Palm/Passion Sunday

Year 4: March 25, 2018

Preaching Text: John 12:12-27; 19:16b-22

The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

(Written for ages 10+)

Comment:

In this text, Bishop Craig A. Satterlee explores the way so many of us place our expectations upon Jesus. When we release our expectations, accepting the truth that Jesus is not our kind of king, but God’s kind of king, Satterlee suggests, “we are free to enter with joy upon those mighty acts by which God has given us abundant, eternal life.” The Girl Who Drank the Moon is also a story filled false expectations and misunderstandings that eventually fall away to a truth that is in its very essence, love. The monster Bog is like the Word who was with God in the beginning. He shares this revelation in a poem as Barnhill’s story is coming to an end:

“The heart is built of starlight

And time.

A pinprick of longing lost in the dark.

An unbroken chord linking the Infinite to the Infinite.

My heart wishes upon your heart and the wish is granted.

Meanwhile the world spins.

Meanwhile the universe expands.

Meanwhile the mystery of love reveals itself,

again and again, in the mystery of you.

I have gone.

I will return” (Barnhill, chapter 47)

Through this text and story we are invited to set aside our expectations so that we may open our eyes to the mystery of love revealing itself in the Gospel and in the world around us.

Thanks to regular contributor Noell Rathbun for writing the Year 4 Narrative Lectionary Links.

Lectionary Links (NL): March 25, 2018 by Storypath is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.