4th Passiontide
Palm Sunday
Matthew 21: 1-11
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| Entry into the City, John August Swanson |
And they
approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage by the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus
sent two disciples ahead and said to them, “Go to the village which you see
before you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there and her foal with
her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him
that the Lord needs them, and he will let you take them right away.”
This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
‘Say to the daughter of Zion,
Behold, your king comes to you in majesty.
Gentle is He, and He rides on a donkey and on a foal of the beast of
burden.’
The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought
the donkey and the foal, placed their garments on them, and Jesus sat on them.
Many out of the large crowd spread their clothes on
the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.
The crowds that went ahead of them and followed Him shouted:
Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is he who comes in the Name and Power of the Lord!
Hosannah in the highest! [Sing to Him in the highest heights!]
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who
is he?” The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in
Galilee.”
4th
Passiontide, Palm Sunday
April 13, 2014
Matthew 21: 1-11
 |
| Kingdom of the Dead, Peter Callesen |
We are entering Holy Week. The altar and vestments are
black. In this week Christ battles the forces of duality, the forces of black
and white. These are the false polarities of either /or, the black and white,
yes/no of dead binary thinking. Good or bad. Heaven or Hell. By the end of the week he will enter into the
Place of the Skull. He will die, and rise again.
Christ exists in the living world of flow, of change and
transformation. He operates in the changing subtleties of the grayscale, in the
nuances of color. His opponents ask Him questions designed to entrap Him. He
gives them answers from outside of their framework, answers from the flowing
world of a greater reality.
Today we still battle with the kind of deadness that our
brain-bound intellect so easily falls into. We still tend to manifest one or
the other of the ill-making polarities in the way we think, thus closing
ourselves off from greater possibilities. Nevertheless, we strain to open our
thoughts in reverence. We struggle to warm our hearts in empathy. We strive to
act according to the inspiration of our conscience, our higher self.
In those moments when we manage reverence of thought, when we generate heart’s love, when
we do deeds of conscience, in those moments Christ can operate in the world. In
such moments Christ is in us. It is he
that thinks in us, suffers in us, dies and rises in us. As Rilke says,
To work with Things in the
indescribable
relationship is not too hard for
us;
the pattern grows more intricate
and subtle,
…
Take your practiced powers and
stretch them out
until they span the chasm
between two
contradictions ... For the god
wants to know himself in you.[1]
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