I don’t know what to do with Palm Sunday

I don’t know what to do with Palm Sunday.  It seems like an aberration — palm branches waving and shouts of celebration ringing out — planted as it is at the tail-end of Lent which for 5 weeks has had the shadow of the Cross growing larger and larger.  And planted at the start of Holy Week, when we take the inexorable inevitable journey into betrayal and bread and wine and agonizing prayer in the garden and trial and . . . well, you know what’s coming.

I honestly wonder what Jesus felt as He rode into town in the manner of royalty, seeing the crowds gather and the palm branches waving and hearing the shouts equivalent to “hurrah” but which actually meant “save !”  Was He able to stay in the moment or was He already thinking about what was coming in the next few days?  I wonder if it felt like an aberration to Him?  After all, the past few weeks for Him have been growing in intensity, as He left the relative safety of the Galilean hinterland and resolutely turned His face towards the hornets’ nest danger of Jerusalem, with its concentration of political and religious power that was feeling threatened by this itinerant rabbi who has obviously gotten out of hand.  And yet He kept walking towards the danger, day after day.  And then, just in case there was any vestige of the thought (perhaps in one or two of the disciples?) that they might sneak in cognito into Jerusalem, Jesus destroys that possibility by raising Lazarus from the dead!  Even in a pre-YouTube and pre-Twitter age, that story would have spread like wildfire.  Jesus was back, and everyone knew.

He rides in, hearing the shouts of praise, anticipating the cries of anger and threat that will soon come.  I don’t buy into the cavalier sermonizing that assumes that the same people who waved palm branches would later be shaking their fists at the crucifixion.  There were plenty of different sorts in Jerusalem — fans of Jesus, opponents, and a lot of people somewhere in the middle.  I actually think that the people welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem were genuinely and deeply happy that He was back, and were genuine in their soulful cries that pleaded for salvation.  “God has come to help His people” is what the crowd cried after Jesus resurrected a widow’s son (Luke 7), and this essentially is what the crowd was crying now.  Help has arrived!  Jesus is back!  Now, things will change!  The oppressed will be set free, the poor will find hope, the sick will be healed, and a whole new world will be made.  Jesus is back!

What intense disappointment must have been felt as the events of that week later took place.  Such intense redemptive hope, crushed so quickly just days later.

Or, at least, that’s what it looked like, from the outside.

Little did the people know that, actually, just when they thought all was lost, all was found.  The world changed not on Palm Sunday, not in the middle of shouts and noise and adulation, but on Friday, when, mystery of mysteries, the 2nd Person of the Trinity . . . died.