A New Look at Palm Sunday

Eleuthera

Four weeks ago, I was looking up at the wall surrounding the Old City, imagining the scene two millenia ago when Jesus came through the gate closest to the Temple on the Mount with fanfare including palms to show homage. A week later he was forced down the cobbled streets of the ( now ) Via Dolorosa, just steps from Ecce Homo, my hostel/pensione, during my stay in Jerusalem.

After walking those same cobbled streets, the ruins of the Temple Mount and City of David which historians think he surely visited, my image of the place and time is altered, as would be expected.

What I didn't expect, on this Palm Sunday, was that I could imagine the bustling Old City in 30 C.E or so--its diversity, the busy merchants, holy men, the Roman occupiers--there were rich and poor.

Maybe our world hasn't changed so much. There are still occupiers in many parts of the planet, certainly merchants, and, I believe holy men and women ( not the pious kind, I've never trusted that posture ) but the ones who are making a little difference. Like the author of Three Cups of Tea who built schools in Afghanistan for the disenfranchised, especially for the girls. Or the Catholic Worker down in the Bowery where someone named Steve next Sunday morning will orchestrate the feeding, with dignity, of proably 200 ( mostly ) homeless men who otherwise wouldn't have eggs and ham for breakfast, hot coffee, juice--and a bag of sandwiches to go.

I find that hopeful on this Palm Sunday. I do.
MC