Claimed, gathered and sent

I shared these words  with the people of St. Timothy Lutheran Church last Sunday, 4/14/19. This is my response to today’s Palm Sunday readings. I was moved by these words and they eloquently echoed my own thoughts. Here are excerpts from a Palm Sunday sermon by Frederick Buechner entitled “The Things That Make For Peace” from A Room Called Remember : We call it Palm Sunday because maybe they were palm branches that were thrown into the road in front of him as he approached the city-a kind of poor man's red-carpet treatment, a kind of homemade ticker-tape parade. Just branches is all the record states, but maybe palms is what they actually were, and in any case it's as palms that we remember them; and all over Christendom people leave church with palm leaves of their own to remember him by on the anniversary of his last journey, to pin up on the kitchen bulletin board or stick into the frame of the dresser mirror until finally they turn yellow and bri...

The text I’m preaching from is Matthew chapter 21 which was read in the processional liturgy.             Jesus is coming into Jerusalem. Something new is in the air. This could really change everything. How many of us have experienced an event like that in our lives—whether it be a new job, graduating from school, getting married, having a child, retiring…the list goes on. I don’t know about you, but when there’s something exciting on the horizon in my life, I fantasize about it. I imagine just how it will be. I can’t wait for the occasion to take place.             Let me give you an example. When Ray and I first got married, I thought when he retired; we’d just ride off into the sunset together and live happily ever after. That just sounded great. I couldn’t imagine anything much better than that.             Those were...

As Bob Dylan wrote, “The times they are a changin.’ This Sunday is one of those changing, transitional times in our church year. The end of Lent is near as we move through Holy Week towards Easter. Today, we’ve heard and participated in the celebratory parade with Palms, singing “All Glory Laud and Honor,” walking down the Mt. of Olives with Jesus during his triumphal entry into Jerusalem . Did you hear the hosannas? This crowd was excited. They wanted to crown Jesus as king! When I lived in the Holy Land in the 1980s, on Palm Sunday, Christians of all denominations and languages would gather on the Mt. of Olives . We would sing, pray, and joyfully walk down the Mt. into Jerusalem . We were Christians of all nationalities and languages singing and shouting, “Hosanna!” It was like being transported back in time to Jesus ’ time. Can you imagine what it must have been like on that first Palm Sunday? This morning our readings take us to other place...