Scripture Reflections for Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

“What a paradox. He is the Lord, he is the master, he is the King of kings, he is God yet he has to borrow a donkey to ride on. This is a rare combination of divinity and dependence, of possession and poverty. He has nothing of his own yet he owns all.”

“This is the most important thing about the donkey: I am the donkey. In the story you are the donkey. I am the donkey. I'm the one called to carry Christ into the city.”

“So Paul's writing to this church at Philippi and what does he do? In one breath he both upholds Jewish monotheism, right, by quoting Isaiah 45 and at the same time makes clear that implicitly, he doesn't say it, that Jesus is Lord and, who's not lord? Caesar”

“So notice Paul takes a passage...in which the Lord says 'I'm God, there is no other. To me every knee will bow and every tongue confess' and Paul takes that text and he applies it to Jesus”

“Humility means to be grounded, to be grounded. God is certainly humbling us at this time and we're called to keep our eyes fixed on that humble Jesus who takes up that cross and embraces it and walks, these days that we know, lead to victory”

“in certain manuscripts of Matthew it says that Barabbas first name was Jesus...and which one does the crowds pick? They pick the false 'son of the father,' they pick Jesus Barabbas instead of Jesus the Son of God.”

“Just as Joseph was exalted to the right hand of Pharaoh to save the whole known world through the gift of wheat, so Christ, the new Joseph, is betrayed by Judas but it's precisely by means of that betrayal that he's going to save...the whole world through the gift of the Eucharist”

“sometimes God saves us from troubles, other times God saves us through the troubles. Sometimes God calms the storm, other times God allows the storm to continue while he calms down his child”

“Peter followed at a distance. Peter finally woke up to stay watch. Peter showed up. He showed his commitment to his call as a disciple of Jesus by his presence. We often make much of Peter's denial and seldom consider the courage that it took for him to go to the high priest courtyard”

“This image then, a crucified dying God, unsettles us and disturbs us...for if our God so suffers, is so exposed to the brutality and power of this world, what shall become of us?”

“Judas in this version of the gospel tried to give the money back. Tried to erase a wrong that he knew he could not erase. But the sad thing is he went running back to...those who could do nothing to restore but only continue to destroy.”

“Our penchant for happy endings and our inattention to the sorrows of history can lead us to believe that Christ's resurrection softens the blow of the tragedies that preceded it, as if knowing how the story ends now somehow retroactively makes the unsettling suspense and the unraveled lives of Jesus's followers any less real”

“the cross always meets us at the intersection of the Father's mercy and the Father's justice”

“if you've ever felt like God has forsaken you, always remember that Jesus knows what that's like. He experiences that in his human nature on the cross but he also cries out to God with Psalm 22 which is the psalm that tells us God doesn't abandon his righteous ones”

“he's also the new Joseph. He is the innocent son who's righteous blood is going to be poured out, who's going to be betrayed unto death so that all of his brothers, in this case the disciples, so that they and the whole world might be saved, right. Not from famine and starvation like at the time of Joseph in Egypt but from sin and death itself.”

“when the crowds welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem he too is a king coming into the city of Jerusalem and he too is going to go up to the altar to offer sacrifice but it's not the altar of sacrifice in the temple, it's the altar of the cross”

“When I judge people, when I gossip, when I get so angry I become spiteful and disparaging, when I have seen injustice and I turn the other way, I am not just there seeing my Lord being crucified, I am doing some of the crucifying myself”

“So just as Solomon, the son of David, is acclaimed as he enters the holy city after his anointing, the crowds acclaim Jesus as the Son of David. And Jesus, too, will take his place on a throne but he will be enthroned upon a cross.”