Looking for an opening

Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” John 11:16

In the midst of all the festivities and observances of Holy Week, it’s easy to miss the other major event that comes with the arrival of April: Opening Day! (Perhaps you have the opposite experience.) And not to confuse the two, or even to equate them, but there is a striking similarity.

Finally.

That’s the feeling, after a long cold winter, after desperately following the Hot Stove League and imagining its impact on your favorite team, after long weeks of Spring Training and feverishly examining previously unknown and unheralded rookies, the day comes. Your own home team, in your own home park, bring on the hot dogs and the nachos and the cold beer (not quite so important in chilly April) and let’s PLAY BALL!

I wonder if Jerusalem felt the same way. Three long years of signs and miracles and preaching all around the countryside, in small hamlets and outlying places without names, growing in fame and reputation, but when, WHEN, will Jesus deign to step into the great city herself? That, as much as anything, might be the motivation behind the thronging crowds and the Hosannas and waving palms. Finally, he has come!

Palm Sunday is mostly a day that we observe as an end, or at least as the beginning of the end, the climax of horror and blood and death. But it is for Jesus a day of arrival, an entry, an opening. It is his way into Jerusalem and his way into us, and, as such, a beginning of victory and triumph, of life and life everlasting and abundant. The cross hides the mysteries of Heaven itself, this week is not merely the end of a long Lent but the beginning of a new life, the opening day to what will surely be our best season ever.

Yes, we have finally come, not to our end but to our opening, to the heavens opened up, the gate of eternity visible in death, mercy and divine grace shown in the very human misery of the cross. Prepare to see the stone rolled away, the tomb gaping open, prepare to hear angels bidding us who wait to live, and … let’s PLAY BALL!