Luke 19:28-40 or Luke 23:1-49

Year C - Lent⁶ or Conviction⁶

March 20, 2016

False Dawn Sunday

Luke 19:28-40

Premature Fear Sunday

Luke 23:1-49

There is simply too much asked of this Sunday to bridge whatever process has been followed during Lent and a next week. Whatever theme or program has been followed, it was far too weak to bear the burden and joy of a next week.

Our own bias is to drop the Passion/Premature Fear approach. At worst it inoculates people from walking whatever lonesome valley they are in the midst of. There isn’t a best.

Note the story Jesus tells just before this pericope—those who are faithful in a little or a lot, will be satisfied with enough; those fearful in any amount, will never know enough. With this final tale we can come to the beginning of the end of the journey.

Here in Luke the story is not a Palm story, but a Clothes story—a story of the wrapping and unwrapping of our lives. It is this acknowledgement of having been wrapped round in belovedness and a willingness to unwrap our life to follow a meaning beyond what we can but dimly imagine but feel deeply within.

This unwrapping takes us back to unity with all of creation, every stoney part of it, where we join a hopeful, “It is good!” with a refrain, “Good enough!”

So here we have a wrapping up of our Lenten Journey: Dust is enough; Sing a song of treading a stoney path out from a gloomy past, standing at last in the gleam of a bright star from our “native land”, a home of heaven here on earth. (see “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson).