In years past, the season of Lent has tended to drag on. Maybe it is because the thing we chose to give up was just too much of a shock to our senses, too ingrained into our daily routine and the abruptness with which Lent arrived did not provide us with an adequate amount of time to prepare. Perhaps we were looking forward to the season of Lent and for whatever reason, once we hit week three and there were still three weeks to go, the season we were looking forward to was now the season we wanted nothing to do with, a season that we wished would just getaway. Lent is an odd time in the church year. 

The sloth-like pace of Lent is intentional. This is not Advent where we anxiously await the culmination of four weeks with tinsel and decorated homes. Maybe I’m wrong, have you ever decorated your home for Lent? Have you ever put a Lenten tree in your family room? The slow pace of Lent provides space for the Church to do some self-reflecting. This season of fasting, prayer, and repentance is an intentional act to allow the faithful and not-so-faithful to turn back to Christ, turning away from the sin which has grabbed a hold of, that we cling to, in the hope that by the Grace of God we will no longer be bound to our sin and instead we will step into the light of Christ’s resurrection.

Mustering with his band of followers at the Mount of Olives - the place where God declared to “stand in order to defeat those who had gathered against Jerusalem”[1] - Jesus dispatched two disciples to fetch a donkey and a colt. After retrieving the animals Jesus was saddled up and the disciples along with the followers they had been collecting as they moved throughout the region begin their procession from the Mount Olives towards the Holy City of Jerusalem. 

The first-century red carpet was rolled out for the prophet, the Messiah who was coming to free the Holy City, coming to free the world from the weight of that which they had been held captive by. The followers who had been traveling with Jesus, witnesses to and participants of his miracles and teachings - the feeding of the 5,000, teaching Peter about forgiveness, the extension of grace to a woman about to be stoned, the healing of the blind, and so many more - threw their cloaks onto the ground so that the dust from the ground would not be kicked up and onto Jesus by the humble animal he was riding on.

As Jesus and his followers entered the Holy City they were greeted by another group of people, the citizens of Jerusalem. We do not hear about this group of people until nearly the end of the Palm Sunday story. While Jesus had been traveling to the city he was hailed as the Messiah, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven.”[2] These shouts of praise and longing were the echoes of a prayer, of Psalm 118, “a psalm of victory of Israel's Lord, a psalm in which the gate of the Lord is opened so that the righteous may enter.”[3]

 When these two groups of people came together - Jesus and his followers, and the residents of Jerusalem - Jesus was identified, by his followers as a prophet but in his procession into the city, Jesus identities himself as Lord, but a Lord who would ride a creature not typically associated with royalty and power. He rode not a warhorse ready to take a triumphant victory through force, but instead fulfilling the words of the prophet Ezekiel, Jesus entered the Holy City with humility. 

If Lent seemed to drag on in years past, this year, Lent of 2020 has felt as though we have been moving at the speed of light and yet we have not gone very far. If you’re like me the path you now travel is limited to the walls of your home, with deviations from that path few and far between. The ash on our foreheads is barely been gone it seems and now Jesus is marching into Jerusalem, making a B-line for the temple. And it would be great if that is where the story ended, with shouts of “Hosanna!” But as Lent draws to a close, there is more to the story, there is more than just Palm Sunday and shouts of “Hosanna!” to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem and to the closeout Lent. 

If we leave the story at “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven”[4] we miss the abruptness with which Lent draws to a close, the closing is not drawn out, and the quickness with which Holy Week moves. Jesus entered the Holy City and before a week goes by, he will have been crucified. He will be dead. In less than a week the man who entered the city peacefully, with no show military force, will tell his disciples to put away their swords as he was taken from a garden, arrested and then killed. The quickness with which we move into Holy Week, beginning with this procession, is a shock we experience year after year. Rev. Fleming Rutledge describes the movement as beginning with “triumph” and ending in “catastrophe.”[5]

The “turmoil”[6] Jesus caused as he entered the Holy City stirred up such alarm among the religious and political leaders that the only thing left to do to this peaceful prophet was to kill him. And in a moment of brief clarity the religious leadership of Jerusalem and the political leadership of Rome, two groups who did not always see eye-to-eye, found a common enemy they could focus their attention on. 

We cannot, as Fleming puts it, pass “from Palm Sunday to Easter without Good Friday.”[7]

The movement of Holy Week occurs quickly, so quickly in fact that it is easy for us, the faithful to ignore the events of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, preferring the celebration of resurrection over betrayal, denial, arrest, mockery, and death. In moving from Palm Sunday to Easter, skipping the rest of Holy Week we forget that the crowd who followed Jesus into the Holy City, the group who shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven”[8] would either shout “crucify” on Friday as Jesus was offered to Pilate in exchange for a murderer or they would go into hiding, fearing the fate of their teacher would soon be theirs.

It happened so quickly. The shouts of “Hosanna” would quickly move to shouts of “crucify.”

And that is where I find myself during Lent. That is where I find myself -answering the question. “Who Am I?” during Lent. There are days when I would like to think I am leading the Palm Sunday procession, keeping the pacing just right and then there are the times when I find myself hiding behind a locked door or joining the crowd willing to exchange Jesus for Barabbas.

The day that we look forward to, Easter, the day we celebrate every Sunday, did not come without a price. “Easter was not ‘made easy’ for Jesus,” Fleming Rutledge writes.[9] And yet, the price paid by Jesus is not the price we pay. The saving grace extended to us by Christ - the same grace extended at the well to the Samaritan woman, the same grace extended to the woman about to be stoned, the forgiveness of our sins - no matter how many the maybe - is free. Free to those who shouted “Hosanna!” and free to those who hid or shouted “Crucify!”

Easter is coming, and it is free, and it extends freedom to us, to everyone. Freedom from captivity to sin and Death was paid for with the unconditional love of God, for you. The peace we seek in this world, as slowly as it may seem to arrive or as quickly as it may seem to depart, is found in the cross of Christ. Beginning at the Mount of Olives, all the way the Calvary, regardless if you were in the crowd shouting “Hosanna!” and then hid in an upper room or if you were part of the crowd who traded the life of Christ for the life of Barabbas, that freedom is still yours and the price has been paid.  

[1] Hauerwas, Stanley. Matthew. Brazos Baker, 2006. Page 181.

[2] Matthew 21:9, NRSV

[3] Hauerwas, Stanley. Matthew. Brazos Baker, 2006. Page 182.

[4] Matthew 21:9, NRSV

[5] Rutledge, Fleming. The Undoing of Death: Sermons for Holy Week and Easter. W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2005. Page 11.

[6] Matthew 21:10, NRSV

[7] Rutledge, Fleming. The Undoing of Death: Sermons for Holy Week and Easter. W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2005. Page 12.

[8] Matthew 21:9, NRSV

[9] Rutledge, Fleming. The Undoing of Death: Sermons for Holy Week and Easter. W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2005. Page 9.