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You know we gather on Palm Sunday with palms and wave them and march around and sing, and we have been doing this for a long time. You know, a hundred and twelve years ago they found a document in the Middle East. It was a travel diary of a woman who, sixteen hundred years before, had traveled to Jerusalem, and she got there just at the beginning of Holy Week. When she got there she found people doing exactly what we were doing. They were doing this sixteen hundred years ago, and observing Holy Week throughout the whole week. They say this is the week of telling Christ’s story again and having it come true in ourselves and in our community. Another description I really like is “This week is set aside to celebrate who we are and what we have become.” That’s what Holy Week, Palm Sunday, Easter is all about, to celebrate who we are and what have we become.

What have we become? Five years ago, they did a survey throughout the United States, asking people what the meaning of Easter was. The number one answer was “It’s the celebration of Spring.” The number two answer was “It’s school break time.” And the number three answer (You guessed it!) was “It means the Easter Bunny.” And they asked the question too, “Holy Week, what is Holy Week about?” The number one answer in the United States five years ago was “... going to Disneyland.” The Catholic Shrines of Lourdes and Fatima have been replaced by other shrines, Graceland and Disneyland and Las Vegas. And, you know, Catholics used to honor relics all the time, and we kind of smile at it as old-fashioned today, gathering saints’ relics. But they have been replaced by mementos of Elvis and Mickey Mouse. And I’m not so sure that’s an improvement. And the saints that used to people our imagination and our fantasy world, the saints and martyrs.... They’ve been replaced by sports’ heros and Hollywood celebrities. Although this week, Holy Week, even when we were big into saints and they did people our imagainations, we put a sack over their heads. If you go to churches even today, you will find many churches that put a sack over the saints. (We are kinder to them. We remove them entirely.) Saint Anthony and St. Theresa are back there in the confessional, going to confession. We didn’t think Mary and Joseph needed that. They are up here in the front.

The idea was that during Holy Week we are not to focus on anything but Jesus and the journey of Jesus and to celebrate who we are and what have we become. That’s what this Holy Week is about. So we begin with Palm Sunday and it’s really a joyful journey. When you think about it, how amazing! Jesus, during his ministry, would heal people and do wonderful things, and he would say, “Now, don’t tell anybody.... Don’t tell anyone.” And then they came and wanted to make him a king, and he hid himself. None of that! But, on Palm Sunday, he finally says, “What the heck. Let’s celebrate!” In fact, in one of the gospels he says, “If these people didn’t cry out and sing in honor of me, the very stones would be shouting out.” And when you think about it, it was a dangerous joyful journey. After all, we are in occupied Roman territory, where waving branches and having a parade is the symbol of the arrival of the Emperor or of honoring one of their gods or of a victorious warrior such as Caesar arriving. And Jesus says, “Let’s do it! Let’s do it! Let’s celebrate it.” So, we celebrate the joy of who we are and what have we become.

Joy is something you can’t hold onto. You can’t clutch it and you can’t expect to have joy every moment of your life. But joy means being aware of the blessings in our lives, being aware who we become in Jesus. Joy means being connected with other people, not being isolated, not being alone. Joy means looking at things differently, you know like the man who won the lottery, millions of dollars. And they said to him in the interview, “Are you going to quit your job?” He says, “No, I’ll still go to work every day but I’m going to have a totally different attitude.” We’re the people who, because of Jesus, have a totally different attitude, an attitude of joy. As Teilhard said, “Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.” That’s Palm Sunday.

Then there is Holy Thursday where we remember that we are a people nourished by Jesus, the Bread of Life, and called to service. We’ll be washing hands and feet as Jesus told us, a sign that we are called to serve one another. And on Good Friday, we will remember the story, remember how the disciples, and we’re among them, didn’t hang around and they deserted Jesus at some times. At least, they stood far off. They weren’t going to get too close to him. And then Easter Sunday, we celebrate and we come together with mixed faiths and mixed feelings, just as on the first Easter morning some of the disciples said, “It’s just too good to be true.” And finally, the following of Jesus after the celebration of Easter is a people who have gone out and changed the world. That’s who we are called to be. That’s what we’ve become.

You know, there is a lot of discussion about what was it really like, what was the historical Jesus like. We are getting all kinds of stuff on TV these days. They are kind of reinventing or re-instituting Judas, the “Gospel according to Judas.” Have you heard about that? The scholars have pointed out that we have known about this gospel all along. The Church knew about it in the year 150, 160. They thought it was unreliable and unimportant. And today, for TV and National Geographic, it’s been reconstructed and it’s still unreliable and still unimportant. And now they are having something I think on ABC TV. (I shouldn’t name the channels and give them free advertising.) It’s the Dynasty of Jesus and his family and it is based on the discovery of this casket of bones in Israel about five years ago that looked like it was the bones of St. James, the cousin of Jesus. They developed this whole story about the family of Jesus from there. Now, Jesus had a family. We know a lot about it. The Israeli Government already had declared that that box of bones is a forgery. They even found the forger’s tools and how he did it. But it makes for good prime time listening. ....But we want to get back. What’s it about? If I can use the phrase, “Here are the bare bones,” we know Jesus was a historical person and the best of the scholars tell us three things. There was a movement, an execution and continuation. Three things. A movement of people following Jesus. He clearly was executed. And it continues. Three things: movement, execution and continuation. And the greatest of these is continuation. And we are part of the continuation. We are called. Who we are and what we have become is part of the continuation of the living risen body of Jesus.

Remember at the beginning of Lent I invited people, during Lent, to try each day to deliberately do one noble thing? I’m not going to ask for a show of hands. I got a lot of reports of people. I didn’t find anybody who did forty days and had forty noble acts. That’s pretty tough. But great things. Some people immediately tried to reduce their road rage, like me, and make the highway safer from Christians. Others decided to talk to someone at work or at school who other people always leave alone. Others decided to give a compliment to a stranger and here’s a tough one. Some decided to give a compliment to a family member or a friend. That’s harder. Others decided to invite someone to dinner that they usually forget. Others, to call someone who would love to hear from them. Others, to jot a note to old friends. Others, to call their legislators about immigration. Others, to send a postcard to President Bush about genocide. And others, to help out here in our gym during our two weeks of Winter Nights, housing the homeless. To do one noble thing deliberately.