Palm Sunday Memories

It's still dark outside, but I'm too miserable to sleep! I slept very little last night , so to redeem the time I started thinking about my favorite Palm Sunday memories.

Memory #1--I joined FBC on Palm Sunday 15 years ago! I’ve actually been there 17 years, but I waited two years to see if Joe would join with me. He wouldn’t, but he gave me his blessing. I joined on a Sunday night when few people were there, and most people thought I was already a member, so it didn’t really make a blip on the screen, except in my heart. It's not a perfect church, but I don't think there's another one around like it, and I'm so glad I'm part of it!

Memory #2--One year I went with the youth to Waco to a Poverty Simulation, where we lived homeless for three days. On Palm Sunday we attended “The Church Under the Bridge” (no building, just a gathering of poor and homeless people under an overpass near Baylor). We waved palm branches as Jesus (who was black!) rode into the area on a donkey. We also had a foot washing while they played a great song I already loved called “The Basin and the Towel” by Michael Card.

In an upstairs room, a parable
is just about to come alive.
And while they bicker about who’s best,
with a painful glance, He’ll silently rise.
Their Savior Servant must show them how
through the will of the water
and the tenderness of the towel.
And the call is to community,
The impoverished power that sets the soul free.
In humility, to take the vow,
that day after day we must take up the basin and the towel.
In any ordinary place,
on any ordinary day,
the parable can live again
when one will kneel and one will yield.
Our Savior Servant must show us how
through the will of the water
and the tenderness of the towel.
And the space between ourselves sometimes
is more than the distance between the stars.
By the fragile bridge of the Servant’s bow
we take up the basin and the towel.

Memory #3—Last March when Annette and I were in Israel, we walked down the very road (it was down a hill) where Jesus (the real Jesus!) rode in on a donkey. I don’t have words to describe the feeling, but I’ll never forget it. Annette and I sang a hosanna song as we walked! (When we got back, Annette rode a camel and did the princess wave, but that’s sorta beside the point.)

Here’s something to meditate on this Palm Sunday by J. Lee Grady. It's long, but it's important, so take the time, ok, bloggerbuddies?

During one of my recent visits to Nigeria I was asked to speak at a conference in downtown Lagos. The meeting was to take place at the Muson Centre, a fancy civic auditorium, and I was told that several prominent church leaders would be in the audience. Of course it would require me to wear my suit, since all Nigerian Christians wear their Sunday best on such occasions.

Around 4 p.m. my friends picked me up and we began the drive from Lekki, a nearby suburb. Unfortunately, “nearby” in Lagos can mean more than an hour in the car—most of which is sitting in standstill traffic in 95 degree heat. While it is a city of 11 million, Lagos has about three traffic lights. Intersections are always snarled. Getting anywhere often requires miraculous intervention

Sure enough we hit a nightmarish jam and I found myself stranded in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes. My friends began to call people at the convention hall to discuss alternate routes. Then they began to discuss alternate modes of transportation. (Someone even suggested using a boat to cross the lake near the intersection where we were trapped!)

I listened to the phone conversations and heard someone mention “Okata.” I figured this must be the driver who was coming to rescue us. I was looking forward to greeting Mr. Okata.

But in a few minutes my friend Andy explained that okata was not a person but a form of transportation. It is, in fact, the poor man’s taxi, a crude motorcycle that whisks only the bravest and most desperate travelers to their destinations.

Before I had a chance to weigh my options, the okata arrived. The driver was not wearing a helmet, and he did not offer me one. He revved his motor and smiled wickedly, as if to say, “Come and join me on your journey to certain death.”

I breathed a prayer and then straddled the vinyl seat, holding onto my driver for dear life. Within seconds we were weaving between cars at a fast clip, stirring up red dust and attracting curious glances from the locals. The sight of a white guy in a black suit barreling through town on the back of a motorcycle taxi must have looked like a scene from a Nigerian comedy film.

I opened my eyes a few times, only to see that we were headed into a 2-foot-wide space between two buses that were inching closer to each other by the second. I squeezed my driver tighter, groaned and shut my eyes again. The driver again laughed wickedly and sped onward.

I began to think of my mother. Every time I go to Africa she worries that I will die. “I am not telling my mother about this,” I said aloud. Nobody heard me. The scratchy roar of the cycle’s engine seemed to drown out all other noises in Lagos.

We weaved through more traffic, jumped on and off sidewalks, squeezed through more intersections and finally pulled in front of the Muson Centre—where many of the bishops of Lagos were waiting for me, “the man of God,” to arrive with my entourage.

They got the shock of their lives. I drove up on the back of an okata, my suit and shoes covered with dust. It could have been an embarrassing scene, but as soon as I stepped off the cycle and said goodbye to my driver (and thanked him for sparing my life) I recognized this was a holy moment.

When I took the podium that evening, I told my Nigerian hosts that my unorthodox arrival was actually full of prophetic meaning. I apologized to them for the way some American ministers have demanded limousines, red carpets and celebrity treatment. And I exhorted them to renounce the arrogance, pride and entitlement that characterize so much of Western Christianity.

When Jesus came into the world, He made His first appearance in a lowly manger. Just days before His crucifixion, He entered Jerusalem on a humble donkey that He had to borrow from residents of a poor village (see Matt. 21:1-4). He did not demand fancy horses, regal guards or trumpet blasts. He laid aside His kingly glory and took on the form of a bondservant.

If Jesus had visited Lagos, He probably would have used an okata. As we celebrate His entry into Jerusalem this Palm Sunday, let’s remember that our risen King is calling us to return to humility—a value I fear we sophisticated Christians in the 21st century have lost.

Happy Palm Sunday, bloggerbuddies!