When Donkeys and Temples Tell Stories

Palm Sunday... the beginning of Holy Week. Holy Week is literally one week that changed the world. So yes, this is a big deal. Yes, this story of God punching a hole in the universe and jumping into our broken reality as one of us is a story so counter-intuitive to all the religious stories of the Divine that proceeded it and that have come after it - that it demands you take pause and listen.Every religious story you hear is a variation of a single theme - what do I do to get God to accept me? Why have people always felt that we are somehow not right? Why is all religion about “propitiation” - trying to turn God’s anger from you? Why are both sacrificing and being good as a way to God a universal proclivity of mankind in every culture and every generation in the whole history of the world? It must be, it can only be, that deep  in our DNA is shame. Deep in our DNA, so deep we can’t condition it out or breed it out of ourselves, is the haunting realization that we are deeply broken and we can’t fix ourselves or make ourselves happy or free by just existing.So we have religion - systems of belief that tell us that the gods are angry with us and we have to sacrifice to get in their good graces (or keep them off our backs) and we need a certain list of things (that usually looks like the ‘Golden Rule’) to prove our worth. From culture to culture it is just a variation of the same theme, the gods are different but the demands they make so we can justify ourselves are pretty similar. No wonder that until Jesus came along, the idea of “Loving God” was never part of the religious vocabulary. Love God? Are you kidding me, you didn’t love God, you appeased God, you used sacrifices to keep God away.One week changed everything. When Jesus came and entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday he came as a King. He came to bring a kingdom. He came to rule and reign - HE WAS KING! But his rule and reign is not like you think. It is not like religion. The donkey tells a story. When he came to the temple he came to cleanse it and also to make it obsolete. What he did at the temple cleansing was so terrifying that the religious leaders knew they had to embrace Jesus or kill him. Temples tells stories.This Palm Sunday we will see what donkeys and temples tell us about Jesus. Let me give you a hint. They tell the story of the God of the Universe turning the tables on religion and instead of making us pay - God paid. It is the ultimate love story, ultimate adventure story, ultimate hero story, and if it is true, it changes everything we think about reality. Indifference is not an option. Hope to see you Sunday and we’ll talk.Blessings,James M. Holland