Palm Sunday

Joy and I have just returned from Palm Sunday at the Lutheran church.  This is the first Palm Sunday in over thirty years I  was out of the pulpit,  and the first one in forty years that I did not spend in a Presbyterian church.  I wondered how it would be not to be preaching today.  I have to admit, it felt pretty good.  It's like a stagehand who finally gets to sit out in the audience and enjoy the play.

The worship service was different from any Palm Sunday service I had ever seen, and really different from a Presbyterian service, where we try to make people feel the sufferings of Christ by talking them to death.  What we do by words, they did by action, the ritual preaching louder and with more meaning that I am usually able to convey, even in my best sermons.

The service started outside the church. The whole congregation was given palm branches.  Then the minister read the Palm Sunday story on the steps of the church, and we sang "All Glory Laud and Honor" as we processed into the service and took our seats.  The choir sang several songs, interspersed with the reading of John 18 and 19,  the entire trial and crucifixion story.  Then came the offering and the prayers for the people,  then communion, where we walked forward and took it from the minister's hand,  as he reminded us by name that it was for us Jesus did this.  Finally at the end,  a woman read Psalm 22,  David's prophetic telling of the crucifixion, as the minister and his assistants stripped the altar and the front of the sanctuary bare.  The minister extinguished the lights and took off his robe and walked out, not as clergy, but merely as a man.  Finally, we all left in silence.

It was that part, the stripping of the altar, that got to me.  What is God doing in my life now, but stripping me of my status before Him, reminding me of what was said at Ash Wednesday, "Remember, you are dust, and to dust you shall return?"

Speaking of returning to dust, I received some sad news yesterday,  An old friend from seminary,  Gilbert Rowell died suddenly of a heart attack yesterday.  Gilbert was like me, a thirty year veteran of Christ's service.  He was a good man and a good pastor.  But now, his body goes to dust, and his soul goes to the Lord.   He will be missed, and we pray for Robin, his wife, and his children who will miss him terribly.

What is death, but the stripping of the altar?  We come into this world as simple souls,  grow up,  get educated, take our place in life as fathers, mothers, workers, leaders, ministers, or whatever, then, sometimes without warning, we God strips it all away, and we are left souls bare before God, facing Him alone.  We add layers of clothing and status around us,  and God can take it all away in a second. 

When they read the crucifixion passage from John this morning, I was reminded of a little detail I had forgotten. The spices that anointed Jesus' body were donated by Nicodemus, the same elderly leader who came to Jesus by night in John 3, to whom Jesus said those famous words "You must be born again."  I suppose that is what has happened to my friend Gilbert today--born again into glory.  When we lose all, and we are left with nothing, then life begins anew.  In the cross, we are stripped of everything so that we can start over,  with a new Life in the resurrected body of Christ. 

Underneath it all, we are just bare souls, naked as God made us.  It's good to remember that occasionally,  and that life can begin again.