We were late for church. Josh pulled into a handicapped spot and dropped me and the kids off by the back entrance. I scrambled after them, an extra bag of kids’ clothes draped over my arm, my blue travel mug of coffee tucked inside. “I have to pee!” my son told me as we climbed the steps. We walked down the narrow hallway to the nursery and ran into a cluster of kids by the doorway clutching palm branches. Amy, the smiling children’s pastor, waved to us: “You’re just in time!” and handed each child a palm. I pointed to the bathroom explaining “Bathroom emergency” and steered Rowan inside while Eliza joined the crowd of other kids.
After singing the Daniel Tiger potty-training song (“Flush and wash and be on your way!”), I opened the bathroom door to find the kids already gone. They must have begun the procession, I told my son, who looked stunned at the now empty hallway. We raced around the other side and entered the back of the sanctuary, watching the kids walking up and down the aisles waving branches as the gospel choir sang “Hosanna, Hail King Jesus” to a steady beat. Eliza was walking down the aisle toward us, so I waved and guided her little brother to join her in the procession. The adults were all smiles and cameras, and the beat of the drum thumped its way into my heart, crept upward toward my face, and crested into a grin. I can’t help it—I love Palm Sunday. I love the servant King riding on a donkey, I love the pageantry and glorious drama of the Messiah, humble and powerful, making his way toward Jerusalem and his own death.
As a lifelong churchgoer, I’ve probably heard dozens of Palm Sunday sermons. At the Mennonite church, this Sunday was always one of great joys—it’s the pinnacle of the peace-loving theology that Anabaptists center on. When Pastor Jeff began his sermon stating that Palm Sunday is primarily a story about expectations, I nodded to myself, confident that I knew where this was going. The Jews were expecting a victorious Messiah who would deliver them from their oppressor; they imagined a God who could redeem the righteous and pay back evil for evil, not a King who would die on a cross.
But this year at Calvary, the sermon took a turn I wasn’t expecting. Pastor Jeff highlighted the prophecy from the book of Zechariah in the Old Testament about a king, lowly and riding on a donkey, who will come and destroy Israel’s enemies. In the prophecy, God’s people are told to “return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope” as they await God’s redemptive and destructive work.
That “prisoners of hope” line, the preacher said, is what we need to hold on to. The Jewish people’s expectation—that their lives, their nation, their future, would look a certain way—had not come to pass. In his own life, he said, there had been many times when what he had hoped for, what he’d asked God for, had not been realized. He had been deeply disappointed but remained a prisoner of hope. God gave us power, he said, power rooted in love and humility to live our lives like Jesus. But often it’s not intuitive. It’s not the way of this world, the way we expect.
I listened to these words as I sat alone in the pew, and I saw myself as very much a prisoner. It would be much easier to walk out of these doors forever, out of the struggle to bring my kids to church alone on Sundays, out of the nagging resentment toward my husband for not sitting beside me. Some days I want to do just that—to leave church, to let my faith slide, to change myself to fit where Josh is at, to spend Sunday mornings as a family going out for hikes or reading the newspaper at home. But something keeps dragging me back to church and Mass at the monastery, back to Palm Sunday after Palm Sunday.
The day before Palm Sunday had been one of the largest marches in US history, led by the teenagers who survived the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting. Pastor Jeff told us that anyone who wanted to wave their palm branches and carry a few signs about sensible gun laws could join us right after the service to march down Twenty-Sixth Street for a couple of blocks.
Yes! I thought to myself, excited. I wanted my kids to join in this example of a church community responding to injustice. So as the congregants started pushing out toward the street, I raced over to the nursery to grab my kids and join the procession. After zipping up coats and finding mittens, I held their hands—one on each side—and walked out the front doors of the church. Most of the marchers had already left. I pulled on my kids and started a slow jog, eager to catch up. It had only been a year since I started attending this church and, while I knew a few people, I didn’t know many well. Most of the people ahead of me were in their nuclear family or friend groupings and walking at steady clip, and it wasn’t long before we fell behind. I watched as dads hoisted their daughters onto their shoulders, as parents tag-teamed to carry kids.
“Mom,” Rowan yelled, “I’m tired.”
“Why are we doing this?” Eliza asked. “This isn’t really doing anything, is it?” I considered her words as we walked along, unsuccessfully trying to keep up. A plastic bag floated on the wind by our feet. “We should be picking up trash,” my daughter said. “Trash is what is hurting people, and the world God made, and the animals.”
I explained a little of why we were marching as a church, but my voice trailed off. I picked up my son, who kept stopping to gather debris from the street (a stick, a hotel keycard, a straw) and considered the distance to the congregational marchers. They were a whole block ahead now, and we were just a party of three, holding scraggly palm branches and walking alone.
So much for this meaningful moment, I thought to myself, as Rowan brushed the palm branch against my face. I slowed my pace as the people marching ahead turned the corner, and when we reached the Dunn Brothers Coffee shop, I stopped.
“Hey,” I told the kids. “Let’s just go in here. I’ll ask Dad to come get us.”
I ordered a muffin and orange juice, then guided the kids to sit at the square tables by the window. I gathered the palm branches and put them on a nearby chair, then looked out the window at the gray March sky and tried not to cry. Who gets left behind in a Palm Sunday march? I wished that I had just asked some church members if we could walk with them. I wished someone had noticed we were falling behind.
“It’s taken me years to get to know people at this church,” my friend Julie told me later. “It takes dozens of tiny interactions, Sunday after Sunday, to break in. You have to keep showing your face, keep having conversations.”
I picked at my muffin, then pushed it away. I texted Josh: “Will you come pick us up at the coffee shop?” I didn’t want to walk back into the church today.