All week long, people have been asking: what shall we do now? The most obvious technical fix is that we must regulate guns. We must! But gun regulation will never be enough, on its own. Gun regulation is the beginning, but not the end, this story. Because God calls us to more: to become friends to the friendless and hope to the hopeless. God calls us to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.

Many of us walk through our lives saddled by a sense of scarcity, feeling as if we just won’t ever have quite enough: not quite enough for the retirement we want, not quite enough for the house or car we want, not quite enough to take the vacations we want, not quite enough to give our kids the educations we want them to have. It can surely sometimes feel as if we’re teetering on the edge of not-enough-ness,

even while living in relative comfort, prosperity, and privilege. So we keep as much as we can of what we have for ourselves, just in case,

for a rainy day, because it’s the smart thing to do.

It is not a crime to pray for the gentle Spirit of God—the comforter—to pray for predictability, for the removal of risk and the illusion of control so we can sleep at night. But on Pentecost we remember that God’s Spirit can also set us on fire, transform our lives, turn the world upside down. It is far from predictable. It is risky. It is out of our control.

We tend think of unity as over-and-above the call of duty. Something that would be nice to work on when we’ve solved all of our other pressing problems. But what if division IS the problem? What if segregation IS the problem? What if our chronic “Othering” IS the problem? And what if there is also a way forward, a way out of these deeply ingrained patterns of separation?

All of us Christians are sort of like the oldest children, left in charge to take care of things until Christ comes back. And everywhere we go we see the faces of those whom he loves and has asked us to take care of for him in the meantime. Some of us keep waiting for his return. Some have really become rather tired of waiting and have given up. Some started to think it was all just a story, a pretty good one at first, but the ending left a little to be desired, so they went looking for a different story, something that seemed a little more solid, a little more sure. And those of us who wait, can’t help but wonder, where is he? He said he would be back, and not only at the end of time. He promised.

We make a big mistake when we assume the spiritual journey is supposed to be a safe one. Of course, God doesn’t want us to put ourselves in harm’s way, or to invite or condone mistreatment from others. But God IS inviting us to explore whether being in the presence of our enemies,

which is fairly unavoidable in this human life, is really as dangerous as many of us presume.

I continue to be challenged by the fact that belief is the primary category employed by many Christians to delineate their engagement with God. You’re either a believer or an unbeliever, with little room for anything in between. Belief is so important among Christians, in fact, that people generally seem terrified for my immortal soul, when I tell them that I don’t think faith or spirituality really have all that much to do with belief.

Self-emptying is just so very embarrassing, so very humiliating, when it comes right down to it. Who really wants to join a movement if it isn’t going to be successful or powerful or admirable? And indeed, Jesus is making it quite clear in this moment that success and power and admiration aren’t the name of his game.

This is Palm Sunday. A day that questions everything. A day that asks us if we are willing to live for something bigger,even if it’s also scarier. A day that asks us what exactly we are willing to lay down. A day that asks us whether we’re willing to walk with Jesus to Calvary, to see a new world being born.

If God was a party animal, then I would no longer be sure how to tell right from wrong, up from down, saint from sinner. Even scarier: maybe God wasn’t even all that interested in good and bad. Maybe God doesn’t need categories as badly as me.