Palm Sunday Again!
I have written these weekly reflections for over three years and write the same thing every year on Palm Sunday. Every year I write about this Sunday being my least favorite Sunday of the Church year. That hasn’t changed, but rather than wandering off into a peripherally related reflection this year, I will approach it head-on. In prayer, I ask myself, Why do I dislike this Sunday so much? Why does it rankle everything inside of me? Perhaps God is trying to teach me something. Maybe I am avoiding His Word to me.
I don’t like Palm Sunday because of the fickleness of the crowd. It is disheartening to read about the Passion and recognize how quickly the people’s loyalty changed. Jesus is hailed as King on Sunday and killed on Friday. Intellectually I understand the disappointment of the people. Many still expected a king to amass an army and overthrow the Romans. On Palm Sunday, the people thought they were issuing in a new era where they would rule. By Friday, they realized the Kingdom they longed for was not coming. They felt duped.
How little they understood. It is easy to judge those crowds from a distance of 2000 years. Hindsight is 20/20. What looks like disloyalty and fickleness today may have been a heartbreaking disappointment. Jesus not becoming the King they dreamed of, longed for, and wanted to die for was soul-crushing.
Perhaps on Palm Sunday, God is asking us to put aside our expectations of Him. God is demonstrating through the life and death of His Son the limits of our understanding even today. Palm Sunday is a reminder to be open. It is a siren’s call to let God be God as God is. It is a call to open our hearts and allow God to work in His way. Jesus recognized the limits of the crowd. Palm Sunday is a day when we are reminded that God works in God’s way, not according to our plan.
The other reason I dislike Palm Sunday is I don’t like to read the Passion in parts at Mass. I don’t like to read the “Crowd” part. The Crowd has all the ugly lines. I don’t want to hear my voice say, “Give us Barabbas.” “We have no King but Caesar” or “Crucify Him.” I don’t want those words to be my words.
Lent is ending, and maybe I must hear those words in my own voice. I would like to believe that I would not have been screaming with the crowd for the death of Jesus. But what better time to reevaluate my words and actions?
I need to ask myself, “When do I choose some temporary pleasure over Jesus?” “When do I even keep my mouth shut when I hear judgments and ugliness coming from another and by my silence scream for Barabbas?” It would be nice to think that I always stand for Jesus. But sometimes, I willingly choose the more pleasant route. Sometimes I simply remain silent to avoid conflict. My silence screams my choice to “Crucify Him.”
Yes, I want to avoid Palm Sunday. I want to avoid looking at how my faith is sometimes fickle. And I have 2000 years of understanding that the people of Jesus’ time did not have.
It is hard to look into the eye of our weakness, perhaps most especially when that weakness is expressed in silence. A silence that allows evil to flourish.
But I must make myself one with Palm Sunday. Because if I don’t, I will never know the full power of Jesus’ words to the people of His time. I will not hear their hope echoed through the centuries. I will not hear them spoken to me directly, “Father forgive her, for she knows not what she does.”
In God’s Unending Love,
Gwen
