For Christians, today is known as Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. This is the time of year where Christians are shepherded through the painful story of Jesus’ crucifixion and the joyful celebration of his resurrection. 

The Palm Sunday liturgy (worship service) is among the longest, most complex, and difficult in the entire Christian liturgical calendar. The service begins with a joyful scene of Jesus riding into Jerusalem to cheering crowds, ushering him in waving palm leaves. (Hence the name “Palm Sunday”). This celebration expresses the community’s love and appreciation for Jesus, who dedicated his life to ministering to the people, healing, teaching, and preaching. His primary message: “Love God with all your heart and soul. And love your neighbor as you have been loved.” This is a beautiful message and his ministry is a powerful expression of it. 

Then the tables turn. Judas, one of Jesus’ disciples, betrays him, telling the authorities that Jesus is not who he says he is; that He is an imposter. And so begins what happens when one negative voice catches hold of others. A group turns into a mob who believe the lie and the mob becomes angry and violent. The authorities proclaim Jesus is an imposter and sentence Him to death by execution. 

Amid this chaos, even Jesus’ closest friends betray him. They fall asleep when he implores them to stay awake. And Peter, his most intimate companion, denies even knowing him.

The Palm Sunday service is like liturgical whiplash! This story, repeated each year, is horrific. It begins with love and appreciation for Jesus’s ministry and ends with a trial that condemns him to death on a cross. Fear, anger and betrayal ripple through the community like fire, turning love into hate-filled violence, shouting that Jesus is an imposter. “Crucify him,” they yell!

As I write, I hear words of so many who jump to remind us that the crucifixion is not the end of the story. That is true. The resurrection of Jesus is around the corner, according to the scriptures, three days after his physical death. The resurrection comes next Sunday, known as Easter Sunday. This will be the extravagant celebration of Jesus’ resurrection, the proclamation that Jesus lives eternally as the Christ.

Some Christians prefer to ignore Palm Sunday and jump ahead to Easter. It’s easy to understand why. Easter is a whole lot easier than facing the horror of Jesus’s crucifixion when “….Christ is massacred in His members, torn limb from limb; God is murdered in men.”  (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 71)

And yet God’s love is proclaimed throughout the story. His love is present to Jesus and the crowd who betrayed Him. This is the great power of Christian faith. The love of God that transcends all Life, no matter how dark. 

From a human perspective, this transcendent love seems to make no sense. How can a God of love allow so much suffering? This question haunted me for years. In moments, it can still seduce me. I’m not the only one.

Let’s be clear. Even Jesus had his doubts. As he hung on the cross, in the 9th hour, the scriptures tell us, Jesus exclaimed, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”  (Matthew 27:46) 

His words are searing. Our hearts break, sensing his doubt, knowing moments of our own. 

This doubt in deep suffering is part of the journey of experiencing Love. The scripture tells us that Jesus’ last words on the cross are, “Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’; and when he had said this, he breathed his last”. (Luke 23:44) Jesus died knowing that God the Father had not abandoned him. 

The resurrection story is the ultimate proclamation of God’s love, no matter what, even death on a cross. However, Jesus could not experience the resurrection without going through the crucifixion. Neither can we.

The resurrection tells us that suffering is not the end of our journey, but is an essential element of it. The end is Love, and there is no end. Love was there at the beginning and carries through each moment of our lives, whether or not we know it or believe it. This is the Love that gives us the aliveness of life and extends beyond the grave. 

May we each find our own window into this truth.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

• Have you felt an absence of God in times of great suffering? How did this sense of absence affected your experience of suffering?

• Have you found the presence of God in times of great suffering? What difference did this sense of presence make?

• In your journey of faith, what role has doubt played?

• What helps you deepen in faith? 

“In the sufferings of my heart and the brokenness of creation, open to me further the doors of the eternal, that through the pain…  I may be guided to You as the heart of life…” (J. Philip Newell, Sounds of the Eternal, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002, p, 70)