Every year, someone asks me in the weeks preceding Palm Sunday: ‘What happened to Palm Sunday? How come we have Palm/Passion Sunday?’ Usually the sentiment behind the query is one of consternation: why do we so rush through Palm Sunday to arrive at Passion Sunday? What are the two events jammed together?
As I spent half an hour last night in the silent church strewing palms, throwing others in the aisle (yes, it’s OK to walk on them, they haven’t been blessed, and they truly are a sign of hospitality), I kept coming back to two thoughts that express to me the paradox of this morning: ashes and palms, and the words to the Bach chorale found in hymn 158, ‘Ah, holy Jesus, how hast thou offended, that man to judge thee hath in hate pretended?… Who brought this upon thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee. Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee: I crucified thee.’
First, ashes and palms. There’s nothing like Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, and Palm Sunday to bring people out in droves. People want their palms as much as they want the ashes on their foreheads. Maybe it’s childhood recollections of the festive nature of waving palms around in the air, the one time that one could cut loose a bit, or maybe (as a child), it was having something sanctioned to play with during the liturgy. For whatever reason, people love their palms. When I used to strip the palms up at Saint Mary’s, I selected out the thin palms, remembering how I, as a child, always wanted the fat ones. Palms become the ashes that get crossed on our foreheads the following year on Ash Wednesday and so the cycle of death, crucifixion, resurrection and redemption continues, even as it comes full circle this morning.
It would be lovely to linger at Palm Sunday, to stop the liturgy with the reading of the procession into Jerusalem as we used to in the lectionary of the 1928 Prayer Book, because it’s a triumphant moment, it’s a moment of anticipation, it’s a moment of celebration. There are still those of us who remember that stopping point, but increasingly, the church is becoming populated by people who only know Palm/Passion Sunday as found in the current prayer book. Perhaps the day would make more sense if we were to observe it the way fourth-century pilgrims to Jerusalem did, namely, holding a procession with palms with stations along the way, and then breaking for a time certain before returning to the eucharist at which the focus was at the passion. What we are doing nowadays is consolidating time and that tends to bring on the confusion.
Besides, the progression of thought from palms to ashes to death and resurrection forms the basis for this day. After our brief moment of celebration, we listen to the passion gospel according to the gospel appointed for the year, in this case, from Luke. And that is where the English translation to Bach’s chorale comes into play because, in my mind, I am like those people in the crowd who once threw palms as a sign of hospitality and then just as quickly turned on Jesus and betrayed him.
Nancy Roth in her book of meditations on selected hymns, writes of hymn 158:
‘Was it really you and I who caused Jesus’ death?
‘In our era, we have moved so far from the point of view in [this] hymn that we often do not take responsibility even for our own sins, much less the corporate sinfulness of humankind. We seek excuses for ourselves and for others, refusing to name the truth: “We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.”
‘As a result, we have difficulty in dealing with the evil around us. Whether conflict is international, national, local, or familial, we tend to “demonize” our adversaries, rather than acknowledge the complexity of social, political, and historical reality or the fact that those with whom we do not agree are human beings made in the image of God.
‘[…] When we have recognized our violations of love, however small, we will realize that each of us does, indeed, have the capacity for evil. To say “I crucified thee” may be going too far. But the sum total of those things which estrange each human being from God adds up to the destructive power that creates wars, cruelty and crucifixion.’
I think then, that some of people’s discomfort with Passion Sunday lies in our confrontation with this capacity. Perhaps that is why people simply want to linger with Palm Sunday and not get to the Passion part just so quickly — after all, it will be with us soon enough on Good Friday. And some of us skip it altogether and won’t return here until next Sunday when a lifetime journey will have passed within these walls.
Roth continues: ‘To recognize that such a capacity exists in each of us is the first step in healing and reconciliation. As we stand at the foot of the cross, we see both the effects of sin, and its remedy. Forgiven by the victim, we need no longer be victims of our guilt, but may go forward in life, absolved and healed.’ (1)
Allow yourself to inhabit the paradox of this morning — the festive palms, a symbol of welcome, and the confrontation of our capacity to do harm to one another, consciously or unconsciously. We can live in the paradox because we have already been forgiven and redeemed.
And then, having made your way through the internal chaos that this day sometimes brings, come walk with us the rest of the week to Easter Sunday because it will begin to make more sense as it unfolds over seven days.
END NOTE
(1) Nancy Roth, Awake, My Soul! Meditating on Hymns for Year B (New York, NY: Church Publishing Incorporated, 1999), 107-8.
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