Our God doesn’t push us into categories or classes. Hopefully and prayerfully one of the lessons of this crisis we’re all traveling through together is to let man-made preferential categories and classes fall away.

A rockstar or athlete is no more valuable than someone in food service or on a cleaning or construction crew. A pastor is not more special than the members of his or her congregation. Those who work in the home are not less valuable than those who go into the office everyday.

Maker God, may we come out of this strange season better understanding the value of each and every human life You have crafted.

May this season of wearing masks unmask the lies that have been imbedded into our culture and even our churches.

May hierarchies and patriarchies crumble as we all are reminded of the preciousness and fragility of our humanness and of our complete dependency on our Maker and each other.

Jesus didn’t enter Jerusalem with chariots and entourages. Rather, he was carried in by humility on a young donkey. No, we can’t gather today with palm branches waved while we declare our praise. But on the humility of our enforced separation, grief of lives lost and and a world so suddenly changed, and all facades that we are in control now shattered – perhaps Jesus’ intersection with our lives on this strange Palm Sunday will be an even more glorious ride into our lives.