Oliver's re-imagining of the Palm Sunday story from the point of view of the donkey makes me wonder what Jesus, too, anticipated, on this morning at the start of what was to be the final week of his life.  It's a rather absurd story really...a Jewish teacher riding bareback on a donkey while crowds of strangers line the road into Jerusalem. Our own discomfort with palm branches and parades into church comes from our memory that those who lined the streets on that first Palm Sunday were no more animated in their cheering-- than they would be in their jeering-- along the road to Golgotha, yelling, Crucify him!

The story of Holy Week lies in between the donkey and the crucifixion.  It's heavy laden with contradiction, betrayal and duplicity.   The happy ending we already know will come, a stone rolled away from a cave-his body gone and followers who say they have seen him risen from the dead. We, however, are still in the middle of the story, and the happy ending cannot be stolen and placed ahead of the events that lead to it.

In Holy Week we're each given the chance to find our own story here, to have our fears and grief, our anger and sorrow, caught up in the story leading towards the cross. Holy Week, the middle of the story before the happy ending, is a tale that illuminates our human nature and human institutions, revealing the best and worst of which we're capable.  We discover that we've been each character, the betrayed or the betrayer, the denier and the denied, the evangelist and the doubter.  This story also reveals the power of God to transform us, often in the crucible of suffering, changing us into Christ's likeness, each of us bearing the face of Christ, one to another.

With this story is our invitation to participate in the holiest of weeks with one another and with Jesus.  I invite you to enter this upcoming week with as much integrity and vulnerability, as you can muster.  Bring your skepticism, your hope, your fears, your longings, your anger, jealousy, love lost and love found.  The heart of Jesus and the walls of this church are big enough to hold it and you, and to welcome all of us, who we are and are yet to be.  Even in the middle of the story, as we wait the miracle of the happy ending, we're to know that love rules here.  And will not betray us, no matter what.  For God always has the last word...and that word is love.