As Palm Sunday – Coronavirus edition – draws to a close, I am thinking about the frailty of our own ideas of safety, security, success, and victory. When Jesus entered Jerusalem at the beginning of his Holy Week, he was greeted by people waving branches of palm – a sign of victory by a people oppressed by a foreign government. It was bold and radical. What they shouted was bolder yet “Hosanna!” “Save us!”
I wonder what that crowd imagined that victory or success would look like? Whether they thought it was personal or political or something else entirely, I doubt very many saw it as the cross and the tomb, as the resurrection itself, beyond all expectations. Perhaps they waved their branches without real expectation, but out of a longing for God to act.
The branches we wave every year (many of us substituted local branches for palms this year, of course, which is far more common historically for Christians outside of tropical regions anyway) are usually kept through most of the year and then burned to make the ashes for Ash Wednesday. A reminder that whatever we imagine victory to be, we are bounded by this life – ashes for us are a sign of mortality and penitence on Ash Wednesday – and victory or success by our standards may be elusive. That’s part of what that means; there may be yet a deeper meaning.
After all, is it our elusive idea of victory that this day, this week is about, or is it perhaps God’s idea of victory? God’s own understanding of victory, of success, of safety, and security seems to be a life grounded in the divine love we are given, a life transformed by love. Oh, and that is very good news indeed.
This is a love shown to us in a life that is given up for us at the cross, is then buried, and joins with that most common human condition – our mortality – before being raised again to new life. Think about that for a moment. The life and love of God enters the grave itself and the grave cannot contain it. God’s idea of victory is liberating us so that we can truly love and be loved. And that life of love can lead to personal change and political change and all the other ways that we long to see the world change, depending on what we contend with. For, after all, this is not our victory that we wave branches for on Palm Sunday – it is God’s. And the victory of God is to bring the very life of Christ into our lives, with all our limitations and brokenness, into our very mortality – into the tomb with each of us, into the ashes themselves, so that we may be raised again.
Hosanna! Save us!
rank liturgist
Not for solace only 