Palm Sunday, we must admit, is a very strange worship service.  The service begins outside the church where we acknowledge, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  But almost immediately after we triumphantly cross the threshold of the church, we are transported to Good Friday — not simply denying the one coming in the name of the Lord but actively participating in that one's rejection and death as the Passion Narrative is read.  And although many clergy complain that the only reason our liturgy is this mixed up is because we don't believe that our congregations can be trusted to be back in church on Good Friday to hear the reading of the Passion, it is my belief that the liturgists of the church knew exactly what they were doing and that the disjointed nature of this service is intentional.  For you see, when you take the lessons of Palm Sunday together as a whole you realize that what is being recounted is not merely an historical event some 2,000 years removed.  Rather, what is being recounted is the struggle of the spiritual journey as it is experienced daily in each of our individual lives. 

Each and every day we must choose how we will live our lives — will it be according to values of the dream of God?  Or, will it be according to the values of our culture?  Do we trust God?  Or do we trust our selves? our possessions? our various status symbols?  Can we risk love?  Or do we isolate our selves in order to protect ourselves?  These are the very spiritual issues that we humans encounter each and every day.  Unfortunately, most of us fail to recognize the significance of our daily choices — much less their consequences.

One of the great fallacies of religion is the conviction that the world is a dichotomy — divided into two seemingly unrelated realms:  the sacred and the secular.  For Christian religious folk this is translated into a church sphere of influence and then the sphere of, well, “real life.”  And these two spheres are understood to be not only antithetical but impermeable.  Practically the experience of the sacred is relegated to a weekly religious observance and then on Monday we simply resume our “normal” lives until the next Sunday.  Thus, on Sundays we enthusiastically welcome “the one who comes in the name of the Lord” and come Monday, our spiritual sensibilities are understood to be irrelevant at best and, at worst, we may in fact be equally as deliberate as the crowds crying “crucify” in our attempts to minimize the claims of the sacred in our everyday lives. 

Yet the life of Jesus offers a very different perspective and understanding of human life in the “real world.”  According to Jesus, it is in the “real world” where the sacred dwells and is experienced.  And it is through humanity that the Sacred is incarnated — thereby becoming manifest in the “real world.”  Jesus’ term for this reality was abundant life.  Here abundance isn’t referencing the acquisition of possessions, affluence, or self-esteem.  Nor is it a promise for a carefree life that is exempt from problems and struggles.  Rather, abundant life is our capacity to embrace the fullness of our humanity and then to dare to live our lives in the confidence of God’s abiding presence in the “real world.”  

The lessons and liturgy of Palm Sunday exhort us to examine our lives and acknowledge the superficial manner whereby we structure our lives and world.  Palm Sunday challenges the religious assumption that life is necessarily dichotomous — conveniently (and permanently) divided into the sacred and secular realms.  In the life and death of Jesus, however, we are reminded that life is essentially whole — and holy.  Jesus’ life and death reveals that in humanity heaven is joined to earth and earth to heaven.  It is in the “real world” which we inhabit that the dream of God is manifest and the Sacred is experienced in our lives.