Tomorrow, Christian churches all over the western world will celebrate Palm Sunday. (Eastern-rite churches will celebrate a week later. )

               Most of our churches will celebrate the day as triumphant. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. All four gospels tell us that the crowds go wild. They hail him as the long-promised Messiah. They tear palm branches off the trees and wave them in the air. They rip off their clothes and throw them on the ground for the donkey to trample on. They shout, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!”

               The streets of Jerusalem must have looked like downtown Toronto after the Raptors won the NBA championship, with Jesus playing the part of Kawhi Leonard.

               But the crowds didn’t get it. He wasn’t arriving in triumph to take over the city, let alone the country. He was coming to carry out a decision he had made some time before. To die in Jerusalem.

               Several chapters earlier, Luke tells us that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem.”

               His disciples objected. The powers-that-be will kill you, they said. Stay out here in the boonies, where no one cares what you say.

               But he disregarded them. And from there on the die was cast. Jesus was going to die in the city every Jew considered home.

               Now, I have to admit that my perspective has been shaped by my wife’s decision to die at home. She knew, when the cancer clinic told her last August that there were no more chemotherapies to keep her alive, that she was going to die. And she knew where she wanted to die. In her home. Where she belonged.

               She didn’t leap in front of a logging truck, or swallow some deadly poison, to end it all quickly. Nor did she curl up in a fetal position and pull the covers up over her head. It was coming; it would happen; que sera sera.

               People expect those last eight months would have been a miserable time. For her, and for me. They weren’t. In many ways, they were a blessing. We cared for, we cared about, each other.

               Just as those final weeks, as Jesus moved steadily towards his death on Golgotha, contain some of the richest features of his teaching.

               But the crowds didn’t get it.

               They were in the mood for a celebration. Probably many didn’t know who Jesus was, and didn’t care. They were there for a good time.

               The Bible assures us that this procession was fulfillment of a single verse in the prophecy of a minor Jewish prophet: “Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey.”

               Why should we assume that the crowd knew that verse? They were ordinary people, illiterate, not scholars or scribes. They probably knew their holy texts no better than many of us do.

               Can you name any other biblical stories about donkeys, also called asses? A talking donkey, for example? Do you know which leader killed a thousand enemies with the jawbone of an ass? (No, it was not Donald Trump.) Or which prophet described the Jewish people as dumber than a donkey?

               The Palm Sunday parade suggests that they still were.

               They just didn’t get it.

               If Jesus stared straight ahead, unmoved by the cheering, the dancing, it was because he saw something else – his own inevitable death.

               His death itself was not pretty. It was not something he could have looked forward to. Unlike my wife’s death, where she spent her final days surrounded by love, he would feel abandoned. Humiliated. Physically tortured. And he would die in the most cruel way the mighty Roman empire could devise, hanging on a cross.

               But that was his choice. He had made up his mind. And he was not going to change it.

               The parallels are not exact, of course. But I find that the intensity of watching my wife take the long road towards her own Jerusalem casts new light, for me, on Jesus’ so-called triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

               The people in the streets that day just didn’t get it.

               And when we turn Palm Sunday into a victory parade, we don’t get it either.

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Copyright © 2020 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.

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Inevitably, last week’s column about social isolation (especially in the light of my wife Joan’s death) brought a flood of responses. Thank you for them. For space reasons, I won’t quote those letters which mostly offered personal support and encouragement. 

               Here, though, are some that focussed on the issue of social isolation. 

Bob Mason: “As residents in a retirement community, having just returned from a two-month cruise, my wife and I have been isolated in our apartment, something which we dreaded as we were flying home.  After the first couple of days when we had to unpack, separate clothing to be rehung or to be washed, even getting over jetlag, we began to feel bored and worried how we would survive another 12 days in isolation.

               “Then it hit me just how blessed we are -- unlike some other cruise ships, no one on ours was hit with Covid-19. We saw and did everything that was scheduled, and in all, we enjoyed the cruise even more than we'd anticipated. Back home in Canada, we were safe in our own home…

               “Truth be told, my wife and I have become even closer companions and friends because of this period of isolation.

               “Of course, I know that for single people, to be isolated or quarantined and unable to even go outside is different than our period of isolation. It makes it even more important for me, and I hope to others, that I make an even greater effort to contact friends who are on their own… I want to make this a better world by showing others that I care and that they are not as alone as they might have feared.”

Bob Rollwagen: “The traditional media has been talking about loneliness a lot this past year as a major health issue. Some blame electronic devices and social media for the decline of membership in organizations designed for networking -- clubs, professional organizations, faith groups, charities, and similar networks to support others. Volunteerism is dying. Recent generations are not joiners. Never being more than an arms-length from your work could be a cause also. The current solutions to Covid-19 will likely add to this trend. 

               “Society as we have known it is slowly grinding to a halt. There will be problems and there will be new and maybe better norms. All we can do is hope we focus on the good, the honest, the selfless, the generous, the fair balance of wealth, the just use of climate, and govern like we are all in this together.

               “At this moment, the saddest issue [for me] is that people are dying in hospitals with no family allowed to be present, in an atmosphere that has no time frame for closure. Loneliness is brutal and it impacts all classes. It is like a virus. The cure has to be learned.”

“I wholeheartedly agree,” Florence Driedger wrote about my comments on loneliness. “I have been phoning many of my friends and acquaintances these days. They are appreciative but I wonder how long this feeling of somebody caring will last or how many times will I phone before I get tired of doing so? 

               “In addition, I have sent many texts and e-mails to friends. Again good but not adequate. We also have some very sick friends where the care giver needs support. Like you, nobody can give them a hug. Food shows some compassion but that is not enough. With all the recent research, one wonders whether we can really respond in an appropriate manner to reduce the isolation needed for the health of all of us.”

I had referred to the wafer and wine in Catholic Eucharist as the “the symbolic body and blood of the sinless Christ, [which] could not transmit germs.”

               Steve Roney offered a more orthodox view: ‘The wafer and wine are not the symbolic body and blood of Christ; they are the actual body and blood of Christ. Your understanding is very ‘low church’ here. And Catholic doctrine does not hold that this means they cannot transmit germs. That would be like saying they cannot attract dirt if dropped on the floor. To the contrary, the celebrant and participants take great pains to prevent this.”

Lois Hollstedt: “Loneliness is and has always been a source of human suffering and sometimes can be as sharp as physical pain. 

               “I am not a religious person but I recognize the important role religion has played in forming community and in supporting people in times of need. The place we all now find ourselves is one of those times. So thank you for reaching out in your solitude and sorrow and know that your example is helping others to do the same. 

               “The need to connect is the basis of so many mental health issues and our society is slowly learning how to do more than just basic welfare and we are attempting to support the whole person in body, mind & spirit. Maybe this collective experience will result in more understanding and support for everyone who needs it. I hope so.”

Chris Duxbury: “The church is often the place where people go for support, encouragement and hope, where the doors are swung wide open and everyone is welcome. Yet this is the time when the church has to close its doors. This grieves me as a minister.

               “I was thinking about this the other day, about how the friends of Jesus met privately behind closed doors in fear of their lives after Jesus' death. We too are living behind closed doors now and possibly many have a sense of fear about this. But, Jesus is here with us. Trusting in this allows us to keep going, no matter how lonely or afraid or angry we are.

               “We are bereft of experiencing community in the ways that we usually do. But the community still exists. It is just separated. It has taken on a new form. My role is to continue to feed and sustain my congregations as they journey through this time and to connect with them in ways that, while they are less personal, are ways that I need to utilize.”

Tom Watson: “After my wife died, I found that I needed to get out somewhere every day -- to have social contact, or just to realize that there was something other than the four walls of my condo. Now I'm going out once a week, but just for shopping for food. Everything else to which I want to go is closed. My condo building has shut down the lounge, party room, library and the exercise room... plus only two people at a time on the elevators. I can go for a walk in the nearby park as long as I don't get close to someone else. I make a few phone calls but other than that no social contact. I'm doing as well as I can. But am I lonely? Damn right I am!”

One of the tribulations grieving people experience is the well-meant assurance, “I know exactly how you feel!”

               Florence Dyck: avoided that trap: “I don't know how you feel. I only know how I feel. My husband died unexpectedly four months ago and it feels like yesterday. I, too, feel lonelier than I have ever felt. I hated coming home to an empty house and now I stay in one all day.

               “I write an article every month for the Morden/Winkler paper in southern Manitoba. In January I sent a raw account of how I was feeling, thinking they probably would not print it. They did and I received many thanks for expressing thoughts of others who had experienced such a profound loss. I can't say I now feel better. That will take much longer!”

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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PROMOTION STUFF…

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)

                       Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.

                       I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/

                       Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE

                       The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns.