We come now, with Palm Sunday, to the beginning of Holy Week and in the sonnets that follow I have explored the truth that what was happening ‘out there’ and ‘back then’ as Christ entered Jerusalem is also happening  ‘in here’ and ‘right now’. There is a Jerusalem of the heart. Our inner life also has its temple and palaces, its places of corruption, its gardens of rest, its seat of judgement.

If you would like to join in a discussion of these and my other poems for Holy Week poems you can do so by joining the Literary Life Facebook Page

I am grateful to Linda Richardson who has given me permission to share with you her series of remarkable paintings, ‘The Faces of Holy Week’. These will be on display, together with my poems, in the resurrection chapel in St. Mary’s Linton throughout Holy Week, do look in and see them if you are in the area. You can also look at these paintings and others on Linda’s Webpage.

Linda writes about this picture:

Very often I have thought that I knew what Jesus was about, what he was doing and why he was doing it. Then later I realise it was more than that, something deeper, and my understanding is stretched, and later is stretched again. So it is with Palm Sunday. Jesus is always with me on on my journey but he is always behind me and he is always beyond me.

In this painting Jesus face is elusive, and the features are gestural brush strokes, but energetic and visceral. It is a mixed media painting and within the face is the palm branch that I received at the Palm Sunday service last year. In the painting there is a ceremony from the past, a reminder of the cross that is to come, but if we don’t give our attention, we might miss the present day revelation of Palm Sunday. What will Jesus say to us today? We might imagine there is nothing new to learn, but as our “easy feelings” go through the familiarity of a Palm Sunday service are we still listening?

Palm SundayNow to the gate of my Jerusalem,

The seething holy city of my heart,

The saviour comes. But will I welcome him?

Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;

They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,

And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find

The challenge, the reversal he is bringing

Changes their tune. I know what lies behind

The surface flourish that so quickly fades;

Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,

The hardness of the heart, its barricades,

And at the core, the dreadful emptiness

Of a perverted temple. Jesus  come

Break my resistance and make me your home.