Passion/Palm Sunday, for me, shifts my attention away from ‘my activities’ over Lent like Fasting from Negativity (or Feasting on Positivity). Some I know have also joined this fast while others have fasted from meat or chocolate and that has taken a conscious denial of self. But now there is a shift to the ‘activity of God’ in Christ Jesus. There is a purposeful shift from ‘self’ to something bigger.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (in Tegel Prison April 25 1943 having been arrested by the Nazi Regime) wrote a brief meditation called ‘Fate’ that illustrates this shift. He says
“The liberating thing about Good Friday and Easter is that one’s thoughts are swept far beyond one’s own personal fate to the ultimate meaning of all life and suffering, and of whatever occurs, such that one is seized by a great hope.” (p75 in Meditations on the Cross 1996)
Bonhoeffer reminds us all that our engagement in life through Christ Jesus is not so much about us as it is about ultimate meaning and about the ‘great hope’ that is ours to have and to share.
I invite you today to shift your attention toward God’s plan for all of humanity and all creation as it is found in and through Jesus. I invite you to join with God in God’s local expression of that plan for the sake of the world and the glory of God.
