{podcast_episode 136}
There are so many ways to tell a story.
There is song, a dance, and poetry.
There is this perspective, and that one.
We can emphasize the setting, the plot, or the characters.
We can give the historical context, or the “make believe.”
The story can be told chronologically, or mythologically.
Twists and turns can be emphasized, or sparkling moments.
It can contain metaphors, or be one big metaphor.
The cycle of the Christian calendar names today Palm Sunday.
Twenty centuries ago Jesus of Nazareth rode a donkey into Jerusalem,
so the story goes,
hailed by his followers, set on a mission to celebrate Passover, and
to reform his beloved Judaism,
to call the People to devotion to a loving God.
That’s one way to tell the story.
Some tell the story differently.
Jesus was the Son of God, they say.
He was of the same substance as God.
The assembled bishops and the emperor would declare it so
three hundred years later.
Jesus rode into Jerusalem that day,
knowing it would be his last week of this life.
Yes, he had a mission to fulfill.
It involved losing his life.
This version of the story says
he was to die in order to save the world.
He was to die so that others could experience resurrection.
That’s another way to tell the story.
And here’s another:
I invite you to be the story for today…for this Palm Sunday.
Imagine yourself on the donkey.
One truth of this tale is we enter this day, this week,
knowing death awaits us.
When? Well, that’s a different story…
It has been said that what makes us truly human
is knowing we will die and choosing how we will live.
Perhaps the most important learning of the Palm Sunday story
is this nugget of existential truth that we will die.
Out of life comes death. There is no avoiding it.
A gift of being in the ministry these thirty-six years
has been seeing death up close.
I’ve not seen, like many of our veterans, death in war,
or witnessed first hand death on our streets.
What I know is the journey of those who look ahead and wonder.
I have known the journey of those who have come to
an acceptance of their death, and those who struggle with it.
I know some of the journey of families, partners, and friends
when a loved one dies.
Out of life comes death.
So, here we are, riding our donkeys into Jerusalem.
Let’s call our destination The Beloved Future.
Beloved because it is the place of possibility.
It is the opportunity to live fully,
to name truth as we see it, to love courageously.
We know, somewhere out there, death awaits us.
Many people with whom I talk about the journey toward death,
do not focus so much on the death,
as the dying.
We don’t want to die in pain. We don’t want to die alone.
We don’t want to see our loved ones die in pain.
We take comfort in knowing the advances in medical science, in palliative care,
can alleviate much physical suffering as we approach death.
Palm Sunday really isn’t about that.
Any image you have in your memory of Jesus on the cross,
suggests the story is not one of avoidance of the pain of dying.
Jesus rides into Jerusalem already dying.
He, like you, knows “out of life comes death.”
We are born to die.
It’s not a morbid thought.
It’s the fundamental teaching of the Cosmos.
There is a place over in the Marin Headlands.
It’s along the road down to Kirby Cove.
There the pressures of geologic time provide an image
as if to make the point:
layer upon layer of life sediment, pressed hard over millennia,
raised up for us to ponder.
Or consider the layers of life into death exposed at the Grand Canyon.
In these layers of time our lives are very brief.
Leaves fall from the oak tree.
They disintegrate; become soil:
mulch for new millennia.
Out of Life comes death.
All around the world, life into death.
In India, on the shores of the Ganges River,
corpses burn at Varanasi as they have each day
for countless days.
Families bring deceased loved ones.
Out of death comes ash to flow in the river of life,
to become a new layer of sediment.
Recently in Oakland, walking in the cemetery,
I saw a gravestone.
It was one of those plots where a family has a common stone.
The father had died.
Carved in the stone after his name
are his birth and death years.
The mother is still alive.
Carved in the stone after her name is her birth year, followed by a hyphen.
I remember someone telling me that it is not really the birth,
nor the death that should grab our attention,
but what is in between.
It’s the hyphen that’s most important.
Each of us has a hyphen after our birth year.
Knowing we will die, we live the hyphen.
It is the story we tell, and the story that will be told by others
when that final date is carved into memory’s stone.
There are so many stories about what happens after death:
reincarnation, resurrection, soul-migration.
Walking in that cemetery I remembered a Maryland gravestone.
Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It reads:
“Here lies an Athiest, all dressed up and no place to go.”
That’s another story about what happens when we die.
But, again, our focus this morning
is what we know riding into Jerusalem.
We only have so long to live.
Let’s make the best of it.
Anyone who has had a brush with death:
a heart attack, a stroke, a cardiac arrest, near drowning, critical accident,
or a dreadful diagnosis,
knows how our sense of time can change.
The openness of the future closes.
Out of life comes death raises our consciousness.
What will we make of our lives?
Do we want to save the world, or savor the world…can we do both?
On this journey to Jerusalem,
this hyphenated-story of creating The Beloved Future,
let’s stop and smell the roses.
Let’s raise our voices in song, and prayer, and protest.
Let’s serve those in need and change the conditions that produce their need.
Let’s be gentle with ourselves, gentle with each other.
We will make mistakes.
We will fall short.
Right after we remind ourselves to be kind,
we’ll get upset.
Let’s try again.
I come to church, as many of you do,
to be my best self.
In church life, because we care,
and because we are all human,
we get disappointed, frustrated, angry.
Yet we continue, because, at least for me,
here I feel more than anywhere else,
I am among people who share my values,
my vision for the future.
Here there is always room for me to grow.
We journey on the road to Jerusalem,
knowing there will be disappointment and inconsolable loss.
There will be suffering.
Grief will come to lovers, to mothers, to fathers –
and to all who open their hearts for Love’s sake.
Still, let’s open our hearts.
Still, let this journey be a dance.
Let this story takes us to high mountain sources of grand rivers,
and to the places they join with the sea.
Let our arms open to embrace the gifts of each day,
this breath,
this whiff of apple blossoms,
this chance to make amends,
these hands, reaching to us, offering support,
these hands, our hands, reaching out,
knowing human touch calls us back when we most need it.
We ride into Jerusalem knowing what awaits us.
Yet we ride.
What will be the twists and turns?
What sparkling moments await us?
What blossom?
What hand?
Our lives are full of wonder.
Our time is very brief.
We believe in life,
and in the strength of love,
and we find joy in being together.
– Shelley Jackson Denham
Copyright © 2013, Rev. Bill Hamilton-Holway. All Rights Reserved.
