Expectations

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

April 5, 2020

Palm Sunday

          I have been thinking a lot lately about expectations-mostly expectations that have been dashed by the gravity of our COVID-19 situation.  Events we have been looking forward to for a long time-a lifetime perhaps-have been canceled or postponed.  Graduations, family events, weddings, athletic events, end of the school year celebrations, funerals, and so many other cherished events that we expected to go off as planned have been postponed or will not happen.  Our expectations for what life will bring us have been turned upside down as we adjust to the current situation and whatever the new normal will be.

          Palm Sunday is certainly a day of high expectation.  We hear in the gospel reading that a very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the ground.  The people sang and shouted, and perhaps even danced along the road as Jesus road into Jerusalem.  The excited happy throngs of people expected something amazing to happen.  They looked forward to what they thought Jesus would do.  They hailed him as a king as he came into the city, and recognized him as the Son of David, the mighty warrior king who had killed Goliath as just a young boy, conquered Jerusalem, and ruled successfully over the united kingdom of Israel.  But interestingly, when the people in the city asked “Who is this?” the reply was not “the Son of David.”  The crowd’s response was “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”  Prophets are unpredictable by nature, so I wonder if this was the crowds’ way of saying “This is Jesus and we really have no clue what he is about to do.” 

          As we know, whatever the crowd was expecting on Palm Sunday, crucifixion was not among those expectations.  Their expectations of deliverance, of the success the Psalm longs for, of the action of God in their midst-all of that crumbled in on them on Good Friday.  Jesus was a failure and the energy, hopes, and dreams the people had invested were an utter waste.  The God of Psalm 118 had seemingly abandoned them.

          Of course, we know that Good Friday is not the end of the story.  We know that Easter will come, the tomb will be empty, and we will hear the words “Jesus is not here.  He has been raised.”  We expected to come to a packed church, sing our joyful hymns, and experience the hope of resurrection on Easter morning.  We thought we knew what to expect from Easter and what the empty tomb would look like. 

          The disciples and the crowds had no idea what to expect.  They were living strictly in the moment, trying to figure out what was going on.  God’s action on Easter morning was a complete and utter surprise-nothing they could have ever dreamed or imagined.  They were taken by such surprise that some could not believe what their eyes saw and their ears heard because nothing, nothing like this had ever happened before.

          As we walk with Jesus through Holy Week this year, in the midst of confusion, isolation, annoyance, and fear, we are a lot like the people in the crowd on that first Palm Sunday.  We have high expectations for what God will do, but we really have no clue what form God’s actions will take.  What will the empty tomb look like this year?  The promise of Holy Week is not that everything will go according to our plan.  The promise of Holy Week is that God will act to turn our sorrow into joy, our fear into love, our death into life.  What amazing, mind boggling thing will God in do in our midst that we can neither ask or imagine?  We walk through Holy Week and wait, together yet apart, with open hearts and joyful expectation.

                                                                   Amen