Palm Sunday

For many years I have not understood Palm Sunday. I know the story – stories if we consider each of the Gospels. And that may be why I do not understand what Christiandom has done. It may be that I do not understand it because our results are leading us to a faith that the Jerusalem crowd had.

I do not understand why we give out palms to worshipers and ask them to wave them like the Jerusalem crowd did. The story goes that they did this as a way of heralding the one who would liberate them from Roman occupation. They were expecting either a political figure or a military figure. The crowd hailed him as a conquer of the line of King David.

The road goes on.

But he wasn’t and he didn’t.

The crowd we ask worshipers to identify with and act like will, in a few days, become a jeering crowd that taunt and ridicule Jesus. The story leads us to believe this is because they were disappointed that he was not the conquer, liberator, king of politics. Jim Thomas asks how to tell a cheering crowd from a jeering mob. The volume is the same, the words equally indistinct, the excitement is the same, the people are the same. One holds palm branches until those same people put them down and pick up logs and nails. Does anyone know why we put the idea of holding wood (either young palms or old rugged wood) into their minds?

Why, does anyone know, do we ask them to pick up the palms and wave them with happy shouts? We have Palm Sunday as a happy day with pastels and joyful throngs. We make Palm Sunday a destination Sunday, a high Holy Day. Just like the crowd, in their pre-mob phase, made Jerusalem a destination of high importance. Does anyone understand why we do this? The stories are clear that Jesus kept saying that he would go to Jerusalem and DIE, as in be put to death. The disciples never really grabbed this idea, or denied it when they did. Does anyone know why we maintain the disciples confusion in our Palm Sunday worship?

Maybe it is a matter of history. Does anyone know when we Christians started this practice of having Palm Sunday as a day to denude shrubs and act like we think Jesus is Caesar? At what point was their a world wide distribution of palms? I mean, there is NOTHING green growing in Vermont today. When did we start having palms to wave like centurions? Maybe we can ask history why we do this Palm Sunday thing.

It would be one thing if we used Palm Sunday as a sort of bait and switch. “Hey everyone this is a really fun thing to do, come and get palms (ignore that your young boys will make them swords and fight – they may be getting it right!) See we will start worship as if Jesus is your conquering hero, your mighty king of earth, your miracle working healer, your protector from bad things like poverty and pain and death.”

Does anyone know why we do not ever get to the ‘switch’ once people have taken this bait?

“Yeah this is fun and following a Jesus has times and ways of fun. But we will have to fight for others and ourselves to have justice and peace. Yes, he is our King, but his kingdom is not of this world. Yes, Jesus does liberate and protect us, but not often from political and life situations. Jesus mostly shows us a way to live that gives us the power to live right/well in God’s eyes and this will give us the resilience to deal with all the cages, traps, hurts, pain, injustice, and sadness the world WILL give to us. In this resilience/strength we DO have a Saviour. We are delivered to a new life and life in its fullest.”

Does anyone know why we tend to simply let the fish eat the bait and then swim away without even trying to set the hook? This is not preaching, this is feeding them bait.

Palm Sunday is a monument to how people get it wrong. Does anyone know why we ‘celebrate’ it?

And does anyone know why so much of Conservative Christianity sounds like a Palm Sunday Christianity? They preach so the crowds have expectations like the Jerusalem palm wavers had and then life – like the rest of Holy week – shows us that we will have pain, betrayal, denial, lose, loneliness, doubt, and death. Does anyone know why we wonder at people giving up on Christianity? If anyone has a Palm Sunday Christianity, they will be continual disappointed, confused, and raped by life. They too will turn into a jeering mob that says that Jesus is without importance, call on him to prove/save himself, look to have/make Jesus as a political king, suggests that he promises more than he delivers. Why should we be surprised by this repeat of history?

Does anyone understand why we do this to Palm Sunday?