I wish Palm Sunday was as easy as the people in our first gospel reading (Mark 11:1-11) make it look and sound. I wish we could walk in the Jesus parade, wave palms, sing hosannas, offer blessings, and then just go to lunch. 

That’s how Palm Sunday used to be for me. For most of my life I came to Palm Sunday with joy, anticipation, and excitement. It was a parade, and everybody loves a parade. Jesus rode a colt and we followed along waving our palms, and shouting, “Hosanna!” We celebrated Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and then went home with a souvenir from church. 

I’m not sure when or how it happened but somewhere along the way my experience of Palm Sunday changed. Maybe it was when I divorced, when our older son Brandon died, when I started facing up to some stuff in myself. Maybe it was when my best friend John got cancer, maybe it was the Robb School shooting and the two years since then. Maybe it was all those things and a thousand others like them.

Somewhere along the way I recognized that my life and faith were no longer as simple and easy or as certain and secure as I wanted them to be, as I expected them to be, or as I told myself they were, and neither was Palm Sunday. Somewhere along the way I discovered the fragility and vulnerability that underlie life, faith, and Palm Sunday.

I’ll bet you know what that’s like too. You’ve probably had similar recognitions and discoveries. I suspect my experience of Palm Sunday changed because my experience of life changed.

Maybe that’s why I now come to this day with some ambivalence and hesitation. Palm Sunday asks us to look around at everything. It holds before us truths and realities about ourselves, our lives, and the world that we don’t want to face, we often deny, and from which we turn away. 

I don’t think we deny or turn away from those realities because we don’t believe or experience them to be true but because we do experience the truth of them. The enormity of the truth they hold before us is so overwhelming, so frightening, so painful, and sometimes so beautiful, that we turn away and leave. (Scott, The Seeker and the Monk, 104)

I think that’s also Jesus’ experience of this day. According to St. Mark, Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, goes into the temple, looks around at everything, and then leaves. (Mark. 11:11). He looks around and leaves. 

It’s a strange and anticlimactic ending to what we call the triumphal entry. It sounds more like a drive by than an entry. But what if that’s the key to this day? Maybe today is less about the colt, the palms, the hosannas, and more about looking around at everything and seeing the truth that is before us is.  

What if Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem isn’t the completion of Palm Sunday but it’s starting point? What if that’s true for us as well? Maybe we also need to look around at everything before we go any further into this week.

Look around at everything. Look at yourself, your life, your relationships. Look at Uvalde. Look at our nation and the world. Look at everything that has happened and is happening. What do you see when you look around at everything? 

Look at who is present, who is missing, and who is excluded or unwanted. Gently touch the wounds and hurts. Hear the cries, hopes, and needs. Feel the griefs, sorrows, and losses. Name the things done and left undone. Feel the guilt, shame, disappointments. Acknowledge the injustices, anger, and conflicts. Where is there brokenness? What is in need of repair and healing? 

Of all that you see when you look around at everything name one or two things that you don’t want to look at, that you’ve denied or ignored, that you want to close your eyes to and not face. You got them? You know what they are?

What truths are they holding before you today? What do they bring up in you? What are they asking of you? What are they offering you? What are they taking from you or asking you let go of?

I’m not asking you to make a confession or judge yourself, someone else, or a situation. I’m just asking you to see and name a truth that is before you today. I’m asking you to carry that truth with you through this Holy Week. It’s what Jesus will do. 

All week long we will be meeting and examining truths and realities about ourselves, our lives, and our world that feel too big, too dangerous, or too painful to deal with. We will want to turn away. We will want to ignore or deny the truth before us. We will want to resist what is being asked of us. Let’s not do that. Let’s put down the palms and pick up the truth. 

It’s so much easier to carry palms than the truth. Don’t settle for a church souvenir. The palms might get us to Jerusalem, the start of Holy Week, but it’s the truth that will get us to Easter, new life 

The promise of Holy Week is that the places of our resistance are also the places of our healing, growth, and new life. I wonder what those places will be for you and me. 

If you want to know what those places are, if you want to go to those places, put down your palms and pick up the truth.

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Image Credit: Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.