Prayer Request

[Szdfan]

I still sometimes fill the pulpit at a church about twenty minutes from me. Coincidentally, I preached on Sunday and changed my sermon last minute to reflect what's going in my community. The funeral was Friday and filled the school gym. I thought I was doing better, but had a hard time feeling patient with my students who were crazy because it's 5 1/2 weeks from the end of school and state testing begins this week.

I've posted my sermon below. It's an artituclation of one the cornerstones of my theology -- through Jesus's suffering on the cross and his resurrection, God understands our suffering. Jesus is present with us in our suffering.

Matthew 21:1-11

Good morning,

It’s a pleasure to be with you this morning, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to celebrate Palm Sunday with you. I know I’m not here very often, but I’m always thankful for the chance to fill the pulpit.

In the church calendar, Palm Sunday is the time we remember Jesus's triumphant entry into Jerusalem -- when he rode into the city on a donkey and the crowd met him with palm leaves and songs. It's a brief moment of joy before Good Friday. A brief moment that feels like victory before Jesus is arrested and sentenced to die. It's a moment that sets up the rest of the week as Jesus is crucified and then rises from the grave.

These moments are important for the church because they help us remember God’s story—and how that story of Jesus Christ is still part of who we are today, both as followers of Jesus and as members of his church.

And yet, this morning, I don’t feel the celebration. I don’t feel the hope of the resurrection.

I feel like I’m living in Good Friday.

It’s been a hard week.

At the beginning of this week, I had most of a draft for a good sermon. I frequently wait until the last minute, relying on desperation and the Holy Spirit to get it done. But this time, I had my act together and was well on my way to finishing it ahead of time.

And then, late on Monday night, we lost [redacted] —and my school community in Las Animas has been shaken by shock and grief. We are bleeding, and the wound feels raw.

When I sat down at the end of this past week—which felt like a thousand years—I realized I couldn’t preach the sermon I had written. I couldn’t ignore the gaping wound in Las Animas. And since we are a tight-knit bunch of communities, I know that some of you are feeling that same woundedness today.

So I guess I learned my lesson about writing sermons ahead of time.

I want to start with a confession -- there is nothing I can say this morning that will make this okay.

Often when tragedy strikes, we try to make sense of it. We offer platitudes like, “God has a plan,” or “They’re in a better place.” We try to make the pain feel manageable. We try to stuff it back into a box so the world can feel normal again.

But there are two problems with these kinds of platitudes—these little sayings that sound nice but don’t hold much meaning.

First, we often say them to make ourselves feel better. Other people’s pain is uncomfortable, and when we try to fix it with words, what we’re really trying to do is ease our own discomfort.

Second, they’re just not true enough. There are no words that can make sense of the grief we’re carrying—not really. Not when a child is gone. Not when someone we knew and taught and laughed with (and felt frustrated with) has died in such a tragic way.

There is no easy language to wrap around a loss like this. It’s too deep. It’s too raw. And if you’re feeling shaken—if the ground beneath your feet feels unsteady—you are not alone.

As educators, as a community, part of our job is to prepare children for the world. We teach them the skills they need to succeed. But part of our job, too—maybe the hardest part—is to care for them. To protect them. To believe in them even when they don’t believe in themselves. To walk with them, even when we can’t carry their burdens.

Part of our job as teachers is to help our students survive their teenage years—a time that is often strange, and difficult, and impossible.

And yet, we know that not everyone is going to make it. We know that some of our students—no matter how bright, or caring, or full of potential—are not going to live. We are going to lose some. And that’s one of the risks of being a teacher.

This is my fourth year of teaching. [Redacted] is my first student who didn't make it.

So I don't feel like Palm Sunday this morning and I don't feel like Easter. I feel like Good Friday. I feel loss. I feel anger. I feel pain. I feel grief.

Yet grief is also holy. Grief reminds us that what we lost mattered. [Redacted] mattered. Who he was and what he did mattered. But now he's gone and there's a wound in our community because of it.

We will eventually heal. We will be ok. I will eventually be ok. But that remembering, that sense of loss, that is holy and is something that connects us together.

Holy Week -- Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter -- reminds us that God used Jesus to connect with us.

Not from a distance, but up close.
Not just in the joyful moments, but in the broken ones, too.
Not just when the tomb is empty, but when the cross is full.

Palm Sunday is a moment of expectations.

Jesus rides into Jerusalem like a conquering hero. And Jerusalem isn’t just a city—it’s the center of life for God’s people. It’s not only the capital of Israel, but also the place where they believed God literally dwelled—in the Temple.

So when Jesus enters the city, he’s not just walking into a place.

He’s walking into the heart of a nation.
Into the center of hope and longing and religious identity.
And yet—not all is well.

Because Israel is a conquered people. They live under the power of the Roman Empire. Their land isn’t free. Their leaders are compromised. Their lives are marked by fear and injustice.

So when Jesus enters Jerusalem, the crowd cheers for him—but they’re cheering for the king they want him to be.

They want a Messiah who will overthrow Rome.
They want a leader who will fix everything.
They want someone to win.

But Jesus doesn’t ride in on a war horse.
He rides in on a donkey.
He doesn’t come with soldiers.
He comes with fishermen, women, and children.
He doesn’t head straight for the palace.
He walks toward the cross.

And we know that by Friday, by the end of the week, what happens when Jesus fails to meet expectations.

And we know what happens by Friday—when Jesus fails to meet their expectations.

They turn on him.

The same crowd that shouts “Hosanna” on Sunday is shouting “Crucify him” by the end of the week. Because he didn’t fix it. Because he didn’t fight back. Because he didn’t save them in the way they wanted.

But Jesus didn’t come to win the way the world defines winning.

He came to walk with us.
To suffer with us.
To bear the weight of our sorrow.
To show us that even in death—even in the worst thing we can imagine—God is still with us.

This is not a Sunday of celebration for me. But it is a Sunday of hope.

Because if Jesus walks into that city, knowing what’s coming—
If he walks toward the cross, not away from it—
Then I believe he walks with us now.

When I was in seminary, one of my professors—Mary Thiessen Nation—used to tell stories about her time at a mission in South Central Los Angeles. South Central—now known as South Los Angeles—is a community long associated with poverty and violence. That image was shaped by the 1992 LA Riots and reinforced by movies like Menace II Society and Boyz n the Hood.

Every week, she hosted a Bible study with a group of African American women. And every week, these women would talk about how Jesus understood them.

They didn't mean in it some sort vague spiritual sense.

They meant that Jesus understood knew what it was like to live in South Central LA.

He knew what it was to be poor.
To live on welfare.
To be harassed by cops.
To lose children.
To raise grandchildren because their parents were gone
To go to jail.

To live in a broken world and still get up every morning and live.

For these women, Jesus wasn't just some distant spiritual figure, they saw him as a man who walked their streets, who looked like them and understood how they felt.

They read the Gospels as the God who understands. The crucifixion of Jesus meant that God understood how they felt. That God had also suffered. God had also lost and in that loss, the divine more fully understood what it meant to be human.

So maybe that’s one of the hopes of Good Friday.

Maybe that’s one of the hopes in this time before Easter.

In the grief before resurrection.

That Jesus understands what it means to be us.
He knows what it feels like to work a dead-end job.

To barely pay the bills.
To lose crops.
To lose parents.
To slowly grow older.
To struggle with illness.
To lose a child.

And somehow, by understanding us and what it means to be human in this broken creation, Jesus shows us that are not alone.
Jesus is present with us in the midst of our grief and suffering.

He is present in our unanswered questions.
He is present in our doubts.
And the reason why Jesus is present with us is because of his work on the cross.

Because he suffered.
Because he had doubts.
Because he died.

As the theologian Jürgen Moltman argued, only a suffering God can truly help us. He wrote, "God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him." And that is also hope -- that in the midst of our suffering and grief, there is also the hope of resurrection, of restoration, of a broken world being remade to what God intended.

Holy Week doesn’t skip the hard parts.

And neither should we.

But we carry them together.

With the God who suffers.

And who walks with us still.

Amen.

[mike]

Please pray for Robert and family. I want to make sure his post on the "Today" thread doesn't get lost.

My 20 year old middle son died in a motorcycle accident today. We are doing okay and processing things. Life is quite precious.