palm sunday

so today is palm sunday, and for the first time that i can ever remember, the text for the day was taken from mark and not one of the other gospel accounts. scott talked a lot about the significance of the mundane when talking about the story today. ya know, the things like stealing a donkey, throwing clothes all over the ground and waving branches at the dude; the usual king treatment. but one of the things that really struck me today is how all these people were so excited to have a king come to town that they could overlook the absurdity of the donkey and all the other things jesus had been saying and the fact that probably didn’t really look like much of a tough guy. so they yelled “hosanna,” save us now. as if this crazy carpenter dude could just march into jerusalem on a donkey and fix everything (insert “bad-ass” pun). ironically, when he went for to do just that, everybody just cuts and runs leaving him on his own. i think we’re the same way. we want the king, but not the kingdom. the king saves us, rides on in and represents all our hopes and dreams and expectations. but then when the king get to work setting up his kingdom, we want nothing to do with it. maybe that’s because the kingdom involves imprisonment, beatings, a cross, and a tomb. these are irreplaceable parts of the story. the kingdom is messy, sometimes hard and definitely flies in the face of what we want reality to be. we want the luxury of designing the kingdom ourselves for the king. Hosanna, save us now, but don’t you dare meddle with the rest of things.

so this is my question... can we really, truly celebrate the kingship of christ without the cross, without the tomb, without the kingdom?

thanks be to god for an empty tomb and a resurrection to ensure that they cannot be separated... easter is a pretty special thing...