Joining the crowd

Daily Devotion - April 5

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays) while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

Happy Palm Sunday!

We gathered today in worship, each from our own home.  (We had palms made from cardboard, paper, legos, green gloves ("palms!"), other plants, felt, paper...!)
This fourth week of online worship, my family felt the longing to be with you in person. ("I don't want to do online church!")  But in seeing everyone's faces on screen, I was surprised by how joyful I felt.  I am thankful to gather as church, however that looks. We belong to each other.

Lisa shared about Palm Sunday - and how we continue to celebrate the crowds' misunderstandings of who Jesus is, and of what we need from him.  "Hosanna!" means "Save us!"  And we have definite ideas of what that saving should look like, and what we should be saved from.

Yet, she said, it's kind of lovely that even thought we know what's coming - Jesus' death, Jesus' resurrection, the fact that God does not save us from suffering but enters right in, that God doesn't come in power, but in weakness, alongside us - we still join our voices with the naive crowds, and shout "Save us!" right along with them.

God hears our cries - even when we are not asking for what is best for us, or what is real, or what will truly save us.  God hears beyond our strategies to the needs underneath.  And even when we go right along with the crowds - hoarding toilet paper and beans - God still meet us with what we really need.

It reminds me of this poem, by C.S. Lewis:

Prayer
He whom I bow to knows only to whom I bow
when I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
and dream of Pheidian fancies, and embrace in heart
symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.

Thus always, taken at their word,
all prayers blaspheme,
worshipping with frail images,
a folklore dream.

And all, in their praying self-deceived address
the coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless Thou,
in magnetic mercy, to Thyself divert
our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert,
and all are idolaters,
crying unheard to a deaf idol,
if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, Oh Lord, our literal sense.
Lord, in Thy great unbroken speech
our limping metaphors translate.

C.S. Lewis, Poems


CONNECTING RITUAL:

Let's return to the Evening Prayer, from the New Zealand Prayerbook.  Perhaps, tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might pray this prayer, and so join our hearts:

Evening Prayer

Lord it is night.
The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done.
Let it be.

The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness
of the world and of our own lives
rest in you.

The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us, and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys, new possibilities.
In your name we pray.
Amen.

(New Zealand Prayerbook)


Last week, we read through the Gospel of John.  If you did not finish it last week, why not read it through this week? We will be using chapter 20 next Sunday, for Easter.