March 24, Palm Sunday B (Mark 11:1–11)
Jesus moves in the same direction as other pilgrims but at a pace and purpose that is his own.
What I remember is like a dream. I was visiting a friend years ago, around the time of an important saint’s day in her country, and her family decided that we would go to the saint’s shrine to see the festivities honoring her. We piled into their car after a hasty dinner and joined others streaming toward the basilica. The drive would have taken less than an hour any other day, but night fell around us and hours passed as traffic moved at a glacial crawl. Eventually we gave up, somehow found a way to turn around, and went home.
But I don’t remember that part. I have only a partial, fever-dream memory of our car moving in slow motion through the dark, headlights illuminating crowds of pilgrims on bicycles or walking, everything and everyone pulled in one direction like snowmelt coursing downhill.
I imagine that same kind of gravitational pull moving waves of pilgrims along the roads into Jerusalem for the festival of Passover, all surging into the city, through its crowded streets, toward the Temple Mount.
