Last evening my husband and I attended the final soup supper at our church for this season of Lent. It was well attended and the numbers have grown throughout the season. We’ve had good conversations, eaten delicious soups and desserts, and gotten to know more people at our new church.
Following supper, we went into the sanctuary for the service. We’ve made good use of Holden Evening Prayer, written in 1985-86 by Marty Haugen during a musical residency at Holden Village. After six weeks of the service we’re finally mastering the round part, and that’s it until next year. Hoping we use it again. I appreciate the prayerful music within it and Pastor Richard’s voice carries it well. [Though the video has some echo, the music is soothing and melodic.]
Thus the six weeks of Lent brings us to Palm Sunday this weekend, a celebration of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the beginning of Holy Week, as the church calls it. I think of it more as more a hellish week for Jesus, given the betrayal and pain he endured.
This poem is one I wrote years ago, pondering the sacrifice foreshadowed on Palm Sunday. The poem was first published in Esprit (Spring 2006), a women’s magazine of the Evangelical Lutheran Women I used to write for until its closure..
 
Sacrifice
 
My borrowed beast
climbs the rocky path
treading cautiously over robes
that carpet dusty earth
 
shaded
by a canopy of palms
his body trembles amid shouts of
 
Hosanna
 
such a young colt
he does not hurry –
as if he knows what is to come
 
outside the city gates
the crowd thins and hosannas fade
inside
a poor man empties his pocket
to buy a dove
 
my beast of burden can rest now
my time is coming
 
© 2006 Esprit Spring Edition, Carolyn Wilker