Midweek Faith Lift
Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025
Imagine It: Embody It!
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Passages
Palm Sunday 2025
It was Palm Sunday but because of a sore throat, 8-year-old Billy stayed home from church. When the family returned home, they were carrying several palm fronds. Billy asked them what they were for. "People lined the streets with them to herald Jesus’ return,” his father told him, “and they held them over his head as he walked by." "Geez,," Billy fumed, "The one Sunday I don't go and he shows up."
Jesus rode into Jerusalem and was greeted with applause and palms. People thought he had come to overthrow the Romans, but, no, he had come to change them. ~ Garrison Keillor, humorist
Affirmative Prayer for Today: Spirit within, we open to the Power of Imagining how it is we embody our true Christ nature in our everyday human lives. We are open to the full expression of our Christ self even when it is challenging and asks us to grow in ways we may not fully understand. Amen.
Here we are, dear ones, at the final week of Lent, the final chapter of this story that embodies the true Power and Presence of Jesus as both fully human and fully Divine. All throughout his ministry Jesus has been teaching and demonstrating the reality and the Truth of who he really is as a human/divine being. He has told his disciples that when they see him, they see God, the Father. He has told them repeatedly that this is also true of each of them, of each one of us. He has told them that all the things he has done, they also can and will do. And you know what, they really don’t get it, not at all. Why, because they lack the skill and spiritual power of Imagination! They cannot possibly IMAGINE a reality beyond their human experience, their human consciousness.
Like Billy, they are asleep and they miss it for sure when the true power and Presence of Love is embodied right there in front of them. Later in the week as the crucifixion draws near, Jesus asks them to watch and wait with him as he agonizes about what his ahead of him. He asks them three times to embody Strength and Will, to make the choice to be awake and stay awake, and they blow it, they fall asleep each time. And they don’t even realize what they have missed. At least little Billy realized he missed something!
Now, as we continue, I want to say a A BIG thank you to Susan Wolfe and Su Podraza-Nagle for the excellent talks about the Spiritual Power of Imagination! Having the Big Idea, the creative process of Conceiving a Divine Idea is a huge and bold step. It is a step that Jesus took throughout his entire ministry with his actions and his teachings. Jesus had the audacity to Imagine that the Temple should be a sacred and holy place and the awareness that it was anything but that. He had the Bold idea that he needed to take action and do something to demonstrate that Truth. So after riding into Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday, the next day, he goes to the Temple and turns over the tables of the money changers and thieves doing business there! Now that is something, for sure! We read about it in Matthew 21:12-13
Jesus Cleanses the Temple
12 Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a den of robbers.” (NRSV-UE)
It is critical for our understanding to realize that Jesus going to Jerusalem was a really, really big deal. Most of his ministry was outside of Jerusalem in small towns and villages. When people heard that he was in Jerusalem, thousands gathered to see him and follow him. And then he calls them out and challenges them as he embodies spiritual Truth that he wants them to understand. He keeps taking actions that cause them to wonder and question what he is about. Picture it, one man, in Jerusalem, goes into the Temple and overturns heavy tables piled with money and goods. WOW! Now that is bold and creative IDEA for sure. He is trying to pique their power of Imagination! Imagine a world where the temple is truly a holy place and stays that way! We are STILL trying to Imagine that, aren’t we?!
The very next thing Jesus does in this story of his last week on earth is to heal the blind and the lame who come to him in the Temple, in the space that he has just cleared for true spiritual energy to be realized. He is challenging us to Imagine that the true spiritual energy of Love, of God is about healing, about really seeing and walking in that energy, embodying that energy. The message for all of us is to get up, wake up and see how it is that YOU are to embody love and claim your Divine identity. Don’t walk away, lean in to the energy of Divine Love even when it is difficult, even when is asks a whole lot of you. This is the Visioning power of Imagination that Su Podraza- Nagle spoke of last week. See your wholeness, open your eyes that you might envision the world that Jesus has envisioned, a world of peace, love and harmony. It is truly a BOLD vision!
And then the next story is one that I have always loved although it took me awhile to “get it.” Jesus has left Jerusalem and spent the night in Bethany, outside the city. When he returns to the city with his disciples, he sees a non-bearing fig tree by the side of the road and he withers it. This is in Matthew 21:18-21. The disciples are amazed that he could do this and that he did do this and it is hard for them to Imagine. What was the message here? Well, for sure, it is to Imagine letting go of what no longer works even if you really, really want to try to make it work! You too can wither and release what no longer bears fruit.
The message about manifestation or embodiment is that you first have to let something die for new life, new Ideas, new creative visions to have any space to grow and become real. In that same passage, the disciples ask Jesus how he did it, how did he wither the fig tree so quickly and it reads thus:
Matthew 21:21-22
21 Jesus answered them, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done. 22 Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.”
Jesus is challenging the disciples and us to have faith that when we are empowered to let go of our attachments to how we think things should be, then with faith, we are empowered to Imagine mountains moving and unbelievable results manifesting. It is by faith and the power of prayer that what we can imagine is actually embodied in our lives.
The spiritual Truth that lies behind all of this, the mountain moving faith and fig tree withering is that Love is always at work and Love will find a way. Love meets us where we are and continually invites us to Imagine how a new reality can be embodied through and as us. And what is Love other than our own intrinsic, Divine nature? If we embrace this higher spiritual reality, it is guaranteed to change us, just as Garrison Keillor pointed out in his observation about Palm Sunday.
We have the power of Will that emboldens us to actually choose to Imagine a new reality. We have the power of Understanding and the Power of Faith to ask our mountains to move. We don’t need to know exactly HOW this takes place; it is a mystery. What we move into is the power of imagination. As Rev. Linda says on p. 86 of Divine Audacity,
By the power of imagination, I live as if I incarnate or embody the character necessary for the ideal to become real. I become the personification of fulfilled consciousness. The is what Jesus the Christ did…..the idea of the spiritual human can be embodied. Jesus is revered to this day because of his comprehension of the idea of the spiritual human and his audacious embodiment of the spiritual human consciousness. He understood that he was capable of spiritual power rather than limited to only-human expression.
The whole message and ministry of Jesus was to shine a light so bright that we could not help but see and realize our own Divine nature, even as we live in our very human bodies and human reality. We can imagine there is more, so much more!
It’s been said that there are three things necessary for success: a wishbone, a
backbone, and a funny bone. A wishbone speaks to our power of Imagination.
Here is what Rev. Howard Thurman, African American mystic and mentor to Rev. Martin Luther King said about the wishbone:
Wishbone
Howard Thurman: "Our dreams belong to us; they come full-blown out of the world in which we work and hope and carry on. They are not impostors. They are not foreign elements invading our world like some solitary comet from the outer reaches of space. No! Our dreams are our spirit, the vital part of us. They become for us the bearers of new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope. Even as they romp among the stars they come back to their place in our lives, bringing with them the radiance of the far heights, the lofty regions, and giving to all our days the lift and the magic of the stars."
Happy Palm Sunday and Blessings on the Path.
Rev. Deb