As Jesus rode along, the people were spreading their cloaks on the road; and now as he was approaching the slope of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to praise God aloud with joy for all the mighty deeds they had seen. They proclaimed: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.” (Lk. 19)

The most important “spiritual direction” in life is not north, south, east, or west. It is not up or down, forward, backward, left, or right. It is toward the center. With the exception of Jesus’ understanding of and relationship to the anawim, those persons who have been pushed out to the periphery of life and society, his own life direction and his call seem most always to move toward the center, the core, the marrow, the essential. When it came to the poor, rejected, neglected, exploited, oppressed, and forgotten ones in society, Jesus indicted the political and religious power brokers of his time who marginalized anyone who did not fit into the dominant culture and essentially restructured a beatitudinal ethic in which the anawim were brought to the centermost place of Divine concern which invariably involves justice-seeking and compassionate action.

To center ourselves in Jesus is to go into the dark alleys, into the “questionable” neighborhoods, toward the bruised and brokenhearted, toward the self-loathing, the poor, and the persecuted, or out beyond the highways and byways, out to the margins where the most vulnerable feel safe “enough” to gather. Wherever Jesus goes, including toward the cross, the center goes with him. Do we?

Even when Jesus goes to the desert to pray, it is for the purpose of moving more deeply into the center of God’s heart where he listens for guidance, sustenance, courage, and solace. Even when he went “out” it was to go “in” or to retrieve and bring in those who had been forced out. According to the dominant culture of his time, Jesus was considered directionally challenged and it never ceased to get him into trouble. If Jesus had a map for his life, no doubt even a friend would have grabbed it away from him and said, “Here, give me that. You’re no good with directions.” Jesus’ words and actions continually subvert the message and means of the political and religious elite by suggesting that those who think they have an “in” with God are in actuality on the “outs” and those who have been made to feel they are outcasts are in reality reeled in to the heart-center and embrace of God .

In the gospel reading for the Procession with Palms (Lk. 19:28-40), we see Jesus riding into Jerusalem, the religious center of Jewish life. On the surface it looks a bit like a dusty parade in which Jesus is the Grand Marshall. With the advantage of time and history, we know better. We know Jesus is riding toward the center of a maelstrom in which his crowning moment will appear as anything but triumphant. We know Jesus is riding toward the center of human cruelty and his “magnificent defeat.” We know Jesus is riding toward the crux of everything for which he stands and hopes. We know Jesus is riding toward the crux that will materialize into a wooden instrument of torture that will symbolize forever that this man’s sense of direction was at cross-purposes with the orientation of the powers and principalities of his day. If we’re honest, we will see that it is at cross-purposes with the dominant powers of any age.

Such courage in the face of impending danger is nearly incomprehensible. It is inspiring. It is also quite sobering since it robs those of us who claim his name of any notion that a “centered” life is one of analgesic tranquility, a serene life in the suburbs of prayer devoid of conflict or personal trials or suffering for being similarly misdirected. Instead Jesus’ procession indicates that to move toward the center (whether the center of humility, beauty, joy, gladness, sadness, grief, injustice, mercy, compassion, the suffering of others, or the earth), is to go where the real action is, toward the deepest truths, the most essential questions, and the heart of the matter even when what matters will invite us to lay down more than our cloaks in the road.

This week Christians in the West enter into the centerpiece of the liturgical calendar. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday are our high holy days. Ironically, even this Story, which is not merely God’s Story but our story as well, and not only our story, but the tragic crucible of creation too, has become for many passé, rote, and innocuous. G. K. Chesterton once commented that our perennial spiritual and psychological task is to learn to look at things familiar until they become unfamiliar again. Perhaps this week, we can make of our mind a tabula rasa, a clean slate, and follow Jesus into Jerusalem as if for the first time, as if we were a disciple or friend of his not knowing the course of the next three days.

I invite us to enter into this week with new eyes and new ears looking and listening for the ways that Jesus’ geometry of grace, ethic of compassionate solidarity, and sense of misdirection is contrary to the path favored by contemporary purveyors of power, greed, and superficiality. In a culture that is more comfortable with the shallow surface than the deep center, centering oneself is both a disorienting and reorienting experience. We must not forget that the Prince of Peace was arrested, tortured, humiliated, and killed for disturbing the peace that was masquerading as true peace.

Dan