book of praises would hold so many laments?
What the Psalms do is boldly hold that tension that colors the human experience. A lament does the unthinkable—it holds anguish and hope side-by-side; celebration and joy hold hands with despair—eliminating all thought of formulaic prescriptions to pain, creating a technicolor, multi-dimensional picture of what it means to be human.
The Lenten season is a time when the humanity of Jesus calls out to our own humanity.
Behold the man. Pilot said it. But do I? Behold the man? Too often I want to impose upon Jesus some kind of superpowers, but Jesus was a man. Fully God, yes, but fully human as well. How could one made of flesh and bone, one whose blood ran as hot and cold as mine, how could he withstand such horrors? How could he plead with God to take away this cup and still end by saying, “Yet not what I will, but what you will”? Jesus felt the full range of human emotions. Yet he was as close to the Father as any human could be. Anguish and hope held side-by-side.
Writer Dan Allender reminds us that the poetry of the psalms were the hymns of the people of God. “It was their song book,” he says. “It was what they sang in the temple at their worship services.”
How many times must Jesus have sung the Psalms, given his voice to lament? Even on the night of his arrest, we are told after sharing the Passover feast he and his disciples sung a hymn and then went to the Mount of Olives. Jewish tradition has it to sing the Hallel Psalms as part of Passover—that’s Psalm 113-116. If Jesus did sing Psalm 116 on the night of his arrest, he sang these words: The snares of death encompassed me, the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the LORD; "O LORD, I beg you, save my life!"... (emphasis mine)
True worship involves bringing every dimension of our lives to God, not forsaking the struggles of life, but worshipping in the midst of our struggles.
To lament together is to allow the sorrows and joys of others to be mine, and mine to be theirs. This requires me to stay awake to sorrow and to the struggle of my own pain and questions of God. We can only lament when we fully trust, for lament opens the heart to wrestle with God and hold onto him through the pain—to allow ourselves to be touched by God, so that we will walk with a limp but we will be named.
A season of little deaths, that’s what has been said of Lent and I think I understand why the Orthodox Church calls it the Bright Sadness. Celebration and mourning take it in turns to stir our deep places and our eyes are opened to the truth that we cannot follow Christ and remain unchanged.
We need each other on this journey. All of us broken, flawed, beautiful, complicated people, we need each other. For… am I not the one who—after waving palms in exultation—will so quickly turn in anger? Am I not the one who will deny and betray the Lover of My Soul? We move through Holy Week knowing the end of the story—the great joy of reconciliation. Yet we also know there is no way to Sunday except through Friday.
Anytime we love, we open ourselves to sorrow. Isn’t that a beautiful thing? As I pondered all these things on my birthday, I sat with the readings from Palm and Passion Sunday. I let the joy and anguish tell me a deeper love story. Maybe for the first time.
And as I listened to my heart’s cry, I could almost hear a voice sing Holy, Holy, Holy.
I too, recall the Palm Sunday of my childhood as a palm waving, celebratory time. As you describe, now the readings feel like "spiritual whiplash". But once again, you have added meaning and significance to this day, this week. Thank you always for observing, discovering, and sharing.
So lovely, as always, Laura. And the photos are simply stunning. Happy Birthday!!!