And so, Jesus entered Jerusalem…

The disciples went and did as Jesus had ordered them.
They brought the ass and the colt and laid their cloaks over them, and he sat upon them.
The very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road,
while others cut branches from the trees
and strewed them on the road.   (MT 21: 1-11)

The humble healer rode into Jerusalem on humble beasts.  As he moved through the streets, the hungry crowd covered his pathway with clothes and branches.  What did they hope to shed or uncover by strewing their cloaks and branches upon the road?

Jesus may have known less about where this path would lead than the people realized the source of their hunger.   Was it a convergence of expectations and hopes, hunger and exhaustion?  Uncertainty and expectancy together covered the path which would hopefully be uncovered and revealed.   Still there are so many questions.

…the whole city was shaken and asked, “Who is this?”

We get it wrong many times – the way we think things or people should be and the way our planned lives are supposed to play out.  The wrongness many times results in unkindness, hurt, and suffering, for ourselves and others.  If we can work through the humiliation, resentment and disappointment that accompanies this realization, we can begin to uncover not only the source of the wrongness but also the debilitating effect it has on everyone.  Indeed, part of the responsibility of owning our mistakes is to allow them to transform us.  And this can only be done within the context of trusting in the divine relatedness that uncovers the truth, while at the same time covers all of us with the Truth.

It takes a lot of patience, courage, and practice to recognize the mind-games that prevent the heart from attuning itself with the divine source.  But, when trust flows from the dynamism of divine relatedness, spontaneous gestures can form – gestures of surrender and intentionality.  Sometimes it is exactly these simple gestures of just moving forward with inchoate trust and intimate surrender that not only allow a glimpse of the vision but indeed help to bring about what is to unfold.  Yes, these gestures are great when they flow with a heartfelt certainty coming from a deeper place.

We are still in the streets with Jesus on a donkey and clothes and branches covering the path…

To know where we are going and what we want or hunger for, most times, seem at odds with one another, at least from the standpoint of simply our minds.  When we can connect with the depths of our being, we descend into the Divine Heart who holds us and carries us through wherever we must go.    We take off our cloaks and descend into the unknown.  We uncover ourselves and ride into the dark on the back of humility.

Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.  (PHIL 2:6-11)

How long will we settle for the allowance of any circumstances in this life to cover who we really are, who our God really is?  How deep must we go to uncover God?  How many cloaks must we shed, how many branches must we trim, to see the nakedness and humility of the Divine Depth, Who is the source that loves us by uncovering us in truth and covering us with truth? What will we find if we plumb the depths and descend into our God? And yet, is it really ours to do on our own?

Bruno Barnhart, a mystic of the Camaldolese Benedictine monks, tells us that it is God in Christ who descends into what we are and opens us into God’s own fullness from within ourselves.[i]  This is the radical (root) nature of what we call Incarnation.  The path of descent is God’s path in Christ and this path uncovers all that must be revealed, and perhaps most importantly uncovers Who God is and who we are!  God identifies in us and uncovers the unique historical path that we as Christ are on.

We all must ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, not knowing who we really are and wondering whether or not we will be recognized (uncovered).  We all yearn to thrown off our cloaks and welcome the Divine within, even though we so many times mistake this hunger for something else.  Yet, it is the very desire to be known, to be uncovered and revealed, that marks the nature of our God and that same desire planted in each of us that uncovers the Divine life always transforming us from deep within.

Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

[i] Bruno Barnhart, The Future of Wisdom (Monkfish: 2018), 189