Palm Sunday 2025

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday Year C April 13, 2025 How does the wilderness become a refuge? What does it look like for me to face my own wilderness and to befriend it? These are questions I was pondering for myself at the beginning of this Lent—as I thought about how Jesus is driven into the harsh, unforgiving wilderness to face temptations but then at some point, he begins seeking out the wilderness and the lonely places as places of refreshment in his ministry. How does the wilderness become a refuge? What does it look like for me to face my own wilderness and to befriend it? I realized last week that I had pretty much forgotten about this question, and so I picked it back up again and looked at my Lenten journey through the lens of wilderness. And I realized, much to my chagrin, that I had not befriended the wilderness, but instead, I had done the exact opposite. I had spiritually bushwacked my way through the wilderness of Lent. In this dance that is the spiritual life, we fall away and then we return. We fail and we begin again. So I’ll ask myself again: How does the wilderness become a refuge? What does it look like for me to face my own wilderness and to befriend it? As today is Palm Sunday, we start with Jesus riding at the head of a triumphant parade, and we end with Jesus alone in a garden, facing his betrayal which then leads to his arrest and death on a cross. Today we set the scene for our movement through Holy Week and into Easter, and we are invited to both watch and participate as Jesus embarks on this wilderness journey of loneliness, sadness, betrayal and death, even when he is completely surrounded by people. We can contemplate what it means for us to befriend those places of sadness, grief, loneliness, betrayal, and the shadow of death in our own souls, not rushing to try to triumph over them or beat them into unruly submission, but making peace, making friends with them. In his book The Tears of Things, Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes about this phenomenon saying, “We all need to feel and know, at this cellular level that we are not the first ones who have suffered, nor will we be the last. Instead, we are in one universal parade—God’s “triumphal procession,” as Paul calls it (2 Corinthians 2:14…), using the metaphor of a Roman triumph after a great victory. In this parade, he says, we are all ‘partners’ with both the living and the dead, walking alongside countless ancestors and descendants who were wounded and longing for healing….[Rohr concludes] The body of Christ is one great and shared sadness and one continuous joy, and we are saved just by remaining connected to it.” i Here at the beginning of Holy Week, you are invited to remain connected to both the sadness and the joy that can be found in Jesus’s final days. You are invited to contemplate with me: How does the wilderness become a refuge? What does it look like for me to face my own wilderness and to befriend it? i. Rohr, Richard. The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage. Convergent: New York, 2025, p 101.