Today is Palm Sunday. Now they call it "Passion Sunday." Apparently, there are a lot of folks who were going to church on Palm Sunday, but weren't hitting the special services the rest of the week, when you hear about the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, let alone the Easter Vigil, which seems to be more of an Episcopalian or Catholic thing - a good Lutheran will sit through fifty-five minutes of worship, but ask him to make it three hours, and he'll start thinking of a lot of chores that he could be doing instead.

Anyway, someone must have decided that too many people weren't hearing the whole story. When you go right from Palm Sunday to Easter, all you get is glory. You miss the cross part. And, while Lutherans don't like to dwell too much on the cross, they also know that you don't get to the resurrection without going through the cross. That's true in the story of Jesus, and it's true in life as well. The two go together. Separate them, and you're no longer living in the real world, which is another way of defining the word, "heresy."

So what they've done, is to take the whole story, and put in on Palm Sunday, which is kind of a shame. Instead of being a day of celebration, a kind of foretaste of the glory to come, we start with the "Hallelujahs" out in the parking lot, and by the time we get inside, we're already heading for the cross, which happens about five minutes into the reading of the Gospel for the day, which is several chapters long.

This year, the congregation has another cross to bear: they decided to "go green" this year, with palms from a group that pays people in South America to "harvest green." They use a palm that is more ecologically renewable than the old ones, and only select good leaves to cut, so the plants aren't killed, and the forests aren't depleted. It was the right thing to do, even if it cost a bit more. But you can't make crosses out of these palms. The leaves just aren't long enough, although they look more like palms than the old ones did.

Like everything in the church, some of the folks liked the new palms, which were nice and green, and looked like they came from the florist. Others - those who like to make crosses from their palms - didn't like them, so Pastor Shulz got an earful from a couple of them after church. Edna Sheerer, who leads the Adult Sunday School Class, where it sees it was the topic of a great deal of discussion, suggested that maybe next year they could do some of both, to satisfy both groups. "Wouldn't that defeat the purpose?" Pastor Shulz asked her. But to Edna, the purpose had little to do with saving rain forests or paying living wages to those who harvested them - her purpose was to get her class back on track, and for everyone to get along.

This week, Pastor Shulz read that many of those who harvested the palms had their own ideas about what they would be used for. Apparently, many think that they are used to color money green. And this from good Catholics!

Well, I guess it all goes to show that Palm Sunday, or Passion Sunday if you like, is as much a day of confusion and misunderstanding as it was back then, when Jesus rode into town on a donkey. Everyone still seems to have their own ideas on that. Some think he was there in Jerusalem to institute a new world order. Others thought he had come to defend the way things used to be done, and kick out the newcomers - the Romans. Everyone thought it had to do with money, religion and politics.

While controversy swirled around him, Jesus went about his business, as he always had: preaching, teaching, healing. Doing what God had sent him to do. Which is what Pastor Shulz is doing as well. Hopefully, when the "palm debate" is over, he won't find himself crucified.

And that's what's going on the Palm Sunday over at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, a little congregation not far from here, where George Shulz is pastor - a little congregation that isn't much in the eyes of the world, and whose own sight is a little confused this week, but still is precious in the eyes of God.