All the Feels: A Palm Sunday Reflection

Dear First Pres SLO Family,

Grace and peace to you in the name of the one who walked this journey to the Cross, Jesus the Messiah.

We’re in the last few days of Holy Week—the last days of the Lenten season. It’s a time, as I’ve reminded us each Sunday, of repenting and reflecting as we prepare our hearts for the joy of Easter. We’re not there yet, but we can see it on the horizon, right?

I’m still in the afterglow of Palm Sunday. As I said in our service, Palm Sunday is both hopeful and tragic, as so many who were thrilled for Jesus to come ended up disappointed in who he was. That will always be a sad thing to me. It will always be like that moment in a movie where a character makes a decision that we know will turn out badly, and each time we see it we root for them to do it better this time. Palm Sunday has all the feels.

There’s usually something that sticks with me during the week from the previous Sunday. In one of our “hosanna” songs we see this line:

Heal my heart and make it clean.

Open up my eyes to the things unseen.

Show me how to love like You have loved me.

Break my heart for what breaks yours.

Everything I am for your Kingdom's cause,

As I walk from Earth into eternity. Hosanna…

We wonder so much about how to live this Christian life. How to do the things that please God and avoid the things that don’t. In this song we see another way of saying that. Instead of trying to do the right thing, the prayer is, “Break my heart for what breaks yours.”

Break my heart for what breaks yours.

In other words, shape my heart to see the wounds you came to heal—to see the people you came to include—to see the world you came to save.

That’s quite a prayer. I wonder what our lives would be like if our hearts were so tuned to God’s that we all, both individually and as a community of faith, could reach out to the world as God did. If we could extend love and grace and mercy to the people we encounter, especially the ones who aggravate us or attack us.

Maybe that’s what Lent and Easter are meant to teach us. 

Maybe that’s who God is calling us to be.

Try that prayer for yourselves these next few days, as you prepare for the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. 

May God break all of our hearts, just a little, as we seek to be reflections of his love for a hungry world.

Blessings to you and yours this Holy Week,

Pastor John