Ticker Tape Palm Sunday
Once again at the Northwest Church, Palm Sunday has come and gone. For the fourth year, stunned churchgoers exited the building after "Northwest Passage"--our moniker for the 6:00 assembly--with confetti stuck in their hair and a just a bit of a party buzz in their in their hearts and minds.
The idea is this: if Jesus were to enter a post-modern American city after displaying the sort of power he displayed, and if we thought he was really going to bring the answers to our personal and social difficulties and injustices, we wouldn't put down palm branches...we'd throw a parade...maybe a ticker tape parade.
So that's what we do at Northwest Passage on Palm Sunday--throw a ticker tape parade for the Christ. This year we had cannons shooting confetti into the highest parts of the sanctuary and we finally got that snow effect we've been trying for. The celebration was pretty raucus and gave people the kind of experience that allowed them to enter into the mindset of the people running ahead of Jesus that day as they welcomed him into the city.
That kind of celebration brings into stark constrast what happens later in the week. How is it that a city that celebrates a man's heroic entry on Sunday kills him on Friday? We are a fickle people, and the sort of madness that takes over when stakes are high, when legitimate power is on the line--it makes the whole scene both surreal and totally human. The meaning of the death of Jesus is still alive some 2000 years later, and may our week be filled with renewed grappling with it.
To find your life, you must lose it...
8:03:13 AM
