PALM SUNDAY rose bright and blue, a stunning sunny April day. On the steps of the church, the children, mine included, made double rows, waving palm fronds for the congregation to walk beneath. “Hosanna,” I said to them. Hosanna to everyone, the word rising from my lips, borne by happiness. I knew the word had originally meant save us now, but that was not out of order, either, as we climbed together toward the message of the morning.

I always liked to listen to the crowd murmuring in the pews before the service started. They, the parishioners, and Eben were like two variations on a single theme: the paradox of free will and determinism.

Behind me, where I sat on the front row, a group of elderly ladies and old thin-chested men began the refrain, women with lace at their collars and heavy dark slips under their silk dresses, men with handkerchiefs in their breast pockets and parts in their slicked dark hair.

“I say when a cold’s got your name on it, there’s nothing you can do to ward it off. Dristan, Novahistine, Nyquil, Robitussin, it doesn’t matter.”

“That’s not a bit true. If you see one coming you can double your vitamin C and drink fresh-squeezed juice.”

“When a cough’s going to cough, it coughs. There’s no stopping it. When trouble’s got your number, the phone’s going to ring.”

“It’s the truth, some people can stand out in the rain, never wear anything on their heads, never get sick a day in their lives. This woman I know, people can sneeze right in her face, she never gets a germ.”

“Young people know about nutrition.”

“It’s like a tornado is heading for your house. You think eating an orange crate of oranges is going to make it change its course?”

“You can open the windows; you can get under the table.”

“You can say your prayers.”

“Hush, here comes the choir.”

It pleased me to listen to them, setting forth the strains that would soon come from the pulpit. The king of another world arriving on the donkey’s colt; the congregation riding mortality in an earthly city.

It didn’t matter the title of Eben’s sermon of the week (“The Archaic King at the Crossroads,” “The Freedom to Disobey,” “Lead Us Not into Temptation”), the matter he explored never varied. What does it mean to act if God has foreknowledge of our actions? Today, the lesson of Palm Sunday turned not on whether the crowd on the road to Jerusalem was wrong in wanting a different kind of king, for being fickle in their reception of Jesus, but rather whether either the crowd or the Son of God had any choice in the matter. Could He not have come into the city as had been prophesied? Could they not have waved their branches and lifted their voices in praise? Were both reading scripts in a Passion play that neither had written? And then, of course, the foreshadowing of Easter and the larger question of the crucifixion. Did Jesus have a choice? Did that matter? Today, in choosing Matthew 21 for his reading, I knew Eben would end his sermon, as he did, with the passage in which Jesus says that if you have faith you can move mountains. What, the pastor asked us, did this mean? If the mountain truly moves, does it matter that the moving was foreordained?

After the sermon had been considered and received by all of us, we stood to sing: “All glory, laud and honor, To Thee, Redeemer, King! To whom the lips of children, Made sweet hosannas ring.” Then the old woman who had to blow her nose did, and the ones who didn’t sang loud and clear, full-throated and rejoicing in their immunity.

Seated again, for the prayers of intercession—the pause in the service when anyone may mention a loved one in the hospital or nursing home, grieve aloud over the loss of someone dear, or request help for a troubled friend—I was thinking that I was going to miss this church a lot when it was no longer possible for me to be here. Thinking back to the days when the girls were little and sat up front with me, rather than in the rear with their Sunday School friends. Back to when they had to be poked to keep from squirming. Then, older, when they’d wanted to know why it had to be their daddy every week up there and not someone else’s. Their amazement and interest when they learned it could even be someone’s mother up there. It pleased me how they had grown to be a part of the church through the years. Preachers’ kids were known for acting out, for rebelling, making waves, but mine, natural competitors, had become team players even here: partisan Presbyterians against the Baptists in a Baptist town. At least I had not failed in my duty in this regard; my children were firmly in the fold.

Then, all at once, I became aware of Eben speaking from the pulpit.

“This is the last Sunday,” he said in an even tone to the sea of bowed heads, “that my wife, Cile, and I will be here with you as a couple. Please know that there will be no loss of love within our community because we have reached this mutual decision to go our separate ways.” He paused, then, after a moment of silence, raised his voice in the benediction: “And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.”

Shaking with anger at his making our news public without forewarning me, without a word to me, I kept my eyes straight ahead as Eben in his robes strode rapidly past me up the aisle. “You always like Palm Sunday,” he’d said slyly the night I told him I was leaving. Making plans no doubt even then to spring this surprise on me; to scoop me in my own infidelity. To orchestrate my faithlessness as if it was merely a part of his own composition.

I debated slipping out through the choir room, but that would only take me into the Fellowship Hall, from the frying pan to the covered dishes. Still, I couldn’t bear the thought of heading out the front door where Eben, standing by his daughters, would be greeting his flock as if nothing had happened, shaking each firm hand, bending over each tanned face, accepting their praise for his sermon as his due.

I scanned the sanctuary for signs that anyone at all was shocked, astonished, dismayed by the news. But no. The usual steady hum of good wishes and family gossip fell like a blow on my shoulders. Eben had already told them all.

A polite crowd of the faithful moved around me in a cluster, saying in kindly tones that they would certainly miss me, what a dear thing I’d been, such a good cook, too, they hoped I’d be fine, it had been nice to know me. Bustling around me and then past me, on about their business, having paid their respects as if to a visitor.

No stone thrown; not even a pebble skipped. No curses placed on my head, no muttering among themselves, no sending me to Satan. Rather, it seemed a minor matter: the parson and his wife splitting. As if they’d learned I’d decided to bring potato puffs this week instead of my usual potato bake.

I felt cheated. A heathen, I had assumed that true believers would want to cast me out, to tear, symbolically at least, my garments, to cover my face with ashes. Not merely pat me good-bye, as if I were a college freshman moving her letter to another congregation.

Only Lila Beth, whom I glimpsed through a circle of elders, turned her back on me.

Eben’s three new parishioners, perhaps not knowing any better, took the news seriously. Boyd, the skinny math teacher who’d bought a ring in order to marry himself, put a thin arm around my shoulder and said that being alone didn’t have to mean being lonely. Blanche, the plump widow who’d had the stress reaction to her husband’s death and lost her hair, took off her hat to show me the beginning of beige waves, and offered me the name of her hairdresser. Jae-Moon, the Korean woman who’d fussed at Eben for his sexist sermons, seized my palms in hers and squeezed them fervently. Her tone joyous, she said, “This is good, what you have done.”

I thanked the trio, then stood at the front of the church until the crowd thinned out and the last few slow-moving, hard-of-hearing members began to make their way with canes and walkers up the aisle. One of the women who’d sat behind me caught my arm for support and we brought up the rear.

“I still say,” she croaked hoarsely, “when trouble’s got your number, you can’t hang up the phone.”

“Hosanna,” I said.