Palm Sunday 2022

Palm Sunday 2022 April 10, 2022 Years ago, the church I served in Gulfport, Mississippi, decided that we were going to have a float in the Gulfport Mardi Gras Parade. Mardi Gras is as big a part of that culture as St. Patrick’s Day is here; different groups and organizations create these elaborate floats on flatbed trailers high off the ground. They spend lots of money buying stuff to throw, and people from all up and down the Mississippi Gulf Coast come out for the parades—some in the daytime, some at night. We decided that we would do it as a church, and we would use some of our throws to advertise the church and the service times. As a family, three of the Lemburgs were planning to participate. (David wanted no part of it.) And Mary Margaret, who was in early elementary school, was especially excited about the prospect of rolling in a parade. We weren’t sure what to do about Jack, who was in pre-school at the time, but he wanted to do it, and as he had already participated in his Episcopal pre-school’s “crew of chaos” parade where they dressed up, rode their bikes and threw beads at their parents from a platform, we felt like he’d be ok. I was in charge of purchasing all of our family’s “throws” for the parade, and I spent weeks doing mathematical calculations that involved how many beads a person could throw in a minute multiplied by how many miles per hour the float would be moving, factoring in the mileage of the parade route. (It took me weeks because—English major—remember?) I was determined that I was going to manage and mitigate the chaos ahead of time because we certainly did not want our church’s float to get the reputation of not buying enough throws and running out way before the end of the parade. (In Mardi Gras culture, there’s no greater shame than people riding by on a Mardi Gras float and only being able to wave at you about half-way through the parade route because they have run out of throws!) The day finally came. David stayed home and avoided the chaos all-together. The other three Lemburgs, dressed in our animal costumes (the float theme was Noah’s ark), loaded up our boxes and boxes of beads and plastic frisbees and moon pies with stickers on them advertising the church into our spot on the float. And then we waited, and we waited, and we waited. Finally, after hours of waiting, the float began to roll. All of a sudden, the sun had set, and it was dark and the lights from the streetlamps and the other floats were dazzling. We were filled with so much expectation, as the float rolled out of the staging area onto the parade route, the kids and I scooped up our first handful of beads from the boxes at our feet. I quickly rehearsed with them the bead disbursal strategy of how many beads a minute they were supposed to be trying to throw, and then, we hit the crowd. Out of the darkness, we are greeted by thousands of people lined up along the street. They’re waving their hands. They’re screaming at us to throw them something. There’s loud music blaring from our float and the floats ahead and behind us. And we do the only thing we can do in the face of such chaos. We start throwing beads just as fast as we can scoop them out. It was pure chaos. A couple of minutes into the chaos, I look down to check on Jack who’s standing beside me, and he has those first two handfuls of beads we had scooped up for him before the parade started, and he is just standing there frozen holding them with his eyes as big as saucers. I pause from my frenzied throwing to try to show him how to throw them, encouraging him to throw the beads, and the kid doesn’t move. So finally, I give up and go back to throwing beads at all the people yelling at me to throw them something. The observances of Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter are not unlike our experience riding on the Mardi Gras float in Gulfport. Many of us enter these observances with different strategies. Some of us opt out all-together. Some of us make meticulous plans to try to control the chaos. Some of us freeze up in the face of such chaos. The invitation to all of us, starting this day and rolling through Holy Week up to the grand parade that is Easter Sunday, is to let the chaos come. As we walk in the last footsteps of Jesus, the invitation is to give ourselves over to the riot of emotions, to the conflict and the hypocrisy of a crowd, a hypocrisy we are not strangers to, a crowd who will shout both Hosanna to the king and crucify him in the same breath. To give ourselves over to the shame and vulnerability of having our own feet washed and the quiet joy that is uncovered in and through acts of love and service. To give ourselves over to the discomfort of praying for all sorts and conditions of people—to pray for all those who Jesus offered his life for under the shadow of an ugly wooden cross. To give ourselves over to participating once again in the deep stories our own salvation, as if they are happening to us now, once again, rather than just happening to people who lived long ago. In order to do this, we have to show up, hearts open to chaos and ready for whatever it may bring.