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Yes, this week’s gospel is the same as last week’s.

Zion’s worship follows a lectionary, a fancy word for “schedule of readings.” And the lectionary we use (the Revised Common Lectionary) divides this one story into two parts.

Part 1 was assigned for last Sunday; part 2, for this Sunday. I put them back together, both parts on both Sundays.

Why did I do this?

The whole makes more sense together. In part 1,  Jesus does his thing and everyone seems to love him. In part 2, suddenly the people who changed his diapers and raised him in faith try to kill him.

The whiplash of Palm Sunday to Good Friday is here also, from the very start of Jesus’s ministry. This is easy to miss when the parts are apart.

Together, we get to let go of our own expectations for life and the world and join Jesus in the real world where beauty and ugliness coexist. Jesus is loyal to beauty and resists ugliness, with bravery and mercy. Beauty springs from the grave. Ugliness will end. Beauty never ends. So we can live a beautiful, brave, and merciful life, even in the midst of ugliness. A beautiful new world isn’t just coming. Today, we can be with Jesus in paradise.

This is Jesus’s good news for the poor—and for all of us. Let’s pray we never tire of hearing it, of resting in it, and of engaging again the hard work in our lives and in our communities to live it and make it real for others.

Thanks be to God.

Pastor Clark Olson-Smith