Who is welcome at our door?

 When a guest comes knocking at our door will we let them in? We see this contrasting expectation in Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. Initially, he is welcomed and the crowds gather to anticipate a new beginning. However, this quick turns to isolation, rejection, and death. At the heart of the Easter mystery, we see it played out so often in our everyday lives. We know of instances where people who can gather the crowds, appeal to the apparent immediate needs and promise results they cannot deliver. Yet Easter is not just about opinion polls but about who helps us encounter God who can love even in the face of isolation, rejection, and death. We discover a God who will walk with us even when many shy away from encountering us in our deepest struggles.

This is a God willing to act as a servant and wash our feet, as a person who discovers the anguish of discovering their true self, who can bear the departure and betrayal of close friends and be falsely accused and humiliated by others. This person helps us not focus solely on the cause of our sufferings or even how we are called to endure suffering but rather on the loving presence of one who carries the weight of that within oneself. We discover through the Easter Triduum a person who makes sense of nonsense and counters the argument that only death can relieve the pain of living with contradictions. He is in the words of Ireneus a man who is fully human and fully alive who seeks to break the chains of slavery that can bind us. He seeks to show us how even in the scandal of the cross he becomes most fully himself.

The scene played out at Calvary is never more important, especially in an age where people are only valued by their utility rather than by their personhood, by what they can do rather than who they are, and by their opinions rather than their intrinsic worth. In a world that can seem turned upside down Calvary turns things the right side up. It helps us to encounter God who cares more deeply than we can imagine. A person who frees us from what imprisons us even from our greatest fears. May we walk more closely with each other on this pilgrim path from sorrow to the joy of Easter.