2020.04.05 Palms or No Palms—Hosanna For Both

For Christians, this is the Sunday we remember the procession of Jesus into Jerusalem, surrounded by what Matthew’s gospel account describes as a large and clamoring crowd. (The biblical footnote indicates that “most”—only most—of the crowd followed him.) 

Jesus is astride a donkey. The crowds spread palms and cloaks in his path. They shout: “Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” (Hosanna echoes psalm 118:26 and translates as “O save!")  Many exclamations points!

Jesus is the hoped-for Messiah who will change the world’s hidebound classist politics, bringing justice and peace. So they hoped. So we hope.

The donkey is a humble touch, resonant of the Nativity donkey, led by Joseph and carrying a very pregnant Mary. The couple seeks shelter for the birth. They’re too scruffy for any self-respecting inn to shelter, so they end up in a humble stable where Jesus is born and laid in a humble manger. No one could miss the exaggeratedly humble theme—altogether counter to traditional patriarchal images of Almighty God, then and now. Humble imagery still eludes us. It’s not dramatic or impressive. But, let’s face it, would a large majestic stallion tolerate the stable scene or the commotion of the palm procession? Stallions were for warriors. Not this king!

Hosanna isn’t the whole story, however. There are shadows underlying the bleached scene of joy. In Jerusalem, people say, basically: “Who the hell is this?” Then follows a violent scene in which Jesus overturns the usurious tables of greed in the temple, claiming the temple to be a house of prayer. Who is this intruder, acclaimed by unruly mobs, tearing down our business practices, and adulterating our holy ground? Jesus insults the status quo. Jesus assaults our assumptions.

In the rock opera,“Jesus Christ Superstar,” one lyric, beside wild Hosannas and hope-crazed longings, stands out:  “Jesus Christ, Superstar, do you think you’re what they say you are?” A question many still ponder. 

Palm Sunday in 2020 longs for Hosanna. The world is beset by a dangerous virus, ironically called Corona, spreading easily and rapidly. We are staying safely inside, fearful of human contact that could bring death. Hope of life and fear of death linger together in the air, just as they did in ancient times.

Here is what we hung on our front door this Palm Sunday: old dead palms with new green branchlets. In both, God’s grace emerges.

To be physically isolated one from another with no secure timeline about the dissipation of this virus is crazy-making. Back in the early 1980s, I wrote this poem when I was waiting—and waiting like the biblical Job— for the Episcopal Church to ordain me a priest.

When I have no title
    I make one up—irreverend.
When I have no collar
    I roll my neck round.
When I have no church
    I steeple my fingers.
When I have no altar
    I celebrate my back yard.
When I have no bloody wine
    I shed tears
When I have no bread
    I am a sacrament
When I have no God
    I pray anyway. 

Today, I feel the same suspended timelessness mixed with urgency and desire to be free AND well.

When I have no outdoors
    I clean my windows.
When I have no society
    I fight with my spouse.
When I have no fun
    I, well, never mind.
When I have no friendly faces at hand
    I look through my computer screen at pixelated images.
When I see mask-covered faces walking by
    I strain to see smiling eyes.
When I can’t dine out
    I lose weight and treasure my beloved personal spousal chef.
When I have no church
    I bring church on home.
When I pray to God to lift this curse
    I am not humble.

AMEN and HOSANNA!!

2014.03.13 The Palms Have It

Palm trees in Israel gather and wave their own praises.

Christians call this Sunday, Palm Sunday, because we wave palms around, sing Hosannas, and expect our spiritual hero, Jesus Christ, to liberate us all from whatever keeps us in bondage—outside oppressor(s), addiction, mental illness, disability, religion, politics, gender, your neighbor. Our palms symbolize hope. They wave gracefully, especially when attached to trees. They also have sharply pointed tips, and kids are tempted to use them as swords.

To me this day has always seemed like a Jackson Pollack canvas—huge, diverse, disordered, every color imaginable spattered and splattered and slapped ruthlessly onto white space, filling it with bright horror. There’s no order in this startling beauty-in-chaos, yet.....yet what? Everything is represented.  Pollack titles one of his most famous paintings, "Convergence." See how everything is there? See that it is holy?

 
Every emotion, experience, desire and need you’ve ever known is packed into this day of Palms, this convergence of all of life at once. If you come to church for serenity and calm, or joy, stay away on Palm Sunday. 

Palm Sunday begins what for Christians is the most important week of the year, and also the most big fat unmanageable week. We tell the story of the entire week on this one Sunday.

This is the week in which Jesus of Nazareth and his followers entered Jerusalem where Jesus spoke truth to power, lost his life in the process, and died an ugly, ignominious death-by-suffocation in crucifixion—as his offended loyalists fled in terror, betrayal, desertion.

This week is just as dazzlingly diverse as the putative seven-day week of Creation, but this week centers on human flesh, not just created by but inhabited by Divinity. The crashing crushing climax of this week is less securely glorious than Creation. It leaves us with no evidence—only faith, hope, and love, the strength that flows from hope.

It wasn’t God who abandoned Jesus, it was humanity. Except of course for some few women who stayed with him at every step and cared for his dead body after his torturers had left, their dirty duty done. These women are the embodiment of faith, hope and love. In them we see the whole direction and the point of what would become Christianity. They are the gospel. Follow them, and their kind, with your “palms” and your Alleluias.

2012.04.01 A Day of Fools and Palms

I feel as if I should be writing about Palm Sunday, the time Christians become re-enacters to the maximum!

It is, after all, Palm Sunday. And I can't muster the energy to heave myself out of my mood and follow the flock.

This Sunday we Christians remember the whole enchilada of Jesus as the New Testament story goes: riding into Jerusalem on a donkey thronged by cheering fans. Huge crowds, according to the embellishments of biblical-ese, were more likely small crowds, stragglers probably. They followed Jesus along the road, these hope-against-hopers waving palm pompoms.

Jesus, they hoped, would make it all come true —divine justice for the poor and desolate, a messianic social re-organization. PEACE.

It would be “thy kingdom come” come true, so they thought.

To me just now the triumvalism feels pointless, silly, utterly incongruent. Pitiful really: that we gather in tiny groups and make a tiny parade waving our shreds of palms and singing of glory, laud and honor—our every step shadowed by death.

I have never been present in any parish church Palm Sunday processional “crowd” where enough energy was marshaled to make us sound like a group of enthusiastic believers. Never. The joyful words turned to dust in our hosanna mouths.

We know what happened when Jesus spoke truth to power in Jerusalem. We know that power won, and keeps winning. We know the mission as planned failed.

It is psychologically impossible to move my heart even to imagine the promise of Easter on this messy day of fools and frenetic palm-waving, because I'm living surrounded by a parallel parable.

It’s deafening—the media and politicos each and all squawking and screeching positions. I even agree with some of them, but I can’t bear the cacophony. Its sound is shrill and its energy killing.

So why do we Christians, we Christ-hopers, keep up the charade as we stand on the lip edge of disaster?

I don’t know. I simply don’t know. So I cast my lot with Jesus and the fools and follow anyway, mouthing dry words and fighting back tears.

Where am I going? Tell me the truth, my God.

Please make me a pretty palm cross.