As We Wave The Palms

In a few day’s time, we celebrate Palm Sunday. In most of our minds, it is just a fun day where we get to frenetically wave branches while walking toward the front of the sanctuary. It is a high point in our church calendars to be sure; certainly one of the cutest Sundays of the year. But as with many church traditions, at Palm Sunday there is more being said than may at first be obvious.

In Jewish tradition from the time of Christ, there was an event called a Parousia. This was a parade held for a returning king, back from some triumphant expedition. Hallmarks of a Parousia included: a) the King preparing to approach the city often on some animal, b) the people gathering and cheering on their returning ruler waving branches to celebrate, and c) when the king entered the city, performing some kind of religious ceremony, usually one of purification.

You can find the story of Palm Sunday in all four of the gospel accounts, but today let’s just look at Matthew 21. There you will see how first Jesus prepares to approach the city of Jerusalem, ultimately riding in on an animal (v1-7). Then as the approach begins, we see how the people gather and with all that they are praise Our Lord, waving branches to celebrate his arrival (v. 8-11). Finally, when Jesus arrives in the Holy City, he immediately sets to performing religious acts, in the form of kicking money lenders out of the Temple and then healing the blind (v12-14).

When we celebrate Palm Sunday, waving our branches wildly in the air, this is what we are re-enacting from scripture. The Parousia of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem. The story of when the one we say is King arrived in the City of God.

So why is this important to know? Well, the Mathew recounting of the story of Palm Sunday gives us a hint which can be found in verse 15. There we are told that upon witnessing the procession, the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law grew indignant. At that time, either to maintain their own high status or to keep the foreign occupation in the region from becoming truly ugly, both of these groups were quite cozy with the Romans who were claiming Palestine as their territory. If there were to be an uprising, you could bet the Romans would be there in a heartbeat to shut it down with all force and brutality and so to make sure uprisings didn’t happen the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law kept a constant vigil.

Now, look at this scene of Jesus’s Parousia again. We are first told many are gathered to cheer Christ on. All of them exclaiming that this man approaching the city is a great leader, implying that this man is to them like a king. Then when Jesus arrives in the city, the first thing that he does is go into a crowded, politically important area of the city - the Temple complex - to which he loudly upturns the usual activities that were going on there. As icing on the cake, Jesus does all of this during the single busiest period of the Jewish calendar, the feast of Passover. A festival that, It is important to note, commemorates a story in which Israel was freed from the oppression of an outside power.

Knowing all that, I am guessing why the Chief Priests and Teachers of the Law were indignant makes a lot more sense.

Make no mistake about it, the events we encounter in the story of Palm Sunday, the same events we re-enact every year as we wave our palm branches frantically in the air, are the same events that mark Jesus as a dead man walking. Perhaps there is no clearer proof of this than how the sign that was posted above Jesus as he was hung on the cross in only a week’s time read, “King of the Jews”. The implication is, “this is what happens in a Roman Territory to someone who is proclaimed as king.”

In the story of Palm Sunday, it is those who waved their branches who exalted Christ as their King. As we do the same thing all these years later, this is still what we do. As we wave our branches, we proclaim loudly to the world that Jesus Christ is our King; not Rome or whatever the Rome of today may be. This is still a claim that has disruptive power to it. This is still a claim that threatens to upturn everything, and as such, it is still a claim that paints a target on the back of Christ as well as on the kingdom he is working hard to build. But we do this, we wave our branches because we know what we are saying as we do so, is true.

So this year, as we once again re-enact the events of Jesus Parousia this coming Sunday, let’s do so while being mindful of what we are actually saying with those actions. For on this day, we are declaring a great truth to the world, that our Lord Jesus Christ is King, and as we make that proclamation, we do so knowing there are consequences to that proclamation.