I will never forget that Saturday morning. I can still see, in my mind's eye, the spring sunshine rushing through all the windows on the east side of the house. And I can hear, in my mind's ear, the enthusiastic jabbering of that college freshman who had come by the house to get me to listen to a new record album. That was over 35 years ago, but I can still remember it as if it were yesterday morning.

Mike was at East Carolina University. He had been introduced to opera -- rock opera. Now he was introducing it to me. And we sat for over two hours listening to Jesus Christ, Superstar.

Like any other new music, I had to listen to it a number of times before it really began to say something to me. I had to get beyond my feeling that it was a bit sacrilegious and took some liberties with biblical characters that I questioned. But I think all who have listened to or seen the production of Superstar will have to concede that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice have a very effective way of making the passion narrative live.

I've read the scripture in which Luke reports that Herod, in making fun of Jesus, wanted him to perform some miracle. But Herod's song in Superstar dances through my mind every time I think of that scene:

So you are the Christ,
you're the great Jesus Christ?
Prove to me that you're divine, change my water into wine.
Prove to me that you're no fool, walk across my swimming pool.

Even though I have difficulty accepting all the implications of Mary Magdalene's song, "I don't know how to love him," her inability to express her feeling about Jesus and what he did for her life is so real. She sings, to her own amazement, something I have often sung: "I've been changed; yes, really changed."

Superstar is about the last week of Jesus' earthly life, and that week begins with Palm Sunday. The crowd along the roadway, you recall from the scriptural account, took off their coats and put them down for the donkey to walk on. They cut palm branches and waved them in the air as Jesus rode into Jerusalem. In the Matthew account, they shouted out: "Hosanna, hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." In Superstar they sing:

Christ, you know I love you, did you see, I waved?
I believe in you and God, so tell me that I'm saved.
Christ, you know I love you, did you see, I waved?

Because of that Palm Sunday parade, the whole city of Jerusalem was thrown into an uproar. "Who is this?" the citizens asked that enthusiastic crowd holding tree branches. "It's the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee," they answered. And they might have added: "And even though we don't understand all that he means, we're waving at him. We're letting him know that we love him. Our coats are on the ground and our branches are in the air. Christ, you know I love you. Did you see, I waved?"

That Palm Sunday crowd always gives my faith a lift, for they keep telling me: "You may not understand all about God, or about God's coming in Jesus, or about the cross, or about the resurrection. But at least wave when you see God pass by!"

I have to confess that I don't know how God could be in a baby. I don't know how a cross frees us from sin. I don't know how a resurrection can solve the mystery of death. But I'm not going to let my lack of knowledge keep me from life and love and immortality. But, Christ, you know I love you. Don't you see, I'm waving?

In the Old Testament there is the story about a man named Job. We've spent a lot of time with Job during Lent. We've been able to identify with him. We've sat on an ash heap with him. We have listened to him scream out in agony at what life brought him: loss of every tangible possession, death of his children, disease, ridicule from his wife. We have known something of the anger he felt at the explanations of his friends, and even at God, whom his friends declared caused all his agony. We have felt, as Job did, that the chaotic state of the world is part of God's folly.

After listening to the "sunshine theology" of those friends, who had all the answers, Job cried out to God in his frustration. He could not accept what his friends had said about sin causing pain, about God's will that he suffer, about being zapped if you do wrong. Job did not hesitate to express anger or to tell God he thought him king of chaos, if what those friendly theologians said was true.

But Job didn't buy their answers. He wanted to argue his own case before God. Job wanted God to open up his court and guarantee an honest trial. He wanted a showdown with God, for he believed that if his case ever reached the floor of the court room, he would be acquitted. So Job cried out:

If only I knew how to reach him, how to enter his court. I should state my case before him and set our my arguments in full; then I should learn what answer he would give and understand what he had to say to me.-- Job 23:3-5

Job is frustrated by God's silence, and God's apparent refusal to answer. So he continues:

Let God weigh me in the scales of justice, and he will know that I am blameless ... I should plead the whole record of my life and present that in court as my defense.-- Job 31:6, 37

And then the story says that out of the whirlwind God answered Job. It wasn't what Job expected. It was not the verdict of a judge at court or the pronouncement of a priest in church.

You can never fully understand what the mystery of God is all about. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Do you know where light comes from? Have you ever commanded the morning to appear? Can you hold back the stars? Can you shout to the clouds and make it rain?

Job was confronted with the limits of his own knowledge. God was saying to Job: "You can't understand all about me. But wave at what you do see!"

I remember standing on the beach, trying to comprehend what my eye could see of the Atlantic Ocean. I thought of how vast the eastern shoreline of the United States is. There is no vantage point where any of us can see the whole ocean or even a major part of it. Therefore, there will never be a time when we can say, "I perceive the ocean." But, though I will never know the Atlantic Ocean, I do know a tiny part of it near the edge of the North Carolina coast. So that's the part I'll wave at, even though I will never know it all.

Job and the Palm Sunday crowd stand on such a common ground that it's amazing to compare the two. Job replied to that talking whirlwind, "I have spoken foolishly. I've said more than I should have." The Palm Sunday crowd sang, "Christ, you know I love you. Did you see, I waved? Hosanna to the Son of God."

We often ask too many questions, seek too many answers, want too much explanation. When Moses saw the burning bush, he didn't ask, "Is this one of the seven wonders of the Sinai peninsula?" No, he turned to see, and took off his shoes, and stayed to worship. He waved!

What would Job and the Palm Sunday folk say to us on this festive day? I think they both would point out two things.

Number one: Meet halfway any glory that comes your way. Whenever you see a glory passing by, bend with it, bend to it. Don't be afraid to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of God's love. Mistakes can be corrected, but we cannot do anything for inertia, for inactivity, for laziness.

We need to seize every glory that comes our way, even if we think someone might laugh at us or criticize us. When Zacchaeus of Jericho heard that Jesus was coming to town, he closed his tax office, climbed a tree, and waved. And that day changed his whole life. Remember Martha, so intent on keeping the meal on schedule, she missed an unrepeatable chance to listen to Jesus. This is why I feel worship is so vitally important, for often the glory passes by and we need to be ready to seize it or at least wave at it.

So much of the glory of God comes our way in human relationships. Ed Warner, a father, had a hard day at work, a lot of bad scenes. He sat in the den that night waiting for his son to get home from a party. Ed thought about the rat race at work, about middle age creeping in on him, and about his son Bart who was trying to be independent by coming home two hours after curfew on that particular night.

A friend at the office had told Ed to keep his antenna up and tuned in to his teenager. When Bart got home at two o'clock that morning, Ed remembered those words and told his son he wanted to hear him, and they would talk tomorrow. Bart went to bed. A few minutes later Ed went upstairs and heard music coming from Bart's room. He pushed open the door and heard a song, something about "a new world coming, coming in peace, coming in joy, coming in love." So he walked over to Bart's bed, looked down at his son, reached and tousled his hair.

"Good night, Son," he whispered.

"Good night, Dad," Bart responded.

Ed turned, walked to the door, and started to shut it. Then he had to say it, he had to seize the glory, he had to wave. It came out as a husky whisper, "I love you, Bart."

He started to pull the door closed, but Bart answered quickly, "I love you too, Dad." He closed the door, but Bart wasn't finished. His words came through the door, under it, around it, softly, but clearly, "I really do."

Ed opened the door, looking back into the darkness still echoing with the music, "Coming in peace, coming in joy, coming in love." Bart's head came up off the pillow, "I mean it, Dad. I really do love you."

Something in Ed snapped. He walked down the hall, sobbing in little choking sounds, tears pouring down his cheeks, and laughing softly. "I'll make it," he said to himself.

"I'll make it for another day or so. I really do love you."

Meet halfway any glory that comes your way.

And the second thing Job's whirlwind and Jesus' Palm Sunday crowd offer us is to expect encounters with God as the truest indication of life.

We have a tendency to be suspicious of rapturous moments. We rationalize them and reduce them to harmless interludes in an otherwise normal life. But the testimony of the saints is that we should disbelieve the strict logic of life and trust more in visions. For this is when we are really ourselves, when the fires of the eternal are consciously present in life. When we think back on some experience of great joy, we say, almost apologetically, "I was beside myself." But we were not. That was us. Our cold, logical, rational self is a put-on.

A church member once remarked that she got so carried away with the worship that Sunday morning that she almost told me. "You were not carried away," I said. "You were carried back to where you were meant to be -- a child of God, capable of communion with a Father in heaven."

When these glories come in the normal routine of relationships, in a church service, in a prayer, then meet them halfway, and respect and revere them as the truest indication of life.

"Christ, you know I love you. Did you see, I waved?"

A student of business management has noted that when a person first joins the ranks of management, one has zero experience and one hundred percent enthusiasm. By the time one retires, the mixture is one hundred percent experience and zero enthusiasm. In between these two extremes there is a short time in a person's career when one has the most favorable combination of experience and enthusiasm.

That's what we are looking for, isn't it? A favorable combination of Christian experience and Christian enthusiasm.

"Christ, you know I love you. Did you see, I waved?"