Palm Sunday--on triumph and suffering

Scott has been at an Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation meeting for a week, one of about three foreigners in a sea of Ugandan district doctors and administrators, evaluating their programs and planning for the next year of effort to stop the transmission of AIDS.  It is messy.  I would like the same thing the people of Israel wanted on Palm Sunday:  a messianic power-show of defeating evil once for all, a definitive correction of the world’s ills.  For us that might mean a lovely clean hospital where we are in control and everyone shows up for work and drugs are in plentiful supply and we see cures left and right and everyone can come and see how it should be done . . . But that is not the way God chose to work.  We’re listening to a lecture series as a team, and NT Wright reminds us that God’s answer to evil is to get dirty, to come down, to involve Himself in the story, to transform from the ground rather than impose order from on high.  In a way that has encouraged me to slog on, to plead with passive-aggressive staff to do their work, to make phone calls about drug supplies, to confront, to pray, to hold on.  To go to meetings where we don’t quite fit in, to patiently work on establishing trust with the government, to press on in spite of imperfect programs.

Last week Kisembo preached:  it is easier to fight for Jesus than to die for Jesus.  I think that is so true.  This week as we remember the events of Jesus’ life and death, let us pray to enter the same way He did.  A King coming in peace, moving relentlessly towards the place of suffering, purposefully, soberly.