April 13, 2014
Palm Sunday, Year A
This morning, my husband and a bunch of other folks from St. Aidan's were running in the GW Parkway race. My kids and I were there cheering, with our sign reading "St. Aidan's wishes you GODSPEED!"
As we were there, I took a photo and posted it on our St. Aidan's Facebook page. Then during the procession with palms this morning I took another picture to post.
Thinking about what could work for Facebook, checking my email, reading news on line -- the internet is such a big piece of life now days.
What would it have been like to be following Jesus on Twitter during his last week?
On Palm Sunday: “Entered Jerusalem on colt: palms, Hosannas, adoring crowd. Looking for a place for our Passover dinner.”
On Maundy Thursday: “Ate last Passover dinner with disciples, shared bread and wine, washed their feet. Arrested while praying.”
On Good Friday: “Trials and crowds shouting ‘Crucify him!’ Disciples are gone. About to be nailed to the cross. Abba, why have you deserted me?”
On Twitter, the events of Jesus’ last week would have to be reduced to small pieces that would be quickly forgotten with the next pithy statement competing for our attention. Each event would feel like a separate, unconnected event. There wouldn’t be enough substance to make sense of it. There wouldn’t be enough time to really take in the whole picture.
Holy Week can feel that way. We’ve had weeks of Lent that feel slow and deliberate, and then all of a sudden everything happens all at once. How can we make sense of any of it?
Last week there was an article in the Post about how our brains are beginning to rewire themselves because of all of our digital reading. Before the internet, our brains read mostly in linear ways, left to right, page to page, without many distractions. With the internet and its torrent of information, hyperlinked text, videos, shortcuts, and interactivity, our brains have learned new ways of reading – scanning, skimming, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. The problem is that this alternative way of reading is competing with the traditional deep reading circuitry that our brains had developed for traditional reading. Neuroscientists are beginning to warn that the digital way of reading is starting to invade how we read on paper so that we now read with less comprehension and in-depth processing. When you are used to digital reading, it becomes hard to slow down and read deeply. One researcher worries that if we continue in this direction we will lose the ability to express or read convoluted prose and become “Twitter brains” capable of reading only brisk 140-character declarative sentences.
So maybe what the Church does today can be part of our fight against Twitter Brain syndrome.
In this service we move so quickly from our sunny, joyful, triumphant entry into the Church, waving our palm branches as we sing – to the dark story of the violent events leading to Jesus’ horrific death on the cross. We go from being part of the crowd cheering and welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem to being part of the jeering crowd before Pontius Pilate shouting “Crucify him!”
The two sides seem so unfitting, so opposed, that it’s hard to know quite what to do with them. It feels like it would be easier to talk about them separately. To spend time with the idea of welcoming Jesus, throwing our metaphorical cloaks before him, beginning to realize who he is and what he is sent to do. OR to spend time with Jesus in his last hours, being accused and tried, mocked and taunted, beginning to realize the enormity of his love for us. But instead, they are conflated and it’s incredibly jarring.
They used to be kept separate, these stories. It used to be that today was only Palm Sunday, only about the triumphant entry. The story of Jesus’ death was reserved for Good Friday, a somber day from start to finish. But then the Church noticed that not everyone was coming to Church during the week (gasp!) and so had to make sure the people didn’t just bounce from triumphant Palm Sunday to triumphant Easter without understanding all that came in between.
And so here we are, on Palm Sunday, experiencing the seismic shift in one fell swoop. There is no escaping the collision of triumph and death today, as much as we might prefer it that way. I think today’s strange juxtaposition of triumph and death is a little bit like what is happening with our brains with digital versus print reading. We can begin to wrap our heads around one or the other, but trying to fit them together is like trying to read a Henry James novel when you’ve gotten used to internet reading.The good news in the article is that all is not lost. With effort, we can retrain our brains to read more complex writing again. We can re-find our ability to slow down, savor, and think for ourselves without constant distractions as we read.
And we can do the same with today’s stories. With some effort and will power, we can cast aside our Twitter brains and delve deeply and see that these events aren’t as separate and contradictory as we think.
The waving of palms seems joyful and light, and yet even there, when we are paying attention, we can see that there is plenty of death already present in the triumph. The humble donkey that Jesus rode into town was in deliberately stark contrast to the parades of military might in the Roman world. The people welcoming Jesus through the city gates were looking for a winner, hoping Jesus would save them from Roman occupation and be their hero. Even at that moment, the triumph was unsustainable.
And in the passion Gospel, there is plenty of triumph present even there, when we are paying attention. In the denial and desertion of the disciples, love and forgiveness have already been bestowed by Jesus. Even the cross, an instrument of torture and execution, is a preview of the symbol of new life and God’s overcoming death.
In our Lenten series in Godly Play we’ve talked about Jesus on the cross and Jesus on Easter as being two sides of the same picture. They go together and can’t be pulled apart. When you see or experience one side, you always know that the other side is there too. Neither side can be a simple sound bite. We have to make time and space to go deeper than 140 characters.
That wholeness underlies this paradoxical day. God is right there in the middle of it all, waiting to be discovered. In the most triumphant times and in the most violent and painful times, God is there. In our joy and in our suffering, God is rejoicing and suffering alongside us. Life can be complex and jarring and Jesus is with us in all of it. Amen.
Palm Sunday, Year A
What would it have been like to be following Jesus on Twitter during his last week?
On Palm Sunday: “Entered Jerusalem on colt: palms, Hosannas, adoring crowd. Looking for a place for our Passover dinner.”
On Maundy Thursday: “Ate last Passover dinner with disciples, shared bread and wine, washed their feet. Arrested while praying.”
On Good Friday: “Trials and crowds shouting ‘Crucify him!’ Disciples are gone. About to be nailed to the cross. Abba, why have you deserted me?”
On Twitter, the events of Jesus’ last week would have to be reduced to small pieces that would be quickly forgotten with the next pithy statement competing for our attention. Each event would feel like a separate, unconnected event. There wouldn’t be enough substance to make sense of it. There wouldn’t be enough time to really take in the whole picture.
Holy Week can feel that way. We’ve had weeks of Lent that feel slow and deliberate, and then all of a sudden everything happens all at once. How can we make sense of any of it?
Last week there was an article in the Post about how our brains are beginning to rewire themselves because of all of our digital reading. Before the internet, our brains read mostly in linear ways, left to right, page to page, without many distractions. With the internet and its torrent of information, hyperlinked text, videos, shortcuts, and interactivity, our brains have learned new ways of reading – scanning, skimming, searching for key words, scrolling up and down quickly. The problem is that this alternative way of reading is competing with the traditional deep reading circuitry that our brains had developed for traditional reading. Neuroscientists are beginning to warn that the digital way of reading is starting to invade how we read on paper so that we now read with less comprehension and in-depth processing. When you are used to digital reading, it becomes hard to slow down and read deeply. One researcher worries that if we continue in this direction we will lose the ability to express or read convoluted prose and become “Twitter brains” capable of reading only brisk 140-character declarative sentences.
So maybe what the Church does today can be part of our fight against Twitter Brain syndrome.
In this service we move so quickly from our sunny, joyful, triumphant entry into the Church, waving our palm branches as we sing – to the dark story of the violent events leading to Jesus’ horrific death on the cross. We go from being part of the crowd cheering and welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem to being part of the jeering crowd before Pontius Pilate shouting “Crucify him!”
The two sides seem so unfitting, so opposed, that it’s hard to know quite what to do with them. It feels like it would be easier to talk about them separately. To spend time with the idea of welcoming Jesus, throwing our metaphorical cloaks before him, beginning to realize who he is and what he is sent to do. OR to spend time with Jesus in his last hours, being accused and tried, mocked and taunted, beginning to realize the enormity of his love for us. But instead, they are conflated and it’s incredibly jarring.
They used to be kept separate, these stories. It used to be that today was only Palm Sunday, only about the triumphant entry. The story of Jesus’ death was reserved for Good Friday, a somber day from start to finish. But then the Church noticed that not everyone was coming to Church during the week (gasp!) and so had to make sure the people didn’t just bounce from triumphant Palm Sunday to triumphant Easter without understanding all that came in between.
And so here we are, on Palm Sunday, experiencing the seismic shift in one fell swoop. There is no escaping the collision of triumph and death today, as much as we might prefer it that way. I think today’s strange juxtaposition of triumph and death is a little bit like what is happening with our brains with digital versus print reading. We can begin to wrap our heads around one or the other, but trying to fit them together is like trying to read a Henry James novel when you’ve gotten used to internet reading.The good news in the article is that all is not lost. With effort, we can retrain our brains to read more complex writing again. We can re-find our ability to slow down, savor, and think for ourselves without constant distractions as we read.
And we can do the same with today’s stories. With some effort and will power, we can cast aside our Twitter brains and delve deeply and see that these events aren’t as separate and contradictory as we think.
The waving of palms seems joyful and light, and yet even there, when we are paying attention, we can see that there is plenty of death already present in the triumph. The humble donkey that Jesus rode into town was in deliberately stark contrast to the parades of military might in the Roman world. The people welcoming Jesus through the city gates were looking for a winner, hoping Jesus would save them from Roman occupation and be their hero. Even at that moment, the triumph was unsustainable.
And in the passion Gospel, there is plenty of triumph present even there, when we are paying attention. In the denial and desertion of the disciples, love and forgiveness have already been bestowed by Jesus. Even the cross, an instrument of torture and execution, is a preview of the symbol of new life and God’s overcoming death.
In our Lenten series in Godly Play we’ve talked about Jesus on the cross and Jesus on Easter as being two sides of the same picture. They go together and can’t be pulled apart. When you see or experience one side, you always know that the other side is there too. Neither side can be a simple sound bite. We have to make time and space to go deeper than 140 characters.
That wholeness underlies this paradoxical day. God is right there in the middle of it all, waiting to be discovered. In the most triumphant times and in the most violent and painful times, God is there. In our joy and in our suffering, God is rejoicing and suffering alongside us. Life can be complex and jarring and Jesus is with us in all of it. Amen.
Thank you for explaining why we are reading the passion on Palm Sunday now. I though I was just remembering things all wrong!
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