My favorite musical artist of all time is probably “Weird Al” Yankovic. I started listening to Weird Al somewhere around 1985, when I was about 9 years old. The first album I ever owned was his “Dare to Be Stupid” album on cassette tape. I think I still have that tape somewhere. From the first listen, I was hooked. His song parodies show his unique sense of humor and the amazing vocal ability he possesses, but many of my favorite songs of his are his original compositions, songs like One More Minute, My Baby’s in Love with Eddie Vedder, Melanie, and Dare to Be Stupid.

The first time I saw Weird Al in concert was on my 16th birthday, nearly 34 years ago. (I’ll let you all do that math on that. Weird Al came to the Adler Theatre in Davenport, Iowa, ON my birthday. I just HAD to go, so my parents got us tickets. It was the greatest concert I had ever been to. Fast forward 33 years to last August, when April and I decided kind of at the last minute to get tickets to Weird Al’s concert in Casper, Wyoming. I went into the concert both excited and a bit nervous. I was excited because I still love Weird Al’s music and I knew the rest of my family shared that love. But I was nervous because I wasn’t sure if it could live up to the memory of that concert from 33 years earlier. From the moment the opening act ended, the anticipation began building. Then sound burst forth…”It might seem crazy wearing stripes with plaid.” And suddenly, the nervousness was gone and the excitement bubbled over.

Weird Al did not disappoint, and I left that show with a huge smile on my face. And for the majority of the 2 hour and 45 minute car ride home, we talked about the concert and continued to sing Weird Al songs as they played through the car radio from a Spotify playlist. Even for several days afterward, I could barely stop replaying parts of the concert in my head and telling everyone I talked to about how it went and all the things I loved about it. But eventually, the feeling faded and life returned to normal. The energy of the experience eventually came to a crashing halt. That’s the way those experiences go though, isn’t it? Excitement builds and builds and builds until it explodes and fills everything to overflowing and then eventually it all dissipates and you experience a bit of an emptiness, a let down, a hangover.

One of my favorite original songs by Weird Al speaks to this reality in a rather humorous way. In his song “You Don’t Love Me Anymore,” Al talks about how things are changing in his relationship with the woman he’s dating. That excitement and passion they had at first has started to die down, and Al is noticing some signs of this change. He sings:

I knew that we were having problems when

You put those piranhas in my bathtub again

You’re still the light of my life

Oh darling, I’m beggin’, won’t you put down that knife?

You know, I even think it’s kinda cute the way

You poison my coffee just a little each day

I still remember the way that you laughed

When you pushed me down the elevator shaft

Oh, you know this really isn’t like you at all

You never acted this way before

Honey, something tells me you don’t love me any more, oh no no

Got a funny feeling you don’t love me anymore

With every experience of joy and triumph and excitement, some sort of return to normal or even a drop below normal. Some might call this an emotional hangover.

Today is the day we’ve come to know as Palm Sunday. On this day we remember Jesus entering into Jerusalem on a donkey while people lined the road waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” The people welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem as the coming Messiah. They were convinced that Jesus was the prophesied king, coming to bring prosperity back to the land of Israel. They were excited. Jesus entered the city with a celebration…a parade.

But the party did not last long. Very quickly, the rejoicing turned toward fear and worry and anger. Jesus didn’t have an army. He spoke of the Son of Man being killed, not the Son of Man destroying Rome and restoring Israel to its former glory. The one who they’d cried to for saving was not there to save them…not in the way they thought he would anyway. That excitement as Jesus entered the city quickly died down and the people’s anger began to bubble up. And when these feelings of anger toward Jesus made it to the ears of the scribes and Pharisees, that anger turned deadly. That anger led to the arrest, flogging, and eventual crucifixion of the one they thought would save them. That excitement and joy quickly turned to frustration and death.

The reality of the situation was that the path Jesus was on did not look anything like what the Jews of that day expected. He was not the victorious king riding into Jerusalem to take his seat on the throne. Jesus came to Jerusalem to die. Jesus came to sacrifice himself. Jesus came with no intention of fighting the anger of the people, but willingly offering love in return. Palm Sunday feels a little out of place with the rest of Holy Week. It feels like one of those situations where the people hyped up Jesus so much only to watch the wheels come off when Jesus is arrested and crucified. The joy of Palm Sunday feels like a mistake in some ways. We got our hopes up and it didn’t go how we expected.

I’m reminded of a scene at the very beginning of the movie “Big Daddy” where Adam Sandler’s character Sonny walks into the apartment he shares with his best friend and a big group of people jump out and yell surprise, only to be disappointed because Sonny was not who the surprise party was for. Then, as they talk about the mistake, the person who the party is actually for walks in and no one notices him until he speaks. And at that point yelling surprise would have been awkward and very anticlimactic. The character’s girlfriend, who’d coordinated that surprise, is fuming at this point. She looks at Sonny and shouts, “We wasted the good surprise on you.” Did the people feel like they wasted the good parade, the good celebration, on Jesus, this rabbi who went to death without a fight? Had they made a mistake?

Perhaps Palm Sunday was part of the reason Jesus went to the cross though. I am certain that this celebration did not go unnoticed by those in power, particularly the scribes and Pharisees and chief priests. They would have viewed the celebration of Jesus as he entered Jerusalem as an affront on God. This carpenter’s son could not be the Messiah. This rabbi who taught things that went against their own teachings. They would have seen Palm Sunday as an act of unrighteousness. And that sentiment likely led them to seek even more strongly to arrest Jesus. It was likely the reason they claimed that he was calling himself the King of the Jews.

The joy of Palm Sunday, for’ Jesus disciples, may have felt almost like an affront to the grief of Good Friday. Looking back at it, they may have felt that the parade and the shouts of Hosanna were pointless because Jesus didn’t conquer Rome, Jesus endured ridicule, scorn, and crucifixion instead. And the grief and anger and sadness that the disciples felt would have made the joy of Palm Sunday lose a bit of its luster. But a truth in life that comes from the movie Shadowlands about author C.S. Lewis and his wife’s battle with cancer. After receiving the cancer diagnosis, Lewis and his wife Joy do as many fun things as they can find time for. After Joy’s death, Lewis talks about the grief he’s experienced. And he mentions those times of great joy and he shares a revelation that he’d uncovered. He says about those joyful moments, “The joy then is part of the pain now. That’s the deal.”

The joy of Palm Sunday was not a mistake, it was not something to regret. The joy of Palm Sunday was a part of the grief of Good Friday. It still is. I believe that part of why we celebrate both Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday on the same day is that the joys and sorrows of life are intimately connected. We can’t truly understand the depths of suffering if we’ve never experienced joy, and we can’t truly understand joy without having experienced it when the joy seems out of reach. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday feel like a hangover after the high of Palm Sunday, and that might make us want to skip the joy of the parade in order to prepare for the sorrow. But the joy then is part of the pain now. That’s the deal. May we not diminish our experiences of joy when we are in the midst of suffering. For it is truly in those moments that we need to cling to those joys more than ever. The joy then is part of the pain now. And the pain now will be part of the joy of Easter. We cannot have one without the other, so perhaps we shouldn’t try so hard to fight it and simply lift it all up to God. May God remind us of the joys of the past to help us get through the struggles of today and may the struggles of today simply serve to make the joy of Easter even more powerful and life-changing. Amen!