A Roman cross was one of the most humiliating and painful ways to die. Reserved for making lawbreakers into public spectacles of Rome’s authority. Typically, someone crucified would die slowly from suffocation.Each breath became a choice—lift your body against pierced feet in searing pain, or feel your lungs strain for air. All this while being naked and on display for the gawking public.  Utter objectification and dehumanization.  Someone gruesomely moved from image bearer of God to a mere symbol of brutality.

Palm Sunday—with all its fanfare and tension—feels both like yesterday and a lifetime ago. Can such a dichotomy of feeling and perception be possible?  I wonder if Jesus and his disciples felt the same.

On Thursday evening, he celebrates the traditional Passover meal with his disciples, taking symbols that are ingrained in the fabric of his people and giving them new meaning. In a Passover meal, there would be four cups of wine, each representing promises given by God to the Hebrew people in Exodus 6:6-8.  Four expressions of redemption…

Palm Sunday seems like such a strange turn of events in the narrative of Jesus’ ministry. Previously, he had worked pretty hard at staying under the radar.  But here, he shifts gears and steps onto center stage…riding a donkey. There are so many interesting things happening in this passage. Jesus pre-arranges transportation into Jerusalem with locals from a nearby village. Not a horse, but a donkey and its colt. Odd. He’s so close to Jerusalem. Why get a donkey at this point…unless he had a message and he wanted to be noticed. As a typical Jewish teacher, he was taking this pivotal moment as a chance to use his every move to teach; everything planned and choreographed.

A donkey was not only a common service animal in first century Israel, it had quite a long history in the Hebrew Bible. Donkeys showed up all over the place in the Torah, the history writings and in the prophets.  

One story that may have come to mind for on-lookers of this scene can be found in 1 Kings 1:33-38 when Solomon uses David’s donkey to ride into Jerusalem as the rightful king while Adonjah, a usurper, tries to impress with a triumphal entry on a war horse.

What is one of the most common catalysts for hiding behind indifference or oppression? Fear.  When we feel fear, we have a primal instinct to hide, to protect ourselves, or to fight back. When we are afraid, we shift responsibility to others, we mask ourselves, we bully, and we withdraw from all the things that love asks of us: vulnerability, empathy, and sacrifice. Fear rips us apart and uproots the love that God installed as the foundational operating system of His world. A world where peace, joy, and hope flourish in His image-bearers and partners.

Here’s the thing, we don’t want to fear. It sort of just happens. Fear is our natural response to things that feel big, overwhelming, and unknown to us. We freak out with fear and subsequently hide. Maybe this is why one of the most repeated things God has said through Scripture is “don’t be afraid” or “fear not."

Joy, for Lewis, wasn’t a feeling you could buy or schedule. It was a longing that pointed toward something (or Someone) beyond this world.

Joy is a complex thing that tends to elude us when we are searching for it. No matter how hard we try, it seems like we only end up with lesser varieties.

In my experience, I’ve noticed that true joy is tied to relationships. This helps make sense of the complex and paradoxical nature of joy as described by Lewis. Joy bubbles up in moments of deep connection, reminding us of how good life is and how good God is. The surprise of these moments is that joy is often found in the deepest, most painful circumstances. We find joy side by side with celebrations of life, painful conversations with loved ones, or even moments of rejection because of your commitment to God’s ways. These moments are sad and painful, yet they also deeply resonate with our hearts, confirming what we know to be true.

How in the world did we get here? To this place of fragmentation and hurry, spread so thin over an expanse of activities that we can’t even recognize ourselves anymore. When I consider where I started to lean into busyness as opposed to the call of peace and stillness, I unearthed a problem: all this time, I had been carrying the idea that my value was tied to my productivity. Somewhere along the way, I started believing that if I just did enough, I would finally be enough.

Unfortunately, seeking to do something in order to be something only resulted in a shattered sense of self that needed a miracle to be put back together.

I have a feeling I’m not the only one who has gone down the path of busyness in search of peace.

What does hope look like? Is it worth the effort? Cynicism, while miserable, feels safe. It doesn’t disappoint! Hope is risky and vulnerable, but hope, when placed in the unchangeable and unshakable character of God, can yield a harvest that will last for generations. Don’t get me wrong, there will be times where this harvest might be years or lifetimes in the making.  Just because it is slow does not mean it’s not worth the effort.