“Glory to God” to “Crucify him.”

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

“This is my Son, the Beloved,[a] with whom I am well pleased.”

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

“Crucify him. Crucify him.”

The words at his birth: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

The word of God following Christ’s baptism: “This is my Son, the Beloved,[a] with whom I am well pleased.”

The words of the crowds greeting his entry into Jerusalem: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

And then the words following his arrest: “Crucify him. Crucify him.”

“Glory to God” to “Crucify him.”

The ecstasy of the people of Jerusalem lining up to see him, they laid their cloaks on the road to prepare his way into the city, they praised God for the miracles they witnessed, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

And just a few days later, “Crucify him. Crucify him.”

I don’t understand.

This is a man who healed many, who freed many from demons, who gave the gift of his word and deed to a people in need, the people were given their savior and through their savior salvation.

Yet even in our first gospel reading this morning there are signs that all is not well.

“Teacher, order your disciples to stop." Said some Pharisees.

To which Jesus noted the crowds were but telling the truth.

Jesus was called king, and the Pharisees were upset by this.

Jesus allowed himself to be called king and the Pharisees were upset by this.

The Pharisees were upset and would then set in motion the events that would lead to Jesus’ arrest later in the week.

And following that arrest, the crowds would shout “Crucify him. Crucify him.”

And Christ would be led through the streets enduring shouts of abuse, mockery.

The crowds were not unanimous in their spite however and still echoing through the streets were shouts of wailing and grief.

Jesus, on his way to calvary, was still loved.

And so we go from ecstasy to terror.

From Glory Laud and Honor to the plaintive wondering of Were You There When They Crucified My Lord.

At first, we are Filled with Excitement yet then will witness our savior process to that Rugged Old Cross.

This is Palm Sunday.

This is a service of great variations in mood and temperament.

This is our witness.

We, at the same time, revel in the glory of our Lord.

Day to day we pray to Jesus for relief from our troubles.

We give thanks for our gifts.

We ask for help where help can be provided.

Jesus is our rock, our savior, our confidant on the way to work as we talk to God amidst the hubbub of a long commute.

And yet we know, we absolutely know the outcome of all of this.

We know that Jesus is fully divine and fully human.

Fully human in that he was faced with the temptation to sin, divine in that he did not.

Fully human in that beneath his skin flowed blood, his nerve endings knew hot and cold, he would recoil if pricked by the thorn of a mustard bush, the thorn of a crown of thorns placed on his head.

We know that his divine nature did not prevent his suffering on the cross, his death, on that cross.

We know this when we celebrate his birth.

We know his humanity made him as delicate as all of us.

We know we worship and pray to this man who died, just as we pray to a God who was resurrected.

That is the impossibility of all of this and it hardly makes sense.

The wild swings in the very nature of our Christ astound us, this is a man who could heal as God did; this was God suffering on the cross.

In the words of my Generation Z’s cohort, “Make this make sense!”

I hold a memory.

My wife and I had just met a few months before; we were engaged after six months of knowing each other – we met on a blind date.

Somewhere between our meeting and engagement or just after, the timing is hazy, we were walking around Epcot.

We were poorer then, certainly not poor mind you – we could feed ourselves and lived with a roof over our heads, we just had less money to do those things that make our lives more comfortable.

But we did work for the Walt Disney World Company at the time and one of the perks of working for the company is, in place of them paying a living wage, was giving their employees free access to the parks.

So we were walking around Epcot on scholarship and as is wont to happen in Florida, a thunderstorm came up and we were caught in the rain.

This was a downpour, and being young, dumb, and in love, we walked in the rain; the romance of a summer storm holding hands and smiling through the water dripping down our face and into our eyes made us laugh and lean in closer to each other as we walked side by side in the somewhere between Future World and the World Showcase.

We saw a splash pad nearby, one of those things with a rubber floor out of which bursts of water would shoot out.

Kids would play on these pads chasing the water, cooling off from the hot Florida sun.

These were, I should point out, intended for children, not two adults who were supposed to be sane; supposed to be responsible.

Specifically, they were not intended for Jenn and me.

Well, ignoring our sanity and responsibilities, we, in a downpour headed toward the splash pad while I said, “Well, I guess we can’t get much wetter!”

Friends, I am here to testify that while Florida storms might be rather powerful and with them comes a lot of rain, it is indeed possible to get much, much wetter if one frolics on a splash pad in the rain.

But the memory I hold onto is one of laughter, of being silly, of complete, utter, and unthinking joy.

And it is the memory I return through our over twenty years together.

It is the memory that remains just as real in all that time as we experience the ebbs and flows that a marriage brings.

It is the salve on the wound that won’t heal when my children are hurting and I cannot fix them.

It is the return of a smile when we are in one of those lulls, when we work through our relationship where things just don’t click as they normally do.

It is the confirmation that we are capable of joy when the stresses of work and schedules separate us for a bit; it is the reality that will always be with us: we are full of joy, fully in love when times are hard and even inscrutable.

It is a both/and.

We are both a happy couple and at there are times when need to be reminded of that day in the rain that brought us laughter and happiness.

This story is how I am trying to understand this morning’s juxtaposition of elation and terror; the arrival of our king in Jerusalem and his murder just days later.

It is an attempt to understand just how we can experience such epic heights followed by such low lows.

Or, in the words of Paul, Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death--
even death on a cross.

God is asking us to understand both things, to hold two things in tension: Jesus will bring to us great joy and he is also capable of experiencing great suffering.

It is through that joy we are brought to the very reality of his passion on the cross.

Now this is not a sermon about what happened after the Passion, that comes next week, but it is important to understand even in this context that after Jesus’ suffering, maybe even through his death, or further, perhaps even because of it depending on your beliefs, that suffering was released; our human king returned as our savior God.

Yet even without acknowledging all of that, we are to understand that Christ was at once human and God; that he was at the same time beloved and put to death.

And it is in the passion we can experience hope.

As silly as that sounds, even in Christ’s torture and murder is found hope.

A group of hopeful women wept and tore at their hearts for they wish Christ to stay in the land of the living for a while longer.

A prisoner was afforded paradise on the cross for he proclaimed his faith in Christ.

A centurion came to believe after witnessing the miracles found on Calvary.

Perhaps God is asking us to believe in the hopefulness found in all creation: in life, in death, and in a life in which death is conquered.

Perhaps that is our lesson today.

We are of two minds; two worlds, really.

We are reminded of the joy that life brings and that even in the tragedy of our dying, there is somber solace that even in death remains hope.

Jesus entered a city and he was received a hero and days later it all changed.

We experienced the first event earlier this morning and we will hear of the second very soon.

In between both of those things there is the reminder that we are called to live.

To remember the joy in our times of sorrow.

To recall the sorrow in times of joy.

We are formed by both; we are children of God.

Amen.