Fit to Be Tied -- Untie Us!

"Fit to Be Tied -- Untie Us!" Week less about Jesus, more about us, freed up to make of him whom, what we will, steadfastly undefending in his own behalf, unappealing to any authority higher than ours -- Where does Palm Sunday find us? In procession with him? Followers or disciples? Lining the roadway? Uncertain but hopeful? Waving, cheering? Peeking out behind lines? Cautiously curious? Conspicuously circumspect? Aloof from the mob, from the masses? In Party of Pharisees? Repulsed by rabble? Wary Sadducee loyalists? Fearful for own power? Angry zealots? Fiercely opposing all occupation? Ready for armed-robbered resistance? Resentful of harsh intrusion, gross interruption? Soldier, Temple Guard? Tired of endless "peacekeeping?" Tourists? Long lost among overwrought, overrun pilgrims? Wracking hearts for what's happening here? Here at all? Anywhere to be found? Sweaty Palm Sunday! Falsifying security, frazzling nerve, Day of the Circus, Week of the Cross, wherever it is we are headed, we cannot get there from here! Land and life of detours, false starts, quick stops, wrong turns, dead ends. Laughing to keep us from crying? Crying to keep us from laughing? Who IS this guy on the donkey? What does he think he's achieving? A king to be crowned with thorns? Army of children and kindred rejects? King of Fools? Fool of Kings?? Jesus less dying than living this week: "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day every one of us needs to step outside and take some action to stop this war! Raise hell! Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous . . . We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, STOP IT NOW!" (Molly Ivins) Power works as we give it away. Remember? Children taught to bring forth perfect praise? Offenders not noisy children but nosy elders! Kids are reviving our most hackneyed hopes! Primed to receive the believed in our lives! Allowing good works to be just what they are! Clamoring with justice, with joy. for the world! Dispensing with every deference, every decorum, every propriety, every procedure! Jesus' hunch when to hold, when to fold, power -- more in this single nonviolent witness of dying than in all weapons, all wars, before or after. "We declare the war is over. It's over. It's over." (Phil Ochs)

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Just a few women not Missing In Action, no doubt more attuned to the tragic, watching of children heading for death, unable to reach them, living through it best ways that we can -- like Cecil, first Sunday, pastor at Glide, razing all the nice crosses from all the clean walls, renailing them to our hearts.

Jesus sensing these are his last times? Betrayed, arrested by stark Thursday night? By Friday noon nailed to the tree?

Moment of his cosmic hush, entering Temple alone, emptied of every exigent enthrallment, exhausted, immersed, this stillest of moments -- no one to teach or preach with, argue with or debate, feed, heal, touch, or exorcise -- even to look at or listen to, eerily extant.

How does he see around in the dark? Himself? His parents? His siblings? His memories? Brought every year to the Passover Feast? Sickened by animal blood gush and flow? Losing self in vocation at twelve?

And what of the years in between? Up to temptation on heels of baptism? Bidden leap from this very Temple Top? Presuming on Papa's all-sparing protection? Wondering Who is protecting him now? So much about him we dare not know! Temple destroyed, replaced with his body? Temple-Determiners, both Church and State, wary of holding his fate in their hands?

Destined for Offering since Dedication? Simeon announcing Salvation in Arms? Anna's praise pulsing with Mary's pain? Recalling all those gone before him? Keeping full Jubilee Promise alive? Life abundant, life without any unequalized end? Life broken, poured out, by, for, each, all, equal taste of this Last and First Meal . . .

"As it was late, " Mark concludes, "Jesus retired to Bethany."