Don’t you love it when the Lectionary starts with a line like, “Six days later”? In case you were wondering what happened six days ago, it was when Peter declared that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the Living God…and shortly thereafter got on Jesus’ case for saying he would have to die and got called Satan for his trouble. So stuff is getting real at this point in the story. Jesus is getting ready to head for Jerusalem where, he knows, death is waiting. The New Orleans custom called Second Line expresses the ultimate joy of earthly death, that even when we are gone from this world, resurrection awaits. If you like, we could think of Palm Sunday as a kind of Second Line, a demonstration of jubilation in the face of doom. This was a critical idea for Black people in Louisiana for so many centuries. When your daily walk is through the valley of the shadow of death, it is healthy to believe that this abysmal world with its cruel masters and massive oppression is not the last wo...