a painful smile

Shusako Endo

The Pesach (Passover) was at hand. The people preparing for the festival were looking back on their long history, rueful over the anguished adversity of their ancient wandering migrations, and they prayed with fervor that God would come again to restore prosperity to his land now trampled underfoot by the Gentiles. Jesus, of course, knew the spirit of the feast. On this particular day, shortly before the festival itself began, with full knowledge he dared to plunge into that whirlpool of popular misunderstanding. Descending from the Mount of Olives and through the cheers from the crowd, he certainly knew that he was soon going to disappoint these people, and that the people in their frustration would then turn against him. . . . Jesus, coming down the mountain and entering the city, wore a painful smile.

celebrating nonetheless

"Jesus' awareness of his impending death permeates his actions and can be compared, i believe, to the knowledge held today by the terminally ill ... Jesus on Palm Sunday may be likened to the cancer patient who celebrates and anniversary - fully aware of the "lastness" of it all, yet celebrating nonetheless."
Lucy Bregman

a celebration of misunderstanding

I write this on a day given to remembering the triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem. This year the day seems empty and abstract. The events of the week are too overpowering. The knowledge that Christ's entry led directly to his Crucifixion looms too [grimly] ahead. This seems the strangest holiday of the year, a celebration of misunderstanding. In this world, the [dominion] has not yet come, though our hearts long for it and our lives incline toward it.
John Leax

Leave her alone

An exploration in poetry and art.
I hope you find it useful.
Let me know what you think.
ken@kenrookes.com.au

Palm Sunday coloring

http://arewethereyet-davisfarmmom.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/palm-sunday.html

Christ's entry into Jerusalem

wonderful watercolour by norman Adams
http://www.methodist.org.uk/static/artcollection/image1.htm

save us from self-interest

"Jesus declines to ask God to save him, he rather requests the Father to glorify his name. At face value it would seem that the Jerusalem fan parade is glorifying God’s name but they are not really. They are simply demanding their own liberation. “Save us now!“

The paradox of Jesus’ life is that the glorification of God’s name is found  in the ignonimity and humiliation of the accursed one who is nailed up on a tree. It is from there that the salvation called for in the Hosanna arises.  However, this salvation is now completely redefined by the poured out life on the cross.

Which brings me to that Jerusalem flash mob and their, “God help us! God save us!”

Isn’t that the most primal prayer ever prayed?"

http://thelisteninghermit.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/hosanna-save-us-from-self-interest-palm-sunday-b/

Triumph

Jesus didn’t procrastinate.

“May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,”

he murmured quietly to his friends

as he made his arrangements to take the city.

“We’ll use a colt, though;

don’t want them to get the wrong idea.”

Which wrong idea, Jesus?

There seems to be a rich array to choose from.

Which idea did the crowd get

as they stripped the trees of their lower branches

and cast their robes into the dust?

“I was there when he rode into town!”

they would later say to their friends,

forgetting to mention

that they were part of another crowd

later in the week.

What did they hope for;

were they expecting more miracles

from the radical rabbi?

And what did they get

for their glimpse at celebrity?

A man like themselves,

but one determined to follow

his divine parent’s strange path

of courageous defiance, reckless generosity,

and foolish love.

© Ken Rookes

unless a grain of wheat ...

in my end is my beginning

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers  
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. 
In my end is my beginning.
-T.S.Eliot   1888-1965
  'East Coker'  (last lines)

Fruitfulness

Love is a seed,

its deep-hidden dna

a blueprint carrying the hope for a harvest

of compassion and truth,

comradeship and care,

along with glorious defiant acts

of justice and grace.

Gospel-teller John,

in common with those who wrote before him,

calls his readers to emulate his hero

by joining his company of disciples.

A metaphor enthusiast of the highest order,

he writes of Jesus as a vine

into which the follower has been grafted.

The disciple is expected to be fruitful,

he assures us,

and identifies the pruning shears

as an essential means

by which that fruit is produced.

Ouch.

In another part of his story

Jesus appears as a lonely grain of wheat;

a seed that, to be made fruitful,

must be transformed so completely

and painfully, that its planting / burial

is described as death.

Returning to the subject of discipleship,

he insists that this loss of life

characterizes the process by which

his followers are to bear their own fruit.

Ouch, again.

These are, of course, mere metaphors.

and modern-day disciples have no need

to take them literally.

They are, however,

expected to take them seriously

and produce the multi-coloured fruits of love.

© Ken Rookes 2012