"THE WHOLE PALM SUNDAY PICTURE"

It's interesting, though - what we choose to photograph. I don't know of anyone who has ever commissioned a photographer to come and take shots of their I.R.S. audit. Have any of your friends ever come up and said, "Hey, I just got out of the hospital after my appendectomy. Want to see the pictures?"

We're pretty selective about our photographs - about which memories we want to capture on film. And so the photos we collect only tell a portion of the story of "us" and only a part of the bigger picture of our lives.

Some pictures can actually be deceiving. We all know that pictures, like the ones in magazines, can be "doctored." One technique frequently used by the tabloid newspapers is called "cropping." A photo can be "cropped" in order to remove certain details or to combine images that occurred separately in order to create a false impression of reality. This is the technique, for example, that allows the National Enquirer to show us an "actual photograph" of Elvis and Monica Lewensky having lunch with space aliens on Donald Trump's yacht!

Selective images...altered images...false images. These don't only exist in photographs. These can also exist in our Christian faith. Rather than seeing...and understanding...the "whole picture" of Jesus Christ - the life of Jesus on earth and the continuing connection of Christ to our own lives today - we sometimes carry around in our "mental wallets" some very selective images. Some show only the happiest of times. Some have been doctored to selectively leave out certain details or to combine images. Some of our mental "faith pictures" are even downright deceptive!

Take today, for example. Today is usually observed as "Palm Sunday." It's the day we recall what has traditionally been called Jesus' "Triumphal Entry" into Jerusalem. In the church, today begins what we call "Holy Week," in which we remember the last days of Jesus' life and their significance.

But what image is it that we use to represent this day? If you take a look at the cover of the "News & Notes" - the announcement insert in the bulletin - you'll see an artist's rendering of what could be a photograph taken at the "Triumphal Entry." And what do you see? Palm branches being raised aloft. Hands lilted and waving...seeming to praise and celebrate. It's an image ofjoy...but it's also a very limited image.

You see, that image has been cropped. A lot of the details have been left out, and it's been narrowed down to a deceptively simplistic memory.

Now...try to imagine a process in which we could expand the borders of that image to reveal more and more ofthe original scene. See, in your mind's eye, the edges moving out and out and more and more of the details coming into focus.

If we could do that, we would see the faces of the people who are engaged in this spontaneous and enthusiastic celebration. We would see Jesus riding serenely on the back of a donkey. We would see the dusty road winding along and leading, ultimately, into the city ofJerusalem...where thousands of faithful Jewish worshipers are gathering for the upcoming Passover celebration. It's a seemingly happy, exciting scene.

Now suppose we could not only expand the borders of this photograph but actually extend the image through time...so that we could look ahead and examine the same details a few days later.

If we could do that, we would look for the hands that were raised in praise and celebration...and we'd find, instead, fists of anger raised and shaking in a thirst for blood. We would see the faces of the crowd; many of the same faces that smiled on the road into Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday would now be the faces shouting, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" on Good Friday. We could see the face of Jesus...no longer the people's hero. His seeming serenity would now be understood as the amazing spiritual strength of someone facing death. We might begin to understand why this day is also known as "Passion Sunday."

Now...go back in your mind to the "photo" from Palm Sunday. The people were cheering the man they thought would be their political hero and conquering king. They failed to understand the symbolic significance of his entry on a donkey. In those days, a conquering hero would have ridden in on horseback. A donkey - unlike our modern perception - was considered to be symbol of humility and peace. Jesus was entering Jerusalem, silently proclaiming himself to be only a king of peace! Not one who would overthrow the government with political and military might...but one who would overthrow the power of evil in the world and in people's lives by his willing, sacrificial death on the cross.

Now we often have trouble with that picture. We want to crop out the cross...add in some plastic grass and chocolate bunnies and jump straight to another celebration. We want to see a picture where the Palm Sunday procession leads directly to the empty tomb and a big Easter brunch! In doing so, though, we deceive our selves. And we reduce the single greatest event in human history to the stuff of greeting cards and spring clearance sales!!

If our faith is to be real...if the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are to have a real impact in our lives today...we need to be willing to see the whole Palm Sunday picture. Despite our traditions of waving palms and singing, "Hosanna (which, incidentally, is not a word of praise, but a word that means, "Save us, Lord!"), if Christ is to have any real impact on our lives today, we must learn to stop flipping through these carefully selected, happy images as ifthat alone constitutes a life of faith and a living relationship with God. It doesn't -just as flipping through an old photo album cannot take the place ofreal relationships and engagement with the real world! We need to stop being spiritually sentimental. We need to be brave enough and bold enough to walk through the total events of Holy Week with Jesus...and then apply what we hear and see and learn to the living of our own lives today!

What we really need to do is develop some spiritual persistence of vision. Most of you know that I used to manage movie theaters and, like many of you, I still really enjoy going to the movies. Well, do you realize that a motion picture - those movies we enjoy watching, with their exciting movement and realistic action - are really just a long series of still pictures?

If you looked at the actual film that's run through a projector in your local theater, you would see that it's nothing but approximately 13,000 feet of still pictures printed on celluloid film. As the film is pulled through the projector, every individual frame - each still photo - is pulled into place and a powerful light source shines through the film, through a large lens that magnifies the image and projects it onto the screen. Every individual picture flashes on the screen - not once but twice! - then the projector pulls another picture into place, flashes it on the screen, pulls another down...and so on.

Now, obviously, the projector does this very quickly! For the statisticians among us, a 35mm movie projector, which is what most movie theaters use, pulls 24 of those little still pictures into place to be projected every second. It's very fast...but it's still just a series of still pictures.

So how is it that we are able to see the images move and flow together so realistically? Well, it's not the projector or the film. It's something that God has given each of us in the functioning of our eyes. It's called "persistence of vision." Our eye captures the images we see and holds them there for that millisecond until the next image comes up...so that they seem to flow together seamlessly. Persistence of vision allows separate images to fit together so that we can comprehend a cohesive story.

This "persistence of vision" is something we need to develop spiritually, too. If we had spiritual persistence of vision, then the palms...the cross...the tomb...Christ risen and alive...our lives...our goals...our needs...our priorities: these would no longer be separate, unrelated images but a seamless, flowing, on-going reality where every event influences and helps to define the others.

The whole Palm Sunday picture really began at creation. And the story continues on today, April 16th, 2000. The events of "Holy Week" and Easter that we look back upon each year were real. And the impact they made upon the world was real...just as the lives we struggle to live and understand today are real!

Jesus Christ is not just some interesting but isolated image from a distant past. The things that Christ came to teach...the love that Christ came to proclaim...the power of Christ to overcome death...and the power of Christ to transform lives today are real and ongoing. Not old photographs to be pulled out and shown once a year "for old times sake" - but realities that we intertwined with our own realities.

We cannot separate ourselves, as people of faith, from those past events or their present meaning or their future possibilities. Either we are worshiping a deceptive image of a God who has been frozen like an ancient insect preserved in amber, to be studied and conjectured about. Or we are in an evolving relationship with a living God who can direct and strengthen and impact our lives in a real and vital way.

The question for each of us, as we enter into Holy Week, is this: Will I continue to keep my God pasted neatly in a scrapbook of mental photographs and holiday keepsakes - an image that I take out and look at occasionally so I can "feel better" about things for a little while? Or will I engage myself in the on-going experience of a life in Christ...that requires me to be a part of the story, not just a passive on-looker? Am I willing to journey into places that are unknown...to risk being misunderstood or rejected...to carry burdens that are hard and frightening...to take the ultimate leap of faith and believe that what Christ has promised, Christ will deliver? Am I willing to be engaged in a living faith that demands that I trust an unknown future in the hands of a known God? Well...are you? Amen.

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