This coming Sunday we will join much of worldwide Christianity with the beginning of Holy Week. It begins with Palm Sunday, or as it also is called, "The Sunday of the Passion." As we say in our liturgy that begins our Palm Sunday worship, we draw attention to "the mighty acts of God" which serve to redeem all of creation.  

The story that needs to be retold and retold is quite simple and yet profound. God loves what God has created with a love that never quits. Humanity resists that love and refuses to live as God intends for us. Human willfulness ultimately works to a wholesale rejection of God through rejecting Jesus. Jesus dies an awful death alone and abandoned on a cross. "On the third day" God raises Jesus from the dead. Jesus comes back declaring peace to the very world that rejected him. God sends the Holy Spirit, the creative breath of God which brings everything into existence and which raised Jesus from the dead. This Spirit creates the church that is called to be the embodiment and continuation of Jesus in the world - his hands, feet, and heart.

Back to Palm Sunday, where we begin this most holy of weeks. Jesus rides into Jerusalem. His followers shout praises to God. The Pharisees are more than annoyed. They command Jesus to tell his disciples to stop. Jesus then says something that only Luke records.

"I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out!"

The obvious question is, "What would the stones say?" Click here to continue reading