At heart, we are all dreamers. We dream that we shall succeed, that we shall be liked or loved, that we shall be happy. And the journey of life is strewn with the wreckage of dreams.

The old darling in the retirement home, whose children never come to see her, though she gave them everything and expected they would care for her in her latter years.

The couple who waited for years to have a child and then were given a Downs baby and told they would have to alter their dreams.

The concert pianist whose wrist was crushed in a car accident, and who was told she would never play again, at least not professionally.

The actor who got the big part he had waited for and discovered the next day that he has tested positive for the AIDS virus.

It is all Death of a Salesman, isn't it? The Willy Lomans of the world, always dreaming things will get better and then one day discovering that they don't, that you have to make peace with what there is, with what you have. Maybe this is why the audiences came out crying after seeing Arthur Miller's play; they knew this is the way life is.

What do you do when it happens to you, when the deal you had hoped for falls through, when the love of your life walks out and slams the door, when the house of your dreams burns down and you didn't have any insurance, when the policeman comes to your door and tells you your child is in jail for selling cocaine or, even worse, that she was killed in an accident on the freeway? What do you do when your dreams suddenly fall apart and you know there is no putting them together again?

Maybe it helps to see Jesus at the moment when He knew His dream had fallen apart. That's what's happening in our scripture today, the story of His so-called "triumphal" entry into Jerusalem. It looks as if His dreams have all come true -- the big crowds, the shouting, the royal reception with palm branches and clothing strewn in the road. But He knews better. He knows the politics of the time, the intrigue of His enemies, the fickleness of the crowds. He knows the demonstration is only a momentary celebration, and that beneath it are the deceit and treachery that have kept His people in bondage for centuries. While the others are smiling and shouting and waving their palm branches, He is weeping, and sees it all through tears.

"Would that even today," he says to the unheeding city, "you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation" (Luke 19:42-44).

He had seen it coming for a long time. It was not something that suddenly dawned on Him. That is the way most dreams are broken, slowly, not abruptly. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem" He had cried, "killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" (Matt. 23:37). It is a sad and beautiful image: the mother hen, when the dreaded shadow of a hawk appears on the ground, summoning her little ones under the safety of her wings as she risks her own life to stand off the marauder. Yet the holy city was too steeped in evil to know it was in danger.