Palm Sunday.  The one day in Jesus’ life when he gets the credit he is due!  Crowds cheering, throwing down their coats to line Jesus’ path.  Praising God with “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”  Looking to Jesus as their savior!  Palm Sunday is a day for celebrating!

But we know that Jesus doesn’t place a lot of stock in the praise of the people on Palm Sunday.  He would be just as happy if the stones cried out with praise for him.  Jesus’ goal was never to please the masses.  His goal is to fulfill his mission.  He is the Anointed One of God—not sent to save the Israelites from the Romans, but to save the whole world from sin.  Jesus is the Anointed One of God, sent to save us from ourselves.

And that is what we will celebrate with full force next Sunday.  On Easter, “Hosanna” is replaced with “Hallelujah”.  Hosanna means “Save us”.  But Hallelujah is a mash up of the Hebrew word for Praise, and Jehovah, a Hebrew name for God.  Praise God!  On Easter Sunday we no longer have to shout Hosanna, save us, because we know God already has.  Our praise shifts from Save us to Praise God, from Hosanna to Hallelujah.  Most Christians, even if they are not regular church goers, try to make Easter the one day of their lives when Jesus gets the credit he is due.

But in between the Hosanna and the Hallelujah, a lot happens.  And it’s something of an emotional roller coaster.  Mad, sad, glad, hurt, scared—like five fingers on a hand, we’ve got five basic emotions, and all of them get experienced in holy week.  We see glad on Palm Sunday.  We see mad at the temple, when Jesus threw out the people who were turning a place of worship into a place of commerce.  We don’t need to say much about the sad—we’re already feeling it, thanks to the song Nick has been playing and singing for us.  Hurt—well, we know it must have hurt Jesus to have one of his inner circle betray him, it will hurt Jesus that his disciples can’t stay awake in the garden to support him, and from there it’s just more and more hurt.  And scared?  It doesn’t take much imagination to picture Jesus as scared, his disciples as scared, his mother scared, scared practically to death.

Mad, sad, glad, hurt, scared—the big five of feelings, all in one week.  But there’s another emotion that, when I noticed it in our scripture lessons, took me by surprise.  Jesus took the cup and, Luke tells us, after giving thanks, gave it to his disciples.  Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it.  We say these words every time we celebrate holy communion.  But this week I got a little jolt when I realized, Jesus originally said them on what was perhaps the saddest day of his life.  Even in the face of great pain, Jesus made it a point to give thanks.

Which makes me wonder, what exactly was Jesus thankful for?  Probably for a host of things, for friendship around the table, for food to sustain our bodies, for the tradition of the Passover meal and the liberation it represented, for God’s grace and provision.  I’m sure that was all part of it.  But in that particular moment, I wonder if Jesus was feeling especially thankful for life itself.   It’s one thing to feel gratitude on our hosanna days.  It’s easy to feel gratitude on our hallelujah days.  But Luke records that Jesus expressed gratitude even on the worst days.  Gratitude for life.

That’s not a bad slogan, is it?  Gratitude for life.  As we reflect more on what Jesus might have had in mind, though, maybe Jesus was also grateful for the opportunity to give away his life.  I know, something else for the emotional roller coaster!  Mad, sad, glad, hurt, scared, grateful—and we can also add, humbled.  Privileged.  Blessed.  We know Jesus was suffering at the thought of having to leave this world.  But there must have been such a satisfaction, a special joy, from being able to serve humanity in such a profound way.

Life itself is a reason to be thankful.  And that being able to use our life in service to others is a reason to be thankful.  When we have the privilege of serving, it feels good!  Even if there is sacrifice.

That is so important, I will say it again:  when we have the privilege of serving, that is a special reason to give thanks.  Serving our Lord is a joy.  I know you know this to be true, because you’ve told me so yourselves.  After a day of hammering nails and building walls for Help Build Hope, a blister on your thumb never felt so good.  Getting out of bed so you have time for devotions and prayer before work? Being tired never felt so good.  Sticking up for someone who is being put down?  Being vulnerable never felt so good.  It is a privilege and a joy to be able to give our lives away in service to God.

There’s a lot to feel in this holy week.  It’s all so overwhelming, we might be tempted to tune it all out, to skip from the joy of Palm Sunday to the joy of Easter without giving any thought of the pain in between.  We might be tempted to skip over Jesus taking the role of a servant and washing his disciples’ feet, Jesus ushering in his kingdom by offering his whole life, Jesus suffering a slow and painful death.  To make sure we don’t do that, the wisdom of the church has changed today from being a celebration of Palm Sunday only, into what they call Palm/Passion Sunday, so we can be reminded of all of it.  The mad, sad, hurt and scared in addition to the glad.

But I hope today we will also be reminded of gratitude.  Gratitude for life.  And humility.  The joy and privilege of being able to give our lives away in service to others. Meister Eckhart, a Catholic mystic who lived in the 12 and 13 hundreds wrote, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you’, it will be enough.”   In between hosannas and hallelujahs, may we always give thanks.  Let’s make every day a day when God gets the credit God is due.  Amen.