Nobody wants to hear the Passion story. I’ve heard of people trying to make Palm Sunday easier by moving the Passion story to the end of that service, with a pause before it so people can leave if they want.
I know, it’s no fun, that old story of how that poor traveling preacher was betrayed by one of his friends, abandoned by almost all the others, and then murdered by a governor who was manipulated into it by envious men who were supposed to be people of faith.
It’s a sad, sordid story and it’s no fun at all. But we need to stay and hear it, all of it. We need to do our best to take it in, all of it, everything that happened to Jesus and his friends on that Friday so long ago. We can’t look away and pretend it didn’t. We can’t go straight from palms to Easter lilies without a long hard look at the crown of thorns.
This message is excerpted from “Nobody wants to hear it” by Audrey Novak Riley from the March 29, 2018, blog of the Women of the ELCA. Today is Palm Sunday. Today we commemorate Mikael Agricola, Bishop of Turku, 1557.
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