The town I grew up in had a lot of people with Dutch ancestry and the pastor at my church, Pastor Herm, was Dutch himself, so he enjoyed telling jokes that poked fun at the Dutch. There was one joke in particular that he loved to tell. You see, the Dutch were considered to be very stingy with money, so the joke went like this. Did you hear that the Dutch designed a new car? Yep. It stops on a dime…and picks it up. Now, there’s another common saying about dimes. We talk not only about stopping on a dime, but also about turning on a dime. So I guess that begs the question, “Why dimes?” Why don’t we stop or turn on a penny? Or a nickel? Or a quarter for that matter? Why did we choose a dime?

Perhaps the answer is obvious to most of you. There is most certainly some logic to it. It has nothing to do with the value of the coin or the material with which it was made or its design. It has everything to do with its relative size to the other coins. The dime is the smallest of the coins in the United States. A dime measures 17.91mm in diameter, compared to 19.05mm for a penny, 21.21mm for a nickel, and a whopping 24.59mm for a quarter. It is the 1.14mm between the dime and the penny that makes dimes the example of smallness. For those of us who think better in inches, that’s about 3/64 of an inch difference. It’s minimal, yet it makes all the difference.

Our scriptures for this morning have completely different tones. In Luke 19, we see Jesus coming into Jerusalem in triumphant fashion, riding on a donkey with crowds waving palm branches with shouts of Hosanna! It’s a joyful celebration. People are excited about Jesus and who they believe he is. Hosanna means God save us. The people believed that Jesus would do just that. He was entering into Jerusalem as a conquering hero. The people were excited. It was like a party atmosphere on the road. Like a victory celebration. Here was Jesus, this rabbi who could heal people and cast out demons and bring people back from the dead. Surely, he had to be the Messiah. Surely, this parade was the beginning of the triumphant restoration of Israel. Excitement was all around. Shouts of joy filled the air.

Once Jesus gets into town and the crowds disperse, he and his disciples gather themselves in an upper room somewhere and prepare to eat the Passover meal together. The joy continues into the feast. Jesus does an amazing thing and washes their feet before they sit down to eat. Then the meal is served. Before they can eat though, Jesus speaks. He tells them that the bread before them is his body which is to be given for them. And the wine they are about to drink is his blood, a symbol of the covenant between God and God’s people.

But something unusual happens during the meal. Jesus says to his disciples, “The one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table.” A day that had been full of joy and celebration just turned on a dime toward something very different. The excitement the disciples had just been sharing turned to confusion and panic. Who was it that was going to betray Jesus? Why would any of them do that? They looked around the room trying to figure out which one of them it was.

Have you ever been somewhere that was fun and exciting, but then someone said something or something happened and the whole thing came crashing down? I can think of a couple of examples of this on a minor scale. When I was in the summer between 8th grade and freshman year, the little league season was in full swing (no pun intended) and I was excited. I loved baseball. One day, I convinced my dad to go out in the backyard with me and hit me some flyballs so I could practice my fielding. It was going pretty well until my dad hit a line drive my way that was sinking toward the ground pretty quickly. I raced forward to try to get to it. Just as I reached it, it hit the ground right where my foot was coming down. The ball wedged under my foot and the rest of my body went plummeting onto the grass. As I fell, I remember turning my body so I would fall on my shoulder because I was afraid I might break a wrist. So, instead, I broke my collarbone. My fun time of catching baseballs was done unexpectedly, as was the rest of my little league season.

The other example that comes to mind was from shortly after April and I got married. We lived in a small little apartment in Wheaton, Illinois. And one night I was making ham and fried potatoes for dinner, one of my favorite meals. The ham was nearly done in the oven, so I put oil in a frying pan, heated it up and added the cut up potatoes. Our stovetop was not very level, so partway into the cooking, I noticed that the oil had all shifted to one end of the pan. I grabbed the handle and tilted it down to shift some oil to the other side of the pan. Unfortunately, I tilted the pan a bit too far and the scalding hot oil spilled out of the pan all over my hand. Boy, did that hurt. I quickly restored the pan to its position on the stove and stuck my melting hand under running water. At this point, April had come rushing to the kitchen to help. She put ice in a bucket and I stuck my hand into the bucket with it. I then proceeded to finish cooking the potatoes and ham with one hand. When it was done, I sat down and ate the food, my hand still in the bucket of ice. When I’d finished eating, I got into my truck and drove to the emergency room with my hand still in the bucket of ice. Making a delicious meal turned into 2nd degree burns and two weeks of trying to type on a computer with my hand bandaged so much it looked like I was wearing a boxing glove.

Life can turn on a dime from something great and exciting to something painful and scary, unexpected and unwanted. Jesus’ disciples went from the joy of Palm Sunday to the pain of the cross almost overnight. The people went from shouting Hosanna to shouting Crucify Him in just a few days’ time. We watch them waving palms and cheering Jesus on in Luke chapter 19. And then we watch as they choose for a violent criminal to be released while sending Jesus to the cross. The shift is palpable. We feel Jesus’ joy turn quickly to mourning.

Over the past few months, it has felt like life has been turning on a dime nearly daily. With constant shifts in the economy, news of job cuts all over, funds being cut to programs that help us live and do our work, and people being detained or sent away for no legitimate reason, it feels like there is very little we can count on.

Every year on Palm Sunday, we begin our worship with the waving of palms as we sing about Jesus’ joyful entry into Jerusalem, but by the end of the service, the shift from the donkey to the cross begins. By the time we make it to Good Friday, we’ve fully forgotten the joyful shouts of  Hosanna and have turned instead to the angry shouts of Crucify Him. Our belief that Jesus would save us has turned into frustration that he won’t even save himself.

So what do we do when this happens? When life turns on a dime and goes from shouts of joy to cries of despair? It would be very easy for us to let that despair overwhelm us, and probably even justified. But I think Jesus provided us with another way. Jesus’ way through these moments in life is to wait. Yes, you heard that right. Jesus’ way through these moments where life has taken a turn for the worse is waiting. Now, that may feel like little or no comfort and you might think I’ve lost my mind for even suggesting that as a solution. To be honest, I don’t like it either. I don’t want to wait in the muck and the mire. I want it to be over and joy to return. I don’t want to dwell in the pain and suffering of the cross. I just want to enjoy the parade and then jump straight into Easter.

But healing doesn’t work like that. We can’t just skip over the pain and expect to find healing. As tough and crummy as it is, in order to heal, we have to wait through the pain. To get to the resurrection, we first have to walk with Jesus through his death. And most of us, myself included, aren’t very good at that. When we have pain, we take medicine to numb it. We don’t want to feel it. We just want it to go away. But as they say, if it hurts it’s healing. Pain is necessary for healing to happen. It’s not fun, but it’s needed.

So, I want to encourage you this week to not just skip over the pain of Jesus’ last week, of the betrayal and the beating and the cross. Don’t just jump right to Easter. The joyful truth of Easter is that there is life beyond the pain. So, take all of the steps of the journey with Jesus to the cross and the tomb. And then wait in the silence of Holy Saturday for the coming of the sun and the resurrection from death into life. A life of faith is not just parades and empty tombs. Faith in Christ is a faith that walks through pain, alone and with others. As C.S. Lewis says in the movie Shadowlands when he has lost his wife Joy to cancer, “The pain now will be part of the joy then.” Amen.