Today - Palm Sunday - is the beginning of Holy Week - a seven-day immersion into the story of Jesus Christ - a story that’s also our own story. Every life is a story, after all. Every life has central characters, and minor characters. Every life has a theme - values that inform our choices and give them meaning. Every life has a plot - a sequence of events that occur - sometimes random and sometimes intentional - that don’t make sense until we look back at the end of it. And as every scholar of literature will tell you - whether the stories are from the great epics of Greek mythology, or the stories from the Bible, or from the works of Shakespeare, or even from the classic Disney movies - the stories that resonate most with us all follow a certain narrative arc. The stories of our lives follow this arc, as does the story of the church, and even the story of this congregation.
If we were to describe all of these stories like a play, it would be in three acts and it would go like this: Act One - the beginning of the story, would be about the development of the central character. You in your story, me in my story, Jesus in the Gospel story. If you think about the great Disney movies - Snow White or Cinderella, or if you think about other great movies, like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars - the first bit is all about the main characters and how they grow. How they begin to take their place in the world. Snow White leaves her home and encounters the seven dwarves and begins a happy life with them. Cinderella meets her fairy godmother and goes to the ball and meets her prince and begins a new relationship. Frodo leaves his home to set out on a new path of discovery of new lands and new friends and new responsibilities. Our stories, too, include leaving our home and meeting new people and taking on new roles and growing. Jesus left his home, and met his disciples, and grew as he proclaimed forgiveness and healing to more and more people. This church found its place and grew and offered a spiritual home to more and more Lutherans. Every Act One in the human story follows the same path - growing, gaining a sense of self, becoming who we are.
And then there’s Act Two. Act Two, of course, consists of scenes of conflict, tension, obstacles. In Act Two, the central character must now share the stage with others, people who would try to stop the main character from existing. In Act Two, the time of growing and gaining is brought to a halt, and the main character faces losing everything. In Snow White, she eats the apple and falls unconscious - dead to her dear friends, and it seems as if her happy story has come to an end. In Cinderella, midnight strikes and she retreats back to her cinders and it seems as if everything was only a dream that is now as cold as the ashes in her hearth. In Lord of the Rings, the main character’s best friend and guide and mentor, Gandalf, is dead and it seems as if Frodo’s entire mission is ended before it began. In Holy Week, Jesus’ Act Two is his betrayal by Judas, the passivity of his friends as he’s led away, and his death on the cross. Death is the end of our own second act - whether it is our actual physical death, or the death of a relationship, the death of a time that brought us great joy, or even the death of a dream.
And then, of course, there’s the final act - Act Three. The stories that make us feel good, that leave us inspired and hopeful, they all have a third act. In Act Three, Snow White wakes up and looks into the eyes of her prince. Cinderella puts on the glass slipper, and becomes a real princess. Gandalf reappears and evil is defeated. Good Friday becomes Easter Sunday. Death is followed by new life.
The thing is, we never know where in the story we are. Or, even if we have a sense that we’re in Act Two, we often feel that we don’t know whether or not there will be a third act. Have you ever watched a movie with a young child - 2 or 3 or 4 years old? They don’t know about Act Three. They haven’t lived long enough. They know about Act One, but try watching a Disney movie with a young child. It’s all great until Act Two, when Snow White eats the apple, or Cinderella’s clock tolls midnight. And then! Oh my goodness - young children are shocked by Act Two, and devastated because they don’t know about Act Three! They don’t know that nobody ever dies in a Disney movie - they don’t know that the good guy always wins and the bad guys never triumph. (If you really want to mess with the psychological development of a child, turn the TV off halfway through every Disney movie - it would be appalling!) But their experience is the experience we have of living in our own stories. Us, Jesus’ disciples - we are never certain what’s going to happen next or even where we are in the story. What we thought was Act One turns out to have been the middle of Act Two, and sometimes what we thought was the end of Act Two turns out to be still only halfway through Act One. And who knows about Act Three? Which makes life alternately thrilling or terrifying. Today is Palm Sunday - a thrilling day as Jesus entrance into Jerusalem and heralds the coming of the kingdom of God. Today is also called Passion Sunday - a terrifying day as Jesus embarks on the week that will end in his crucifixion. Our stories - our lives - are thrilling or terrifying depending on whether we expect there will be a third act.
There is, of course, a third act to our story this week. In the story of Jesus, Act Three takes place a week from now, when the tomb is emptied and Christ is given new life. Act Three is the sun rising again after the darkness and night of Act Two. But this Act Three is not restricted just to Jesus. God has written our stories so that we, too, will experience the same Act Three. Unlike young children who don’t know how the movie will end, we do. God sent Jesus to give us a peek at the ending of our own story, so that we might be thrilled, and not terrified. Easter Sunday is the movie spoiler that tell us how things will end for us.
And since we know what our Act Three will be, it means that we live out Acts One and Two differently. It means that we live through Act One with humility and gratitude, knowing that whatever gains we have made and growth we have achieved, none of it will last forever. Act One is not the end of the story. On the flip side, we live through Act Two with strength and endurance. All of the losses and death we experience, none of this will last forever either. Act Two is also not the end of the story. We can do all of this because Act Three is the end, and it is an ending that God writes, which means it is an ending that ends in God. Our story is Jesus’ story. Our story is the story of Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and finally Easter, of celebration and achievement, of loss and death, and of new life. So, whether you in your own story are currently in Act One or Act Two or you can’t even tell, I invite you this week to enter into the story of Jesus, and to receive the comfort of knowing that God has already written *your* Act Three, and it ends, like Jesus’ story, in Easter. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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