There were palm fronds growing by the path and I cut them loose from the tree. When I was done with them, I discarded them in the waste ground behind the garden wall. There they lay.
Was I in the crowd? Oh, yes, I am in the crowd. I’m always in the crowd.
We are right, he is the Messiah, he is wonderful counselor, Almighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace and he is coming as promised. He arrives on an unridden colt and we cheer “hosanna save us” that’s what hosanna means, save us, save us, anointed one, expected one.
The palm fronds lay behind the wall drying until the next spring when someone asked for dried palm fronds to reduce to ash.
In Jerusalem, six years ago, early in the morning I felt I should get up and go and I walked through the town from the Gloria Hotel near the Jaffa Gate to the church, the church that has two names. One is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, there was almost no one there. A priest gathered a small group of people at the bottom of a stair and I asked him “I don’t know what I’m looking at; what should I look at?” He said, “Well, you want to go up the stairs, that’s Calvary, then you want to go over to that little building inside the building that is the chapel with the tomb.”
Later that day, I went into the chapel and lay my forehead on the cool marble slab in the inner room with my eyes closed. It was dark, so dark I felt as if I were looking into a darkened face looking into mine. I felt nothing, I lost track of time. Then I heard a gasp of breath and I opened my eyes leaned away got up and went out. I walked out into the larger church which has another name, the Church of the Resurrection, but not yet not today, we are still at the tomb with our eyes closed waiting for the light to dawn.
Between then and now we gather at a table and he is there and he says to us as he breaks the bread and passes it around. “This is my body broken for you, the true paschal lamb offers himself for us.” At the end of the meal he takes the cup, blesses it giving thanks to God and gives it to us and says, “This is my blood the blood of the new covenant. Remember this whenever you drink it and so we remember also the offering Abraham made of his own son.”
And God reckoned that faith of Abraham unto him for righteousness, it wasn’t killing his son that saved him; it was his faith. So even today, as we without bread or wine in our hands offer our faith as our gift to God and it is through that faith that he redeems us, it is through his act in which we have faith that he has made us whole.
"Our faith is our gift to God." Keeping the Faith, Arizona Daily Star, April 4th 2021.
https://tucson.com/our-faith-is-our-gift-to-god/article_5f031639-f5e1-58c3-9291-cd4d498961d0.html
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