April 17, 2026 Acts 9:1-19 Paul's Conversion, His Call, or Both?

Was Saul of Tarsus’  encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. a conversion, a call, or both? 

While most call this Paul’s conversion, there are good reasons to question that term. Typically, Christians use “conversion” when someone moves from unbelief to belief or from one religion to another.

Saul passionately believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as did the early Christians. Saul was initially convinced Jesus’ followers were heretical Jews who perverted God’s word and will in the world.

It is appropriate to speak of Saul converting from one form of Judaism to another. Paul refers to himself as a Pharisee in Philippians 3:5–6. Likewise, Luke depicts Saul as a zealous and devout Jew who violently disagreed with the early Christians because of their teaching that Jesus of Nazareth was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, whom God raised from the dead. This did not follow the traditional Jewish narrative Saul had learned from scripture.

This lies at the heart of Saul’s "conversion". Instead of seeing Jesus as a deceased leader of unfaithful and heretical Jews, Saul begins to recognize Jesus as the resurrected and living Lord.

Luke initially depicts Saul as perpetually growing more violent. In 7:58, Saul stands by as others stone Stephen. In 8:1, Saul approves of the murderers’ actions. By 9:1, Saul is literally “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Saul pursues his victims. He instigates violent Christian persecutions in Damascus (9:2). Beginning in 9:3, however, Luke’s depiction of Saul changes.

Saul experiences a true theophany, (or a manifestation of God among humans), much like we see at other points in the Scriptures (like, for example, in Exodus 19:16–19; 1 Kings 19:11; Isaiah 66:15; or Acts 2:2). Saul sees a bright light, falls to the ground, and hears a voice calling his name (9:3–4).

Saul even recognizes he is encountering God directly by referring to the speaker of the voice as “Lord” (9:5). Saul is profoundly confused when he asks, “Who are you, Lord?” He recognizes both that God is speaking and that something does not add up. The voice asks, “Saul, Saul, Why do you persecute me?” (9:4). Previously, Saul was sure he was performing the Lord’s work, not thwarting it. After hearing this, that certainty vanishes. Compare this to Jesus breathing last week's message “Peace be with you.” 

Last week's "Peace be with you" was given within the disciple's fear. God's voice disrupts differently here. The pivotal revelation occurs in 9:5. The voice of God identifies directly as Jesus, when Saul is persecuting Christians. Jesus’ statements to Saul are multifaceted. If Jesus is speaking personally with Saul, it means Jesus is not dead nor far off, as some might envision in light of his ascension (1:9–11). 

Instead, Luke depicts Jesus as alive, speaking as God's voice, and intimately connected to his followers. Thereafter, Luke associates Saul with images of death (blindness, no food, and no drink (9:9). Yet, those images soon give way to images of life, such as sight, baptism, food, and strength (9:18–19a). This experience is related in Acts three times, another number associated with Jesus' death. 

Luke weds Saul’s “conversion” with his “call.” To speak of one without the other skews the biblical witness and can lead to theological imbalance. Ananias, a disciple in Damascus, likewise experiences a divine summons (like Exodus 3:1–4:17; or Isaiah 6:1–13). 

He initially responds like Isaiah, making himself available to the Lord (9:10), but then responds as humans typically do by making excuses (9:13–14; see Luke 1:18–20). 

Interestingly, the Lord commissions Ananias to relay the Lord’s commission to Saul (9:15–16). Importantly, Saul does not receive his calling directly from God (or Jesus). Instead, God works with and through a fellow believer to reveal God’s will to Saul. This speaks imperatively to essential witnessing to one another, as Pastor Steve preached last Sunday. Ananias’ obedience is pivotal for Saul’s understanding and subsequent faithfulness. One wonders whether Saul would have fulfilled his divine commission if Ananias had not been faithful in his. 

Saul receives a double commission. Saul will proclaim the good news of God’s work in and through Jesus to a wide swath of people (9:15). Yet, Saul is also called to suffer for the sake of Jesus’s name (9:16). Saul doesn't receive a peaceful commission. Saul’s suffering will serve God’s purposes as much as Saul’s proclamations.

In Acts 9:1–19, Luke introduces us to two distinct, yet interlocking, relationships. On the one hand, Luke wants us to recognize the importance of what will become a fundamental understanding of the Trinity. The voice of Jesus and the voice of God cannot be separated in Acts 9:5, and God’s commission does not take place apart from the Holy Spirit’s empowerment (9:17). 

At the same time, Luke wants us to recognize the intimate connection between Jesus and the church. When Saul persecutes the church, Saul persecutes Jesus. Jesus is not far off. Even in his ascended state, he is present and advocating for his people. Some think, “Christians are the only Jesus people will ever see.” Luke would disagree with them here.

When adequately understood, authentic encounters with Jesus change human lives. Those changes involve both conversion and commission. A genuine encounter with Jesus alters both our actions and our faith. 

God’s call to Ananias involved the potential for suffering. God’s call to Saul involved the certainty of suffering. Obedience to God’s call does not guarantee Christians (nor ministers) a life free from suffering.

Something is unsettling about how the Acts of the Apostles tells the story of Saul on the road to Damascus. We want clarity: was it a conversion or a calling? Luke insists on both, and in that “both” is where the Spirit does its most unsettling work.

Saul doesn't move from unbelief to belief. He is not empty of faith. He is full of zealous, disciplined faith. He loves the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yet, in that very devotion, he is violently wrong. It is possible to be passionately religious and profoundly misaligned with God.

So Saul’s “conversion” is not a rejection of God but a reorientation toward God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. The shock is not that God exists, but that God looks like Jesus. Crucified. Risen. Identified not with power, but with the persecuted. 

“Why do you persecute me?” Jesus asks. Not “my followers,” but me. In that moment, Saul’s entire world is fundamentally shattered and remade. God is not where Saul thought God was. God is in the very people Saul was trying to destroy.

This is treated like death for Saul. Blindness. Silence. Fasting. Saul is undone before he is remade, and the imagery is unmistakable. Before there is resurrection, there is burial. Before sight, there is darkness. Whatever else "conversion" means, it is a dying and rising. 

Paul is even renamed when he is born again. The story refuses to remain inward. It immediately turns outward, toward calling.

Saul does not simply gain new insight. Rather, he is given a new direction, and strikingly, that calling comes through Ananias of Damascus, as a reluctant, ordinary disciple who must overcome fear to participate in God’s work. The risen Christ chooses to work through the fragile obedience of another human being.

This should give us pause if we imagine that God’s purposes prevail regardless of our participation. Here, Saul’s future is mysteriously bound up with Ananias’s courage. The great apostle’s mission begins with someone else’s trembling “yes.” The church is not incidental to God’s work; it is the means by which God reveals, confirms, and sustains his call.

The calling itself is not romantic. In Acts 9, obedience leads directly into pain and misunderstanding. God reveals a deep presence, especially in the places where the world resists love.

There is an inseparability of God, Christ, and the community. The voice that speaks is the voice of God through Jesus, heals, and is filled with the Holy Spirit. To touch one is to touch all. To harm one is to harm Christ himself. Encounters with Jesus are never private spiritual experiences. They are always relational and consequential.

So perhaps the question is not whether Saul was converted or called. Perhaps the question is whether we allow it to be both. To be converted, again and again, from our certainties and inherited assumptions.

We bear Christ into the world. That path may include suffering because the risen Christ interrupts our lives, blinds us, and finally sends us through all those unexpected voices that continue to question, with such unsettling intimacy:

“Why do you persecute me?”

April 12, 2026 John 20:19–31 Scripture In A Time of Fear, Division, and Uncertainty

The Gospel tells us that the disciples are gathered behind locked doors “for fear.” Fear is the atmosphere of the room. Fear is the reason the doors are shut. Fear is what shapes their imagination of the future.

And then, without the doors opening, Jesus stands among them saying “Peace be with you.”

It is difficult to read this passage today without hearing echoes of our own fear and uncertainty framing so much of public life. Escalating geopolitical tensions, particularly the threat of military conflict with Iran and the resulting economic instability, have stirred global anxiety and shaken markets. 

Domestically, debates over public safety, youth unrest, and the balance between enforcement and care reveal a society unsure how to hold together its most vulnerable members. Politically, sharp divisions over budgets, governance, and national direction deepen a sense that we are living behind locked doors of mistrust and suspicion.

The disciples would understand this atmosphere.

They, too, were living in the aftermath of violence, disillusionment, and shattered expectations. The world they trusted collapsed at the cross, through brutal authority.  Hope was fragile. The community had scattered.

And so they locked the doors. Jesus does not wait for the disciples to become brave. He does not ask them to unlock the doors first. He enters as they are, fearful and confused.

This matters because our national assumption seems to be that fear must be mastered before peace can be known. That security must always come first. Regardless of cost certain nations nation must never be trusted with a nuclear weapon. We assume that strength must precede reconciliation. This also comes with the assumption that the side with strength holds moral high ground over its opponents.

The resurrection changes assumptions. Peace is not the reward for overcoming fear.
Peace is the gift given within fear. “Peace be with you” is not a calming slogan so much as a disruptive presence. It interrupts the logic of anxiety that dominates both ancient Jerusalem and modern America.

Jesus shows them his hands and his side. The risen Christ is not unmarked. Resurrection transforms violence. Jesus' wounds remain visible as testimonies of love that endured suffering.

In a time when our national life is marked by deep wounds, the temptation is either to deny wounds or weaponize them. But the Gospel offers a third way: To reveal wounds without letting them define the future. The body of Christ still bears scars, and yet speaks peace.

Thomas refuses secondhand faith. He wants to see. He wants to touch. He wants something real. Jesus does not reject him. This is crucial in a moment when many people are skeptical of the authority of institutions. When trust has eroded, doubt is not a failure; it is often a form of integrity. Thomas represents everyone who must say “I need something more than words.”

And Jesus responds not with condemnation, but with invitation.“Put your finger here.” The resurrection is not fragile. It can withstand scrutiny. It can meet us in our questions.

After speaking peace, Jesus says: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” This is the turning point where the disciples aren't just comforted, they are commissioned, rather than falling to the temptation either to retreat or to mirror the hostility of the world. Instead they are called to be people who have received peace even in systems shaped by fear.

Jesus breathes on them. And, like Creator's Easter service, this echoes Genesis, that breath of God that gives life. In the resurrection, a new creation begins through presence; through peace, and forgiveness.

Pastor Steve preached an astounding sermon on how important it was for us to bear witness to the Gospel's beloved story. He opened with the Artemis II Flyby story as a de facto Children's Sermon. He preached that we accept the news story as true even if we did not witness the event ourselves. 

We are not so different from those first disciples. We know the locked door, but Jesus is not stopped by locked doors. When we are fearful he forever sends Christians out with his assuring “Peace be with you.”

Sermon 

April 5, 2026 Easter: From Grave to A Garden

Over the years, we have listened carefully to the resurrection stories at Easter; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each begins at the tomb. Each begins in grief. Each begins with women who refuse to let love end.

There is one consistent detail that is mentioned in each narrative. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us it was dawn. Light was already breaking.

John tells it differently. Mary Magdalene came to the tomb while it was still dark.

This is not a small detail. In John’s gospel, nothing is accidental. This is the same gospel that begins: “In the beginning was the Word…” Echoing the first words of Genesis: “In the beginning… when the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the deep.”

Pastor Emillie's sermon emphasized that Mary comes in the darkness, and John here is telling us something more than the time of day. He is telling us where Mary was and where we are in times of grief. We are standing at the edge of creation when the world is unmade, when we grieve, and the cross seems to have shattered hope. When she discovers the tomb is empty, nothing makes sense.

In past years, the Easter sanctuary transformation happened at the Easter Vigil service. Now it occurs just before the Easter service starts. The bustling busyness of what is done is an exciting part of our Easter tradition now.   

This year, the Thanksgiving for Baptism emphasized John's recurring theme of creation and God's Spirit moving over the water. God has placed us in a well-watered garden. We sang Take Me to the Water in response to the Thanksgiving.

Pastor Emillie preached about what Mary would have felt in her time of grief by comparing it to what Emillie's family felt when her uncle died. Mary stands weeping outside the tomb. The mystery of the empty tomb was too much at first. She then encounters a man she does not recognize. Of course, a gardener, because John is telling us something again about the first creation in a garden. 

Once there was Adam and Eve, and through them the world fell into fracture. Now there is Mary and Jesus. A woman and a man in a garden again, but this time, the story is not about grasping or loss. It is about recognition. “Mary.”

And in that moment, everything changes. Light breaks. Not just in the sky,
but in the soul. “Rabbouni.” 

Teacher. The Lord of Life. This is the first morning of the new creation. The darkness has not been avoided. It has been entered and transformed. The resurrection is not only about one man rising. It is the rebirth of the whole cosmos. The chaos of Genesis is spoken into order again. The void is filled with life again. The garden blooms again. Pastor Emille preached that Jesus commanded Mary not to grasp this moment, but rather to go and spread the news. The first witness is Mary, who is so excited she must run to announce what all creation longs to say: “I have seen the Lord.”

The congregation responded with the hymn Sing Out, Earth and Skies and the Apostles’ Creed

For Offertory the choir sang Now the Green Blade Riseth, and this familiar hymn landed  deeply in continuing resurrection as creation, "life from buried seed."

After We Eat the Bread of Teaching and Taste and See for Communion we departed with a rousing, full-throated I'm So Glad Jesus Lifted Me. we left as witnesses of the garden restored and where death no longer has the final word.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Service  

April 3, 2025 Tridum Good Fruiday.Tenebrae Service

 

The darkest night

This service is usually better attended at Creator than Maundy Thursday, and this year was no exception. This was true of the services in my youth as well. 

It is easier, I suppose, to get caught up in the drama. There is also a tradition of focused attention on the last words of someone who is dying as if this summarizes a life. 

It makes me think what inscription Jesus might have wanted written, rather than Pilate's as the sign on the cross. Love you? With you? Remember me? Nothing?

This was also another Tenebrae service, like last year. A Tenebrae service features the gradual extinguishing of candles to represent the fading loyalty of the disciples and Christ’s journey into death, culminating in a "strepitus" (loud noise) symbolizing the earthquake/tomb.

Good Friday services are always hard for me. I feel the story is too big. I don’t have words to explain it, and don’t want to explain it. What was accomplished on the cross and in the resurrection? Love somehow sets us free, brings us through our Red Sea crises, breaks our hearts and gives us hope. I do feel the weight of it, wondering how to voice the reality of grief and good news both. 

Yes, we sang our traditional songs and heard the stories from scripture that we have listened to for years. We watched an artist's depiction of Jesus' last words at the beginning of theisservice. The altar was reverently stripped to close the service.  

We left contemplating death and the loss of hope it brings again. 

Rather than an Easter Vigil service, this worship will be our sole preparation for Creator's Easter service.  

Service

April 2, 2926 The Easter Triduum (or Sacred Triduum) Maundy Thursday - Mandatum Novum

Maundy Thursday always begins at the table and never stays there 

Last year I remember Pastor Emillie gave us a poem by a favorite poet of hers, Jan Richardson. It is called Circle of Grace and captures a very particular, special piece of communion that often eludes us, and it is worth talking about on this day when we commemorate that first table. 

 Blessing the Bread, the Cup
Let us bless the bread that gives itself to us
with its terrible weight, its infinite grace.

Let us bless the cup poured out for us
with a love that makes us anew.
Let us gather around these gifts
simply given and deeply blessed.
And let us go bearing the bread, carrying the cup,
laying the table within a hungering world.

Jan Richardson’s blessing names what we are almost afraid to say aloud: the bread comes to us with a terrible weight and an infinite grace. It is not light, sentimental fellowship. It is a costly presence. This is a table already leaning toward the cross.

And yet, year after year in your reflections, what emerges most powerfully is how the table keeps reappearing as more than a ritual of remembering, but as a living, contested space.

At Creator, that space is reclaimed in small, embodied ways: hands offering bread to one another, water poured over tired feet, scripture spoken in many voices instead of one. These are not just liturgical choices; they are theological claims. They say that the commandment, mandatum novum, is not an idea to be admired but an action to be practiced. Love must take on weight. It must kneel. It must touch.

And perhaps nowhere is that clearer than in the question that keeps echoing through all the Maundy Thrusdays I have experienced. Did Jesus wash Judas’ feet?

Scholars can debate the textual history of John’s Gospel, but the deeper question is not historical. For me this question is spiritual. If the love revealed at the table excludes the betrayer, then it is no longer the love that goes to the cross. The logic of Maundy Thursday collapses unless it includes the one who will walk out into the night.

Add to this the basin and towel, which become more than symbols. They become a crisis of recognition. Who is still at the table that I might prefer to exclude?
Whose feet would I quietly pass over?

Because there are other tables being built; louder, more public ones, where the language of faith is fused with power, identity, and exclusion. Bibles wrapped in flags. Accusations hurled in the name of righteousness. Claims of persecution that echo the story of Jesus while bypassing its substance.

Here Maundy Thursday becomes clarifying.

Jesus does not seize power. He does not weaponize scripture or call down judgment; he kneels in service. Most strikingly, he offers no promise of retribution to his followers. Pastor Steve reminded us that victory over enemies comes in renewed fellowship. The risen Christ is recognized not in domination, but in the breaking of bread.

That is the quiet revolution of this night.

It exposes how easily the table can be distorted into a boundary marker, who is in, who is out, who is pure, who is condemned. And it calls the church back to something far more demanding: a table that is carried into a hungering world, not guarded against it.

This is why the stripping of the altar remains such a powerful counterpoint. Everything is taken away, ornament, certainty, even the sense of presence. What remains is absence, vulnerability, and a question: What, of all we have built, truly belongs to the love Jesus commanded?

We are living that question in real time, especially in this season of transition, of calling new leadership, of discerning what to keep and what to release. In that sense, Maundy Thursday is not just a remembrance. It is a diagnosis revealing what is essential.

And perhaps that is where Richardson’s blessing lands most deeply:

Let us go bearing the bread, carrying the cup,
laying the table within a hungering world.

Not defending it. Not branding it, but bearing it as something fragile, costly, and alive. Because the truest sign that we have understood Maundy Thursday is not what happens at the altar. It is whether, when we rise from the table, we are willing to kneel.

Tonight's Maundy Thursday service reminded me of how much Creator worship has changed our worship over the years and what we still bring to services we feel is important. Susan provided beautiful banners behind the altar. Steve  and Claudia brought a pitcher and basin as a visual aid to remember foot washing. Pastor Emillie put together a liturgy meaningful to her and the congregation. Bill added to the reverence of the night with his inspired playing. 

This is a reflection of the love Jesus commanded. 

Service Recording 

March 29, 2026 Palm Sunday 2026 John 12:14-27 Triumphal Entry

What struck me about this Palm Sunday liturgy is not just what was said, but the movement of the soul that was embodied. It journeyed through the arc of John 12: from celebration to surrender, from “Hosanna” to the shadow of the cross.

This was a joyful, festive, and engaging worship. Amy Vanacore played "I will Enter His Gates/He has Made Glad and communicated the true joy in that piece. The acclamation, “Blessed is the one who comes…” placed the congregation inside the crowd of Jesus Christ’s triumphal entry in the Procession. Simultaneously, the language subtly resists triumphalism. 

This was not the victory of the empire. The line “not with the power of empire, but in humility” did theological work here by dismantling expectations. We were invited to confront a paradox: the King arrives not on a warhorse, but on a donkey; ultimately to be crucified.

That paradox intensified through the structure. The palms were raised, symbols of victory, but they were already being reinterpreted.  Not just celebratory branches; they became expressions of participation. We prayed: “May we also…follow Him in the way that leads to eternal life.” In other words, the congregation not only remembered Palm Sunday, but we consented to walk it.

Our Land Acknowledgement in this service grounded this enactment of the cosmic drama in a particular moral reality. We proclaimed implications for justice, history, and our relationship to land. The mention of the Clackamas, Kalapuyan, Molallan, and Upper Chinookan peoples quietly aligned with the earlier claim: this is a kingdom “shaped by justice, mercy, and sacrificial love.” Those gathered collectively refused to separate worship from ethical responsibility.

Lasans Kanneh was another guest musician today that led the congregation in the chorus of Lord, Listen to Your Children Praying while he added powerful, testimonial verses with rich, resonant drumming/ Everything contributed to the heartbeat of the song.

Psalm 24 was especially meaningful. “Lift up your heads, O gates!” becomes more than poetry; it becomes a kind of spiritual architecture. The “gates” felt not only Jerusalem’s gates, but also spoke to our human hearts being lifed. Who can receive this King? Only those with “clean hands and pure hearts.” The liturgy firmly asked: Are you ready for the kind of King who is coming? That question will take us through this coming Holy Week.

And then the Gospel reading turned everything. When Jesus Christ says, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies…”, the entire emotional register shifted. Palm Sunday here refused sentimentality. It insisted that glory is inseparable from death, that life comes through loss. This was the theological hinge of the service. The crowd’s enthusiasm is real, but incomplete. Only later, as John says, do they understand.

Lasana performed at this point Blessed Assurance with a steady confidence in what the song proclaims, He always adds to this song and infuses the congregation's vocals with that same rock-steady certainty.  

The Iona Community Creed added another deeply meaningful layer, framing belief not as abstract doctrine but as a lived commitment to a God who "offended many". This is our Palm Sunday belief. We are not simply providing passive admiration, but are actively participating in a disruptive, world-reordering love.

The prayers of the people widen the scope even further. from the individual heart to the entire cosmos. Creation itself is gathered “around the cross.” What began on a dusty road into Jerusalem culminated in something cosmic, nothing less than the healing of all creation.

And then, in the Eucharist, everything converged. He who was welcomed with palms becomes the one who is broken and given. The joyful procession leads, inevitably, to the table, and beyond the table, to the cross.

So the deep meaning of this liturgy is this: It teaches the congregation how to hold two truths at once. This service once again affirmed that the journey does not end at the cross. It continues outward, into the lives of the people.

There is the tension of paradox. Hosanna and death, glory and surrender, the table becomes a place not needing to be resolved but received. The same Jesus Christ who entered Jerusalem in humility now gives himself in humility again. physically and personally.

Then came the final, almost startling turn: Siyahamba – We Are Marching in the Light of God. which Lasana rehearsed the congregation through singing the African lyrics.   

Everything about movement became embodied in a new way. The liturgy began with a procession into Jerusalem; it ends with a procession out into the world. The palms recalled ancient footsteps. The congregation became the crowd, which became a people on the move.

The Sending Song. Siyahamba was not only a reflective hymn; it is a march. It carries echoes of struggle, liberation, and communal hope. In that sense, it answers the earlier theological claim that this kingdom is not one of empire. It is a different kind of movement altogether, one shaped by light, not domination; by shared journey, not imposed power.

The procession that began in Jerusalem never stops. Palm Sunday is always a revelation. The same voices that cry “Blessed is he” are being prepared to follow him into places where blessing looks like loss, where kingship looks like sacrifice, and where, somehow, death opens into resurrection.

And perhaps, most moving, the service insists we are in this story.

 

A History of Palm/Passion Sundays - High Points / Low Points Remembered In One Service

This special post honors the twentieth anniversary of the Creator blog. The first Creator blog post was written on March 29, 2006 Palm Sunday. Click the Holy Week - First Blog link on the right to see the entire 2006 Holy Week's posts.

Creator, like many congregations, often celebrates either Palm or Passion Sunday or Palm/Passion Sunday together on the same day. Palm/Passion Sundays together carry very different tones and purposes. The contrast is intentional, drawing us from celebration into suffering and are the most harrowing in the wild swing of emotions the congregation can experience.

On Palm Sunday celebrations, we lift our palm branches, wave them in the air like a forest bending toward one man. and lay them down reverently when we enter. We cry Hosanna without hesitation, as if we have always known what we meant by it. Palm Sunday is joyous, everything feels clear: God comes near and is recognized. Or at least, we think we do.

We welcome a king, but what kind of king? Is Jesus bringing everyone victory? Is he a restorer of order? Will he take what is broken and make it right in ways we can understand? The palms in our hands are not only symbols of praise; they are also our quiet declarations of expectation. 'Save us', we say, but have already decided what salvation looks like. This is a king like no other, and the truth of what the "Jesus way" offers can suddenly inspire or elude us. We arrive at the Passion Sunday piece.

The tone shifts, and usually the dual liturgy turns. The story deepens. What began in procession becomes confrontation. What sounded like praise begins to echo with accusation. By the time we are in the midst of a dramatic reading of the Passion, we are no longer standing at the roadside. We have been pulled into the crowd. Now we are given lines to speak as the crowd, we call out "Crucify him".

It is unsettling. We do not leave the crowd behind; we become it. The same voices that welcomed now reject. The same mouths that cried Hosanna now form the words of death to the savior. Something within us resists this. We want to step back, to say: That was them, not us. Yet the liturgy suddenly will not allow us that distance.

On Passion Sunday, like Peter, we see how thin the line is between devotion and denial. How quickly love turns when it is not met on its own terms. The palms we carried so lightly that we have strewn across the sanctuary suddenly gain a new, unfamiliar meaning. How easily we follow Jesus until he refuses to be the kind of savior so many hope for.

Today reveals that we are not only those who welcome Christ, but also those who misunderstand him. The triumph we celebrated was real, but in the end, we judged it to be incomplete. It had not yet undergone the required suffering. It did not yet reckon with the cost of the kind of kingdom he promises.

And still, Jesus enters. He does not turn away from the crowd that turns on him. He does not withdraw the gift of himself when it is refused. He continues towards betrayal, towards judgment, and towards the cross.

There is a strange mercy captured in Palm/Passion Sunday. That Christ would accept our praise is one thing. Enduring rejection is another, but that he would hold both together, that he would receive the Hosanna and the Crucify from the same lips and still go on loving that is the mystery at the heart of this day.

Perhaps the only honest prayer left to us is not the triumphant Hosanna we began with, but something quieter, more uncertain:

Lord, save us even from ourselves.