Today we celebrate the process of entering into a place of peace. The Palm Sunday story illustrates this journey as Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem which means City of Peace. He rides into the city on a donkey, symbolic of royalty in his time. In this culmination of Jesus’ ministry he makes a very bold statement. He claims his inheritance, his kingship… not of the Jews but of the kingdom of the heavens. He claims his divinity. He claims his sonship of his father in heaven, his father whom he tells us is in him as he is in us. In this moment palms, branches are laid before him. Cloaks are removed and placed upon the ground for him to ride upon. In our lives, the cloaks of separation are laid down when we recognize the Christ that was in Jesus is also in us. The branches which symbolize our individual lives are lain down that the divine spark within us might unite us and draw us into an abiding place of peace in our lives and in the world. Jesus enters the city of peace and calls each of us to be peacemakers. He calls each of us to lay down our thoughts of self and enter into the peace and harmony of Spirit, a place of wholeness where we and God are one, not two.

~ Rev. Eileen Patra