I’d like to take a closer look at the Palm Sunday story. I’d like to look at the way it’s typically told, at something that happened that changed the way I read it, and then I’d like to walk through the story to ask ourselves: What does this mean for us?

This fear of Judgment produced no shortage of shame and guilt in me, and I know I wasn’t the only one. The irony is, even though I wanted to let it go entirely, the more seriously I take spirituality, the more I realize you can’t really shake it. Not entirely, anyway. In fact, the language of Judgment—as problematic and weighted as it may be—may actually be poetically pointing us towards a deeper, practical truth.