Jesus is Our Savior - Palm Sunday Post

I think I’ve said this before, as a part of my own story of how I got to be a pastor, that at one point in time I was going to go to Med School and be a doctor. 

To help me figure that out, and understand what that might mean, I was going to volunteer in the lab of one of the professors that my dad works with who is an MD.  I remember the first day I walked into Dr. McArthur’s lab and it was really neat! Especially for this science nerd kid.

However, it didn’t take long for me to realize that I was in over my head.  I didn’t know what to do, and there were lots of things around me, and I remember thinking to myself that if this was what med school was going to be like, then it wasn’t going to be for me.

As an adult I can look back on that now and say that I was terrified of what was going on. To the point that I couldn’t go in that direction anymore.

On the other hand, in a similar set of circumstances, I remember my first Sunday as a pastor.  This would have been back in about June, or even late May of 2003.  I was starting as an associate pastor, and thankfully wasn’t preaching that Sunday.  At the time, I knew enough to know that I didn’t know much.

I also knew that I was young, and was still barely sure about this whole preaching thing.  Looking back on that now, nearly 16  years later, I know that I was a little terrified of that first Sunday. This time it was different.  I trusted, and had faith that I was in the right place.

Because of that, I could tell myself to get on with it, and to take a step into this new role.  I remember when it settled for me.  I was standing in the sanctuary of one of the churches. We were getting ready to go back for a big covered dish lunch, and it was like this switch went off that said you’ve got this, just go out and do it. 

So I did.

Those were two places in my life, at different points and with very different outcomes.  The difference depended on what I relied on to get me through it.  Was I relying on my own skills and abilities, and finding that they were severely lacking and I was totally unprepared for what I was doing, or was I relying on strength from God outside of myself that could hole me up, even though my own skills and abilities were severely lacking and I was totally unprepared for what I was doing?  

That was the difference.

Over this season of Lent, we’ve been talking about Jesus in a variety of different ways.  Each of those ways represents how Jesus interacts with us.  Most of them are meant to be what helps us when we aren’t at our best.

Palm Sunday is different. We’re saying that Jesus is Our Savior, and that is a terrifying statement.  We don’t normally think of it that way, but that’s because we’re used to saying it, and it is a normal part of our lives as Christians.

But we can see how terrifying this is, and how it plays itself out on this Sunday before Easter.  We call it Palm/Passion Sunday.  For Palm Sunday, we say that Jesus is our Savior, and that’s a good thing and a welcome change to the world around us.  But we call it Passion Sunday, because change is terrifying, it upsets the world that we know and forces us into places that are, at best, uncomfortable.

Palm Sunday is represented by the people who were shouting Hosanna as Jesus comes into Jerusalem.  Passion Sunday is represented by the religious leaders who had a pretty clear idea about the change that Jesus was bringing into their world.

We’re celebrating Palm Sunday, because our own strength isn’t enough. We have to rely on something else, on someone else.  The first folks that celebrated Palm Sunday, as the story goes, didn’t really understand what was going on. Not even the disciples. But they had faith to see where they were going, and they trusted in Jesus.

Palm Sunday is a fight over which version of the story is real: Jesus’ or the religious leaders.  Even for the folks that were welcoming the change, it’s still terrifying because we don’t know the ultimate outcome.  

But some could get through that because they put their faith in Jesus and trusted him. Others were going to do everything they could to get things back to “the way they were before” just like they knew how it all worked.

Change is hard, and it’s scary. Holy week, as we are getting it started tomorrow, asks us to be a little scared, a little unsure, and a little wary of the things that are going on.  But it also asks us to have faith, because we know how the story ends.

Easter is coming!