Heart Lake United Church Friends, Welcome to Holy Week! This Sunday we celebrate Palm Sunday – the triumphal entry into Jerusalem of Jesus. And we go on to try to make sense of the arrest, trial, scourging, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As familiar as these events may be, each year we have the opportunity to look at them with fresh eyes – bringing the lessons, triumphs and tragedies of the year past – bringing our faith and our unanswered questions. We may spend a life-time acquiring depth of meaning for these events – adding new insights, and hope – and sometimes just simply celebrating their significance for us. The Polish poet, Zbigniew Herbert, has penned a little verse entitled “Meditations of Mr. Cogito on Redemption.” ( The Gospel In Our Image: An Anthology of Twentieth Century Poetry Based on Biblical Texts. Editor: David Curzon, Harcourt Brace, N.Y., 1995.) He should not have sent his son too many have seen his son’s pierced hands his ordinary skin it was written to reconcile us by the worst reconciliation too many nostrils have breathed with delight the odour of his fear one should not descend low fraternize with blood he should not have sent his son it was better to reign in a baroque palace made out of marble clouds on a throne of terror with a sceptre of death (Trans. from the Polish by John & Bogdana Carpenter.) Yes, he could have been born in a palace, rather than a barn. It could have been a four-poster bed rather than a manger. He could have kept his hands clean – avoiding our human condition. He could have been cloistered in a palace, seated on a throne of terror, wielding a sceptre of death. But that’s not how God is with us in Jesus. It is remarkable the lengths that God goes in Jesus to share life – to come near to us – to suffer with us and for us – to impart new life to us. And, it could have ended in a borrowed grave outside Jerusalem, with Jesus of Nazareth fading into obscurity. Yet something amazing and disturbing happened that first Easter which signals new life – God reaching out again and again and again through the Risen Christ. With you on this journey of discovery and being discovered, as we share Holy Week…