“Behold thy king cometh unto thee”
The joy of this day is equally our pain. We wave branches of palms and sing “Hosanna to the Son of David.” We hail a king who enters his royal city. There is joy. Everyone loves a parade. Palm Sunday, we might say, is Christ’s parade. There is a sense of euphoria that belongs to the celebration of liberation or at least its anticipation.
And yet, the one before whom we wave branches of palm and to whom we sing “Hosanna to the king”, we also shout “Crucify, Crucify.” We nail him to a tree. The one whom we hail as king we mock and deny his rule in our souls and so deny our souls as well. We cast him out of his royal city and find ourselves the outcasts of all creation. In every way we make the parade of this day a parody of his way. We confront a contradiction, a contradiction within ourselves, a contradiction which we hardly know or see until it is pointed out to us, until we are made to see what we will not see. “They [we] shall look on him who they [we] have pierced.”
This is what we do. We make a parody of God’s way. Yet God makes something more. He makes a procession of redeeming love out of our parody of his parade. We shall find that our first notes of joy and euphoria are more true than at first we thought or knew. But only if we enter into the dark hell of Holy Week and into the heart-rending pain of the Passion. Only in passing through the parody of God’s parade can we even begin to hope to come into the procession of his endless love which bursts forth in the Resurrection. And only then might our joys more truly begin. We go from joy to sorrow and from greater sorrow to an even greater joy. Such is Passion and Resurrection.
Yet, perhaps, this must seem all a bit too much. How is it that you and I are present at all in these events, whether singing “Hosanna” or shouting “Crucify”, whether hailing or mocking one who is and who is not a king? The intent of our liturgy – and this week is really one long liturgy, from Palm Sunday to Easter Day – places us in these events, in the midst of these happenings. But again, what does that mean for you and for me and how can that be? Because these events confront us with ourselves. We confront something of ourselves in the presence of God.
We confront the mysteries of sin and death in the greater presence of the God who is love and life. But only through the parade of his Passion. The events of Holy Week compel us to look at ourselves anew, not simply with some greater degree of psychological insight but in the increased awareness of the presence of God. We are drawn into love by repentance. We are drawn into worship by holy fear. We are drawn into joy by sorrow. But why?
Because our lives are a parody of God. All sin is parody. What? Are our lives all and simply sin? Yes and no. We are, to be sure, far less than what we should and seek to be. Every parody depends upon a truth which it twists and turns, denies and mocks in fitful and pathetic imitation. To some extent or another – it is all a matter of degree – we pretend to be what we are not. We imitate the power and the wisdom of God but forget that he is God and we are not. We forget the conditions of our participation in his divine life. In short, we make a parody of his way. There is, perhaps, no greater mercy than that Jesus should name our sins as ignorance, praying in the pain of his passion “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” We do and do not know what we do. We do not know ourselves.
Such is the painful paradox of the Passion and the mystery of Palm Sunday. We do and we do not know what we do or who we are. Yet this becomes the means of our blessedness and joy. To know our unknowing is part and parcel of the labour of Holy Week; it is a liturgical labour in which we find our freedom. Our hearts are fickle and inconstant. There is at once our folly and our wickedness; we cling to our hurts and injuries; we lash out in anger and rage. Our petty complaints hide our better intentions while our best intentions conceal our deadly pride. This is our unfreedom. We do not know ourselves. Yet this is what we see.
We hail Jesus as king on this day. And this, too, is true. But through the parody of his kingship – thinking ourselves to be kings and gods, the masters of all that we see and do – we contend against God in the confusion of our desires and put him to death on the cross only to reveal the greater truth of his kingship and divinity. “He reigns and triumphs from the tree,” but will he reign and triumph in our souls? We find our freedom only in contemplating him who reigns from the tree. The Cross is his pulpit and throne; never more so than in Holy Week. We are to find ourselves in the crowd around the Cross. There are no innocent bystanders.
We are more than spectators, more than mere on-lookers. We are in the parade of Christ’s Passion. We are there in all of the madness and confusion of our humanity in its disarray. To some degree or another such things are all within us. It belongs to our freedom to contemplate the sad and sorry parody of our lives within the greater parade of his Passion. The greater liberation is to God through the disorders of our hearts and minds. Holy Week seeks an increased awareness of ourselves – to present us to ourselves, as it were – but only in the light of the convicting love of God made visible on the cross.
We wave branches of palm but they are in the shape of the cross – palm crosses. They signal our greater freedom, our spiritual freedom as freed from ourselves, but, more importantly, as freed to God in whom alone we find ourselves.
“Behold thy king cometh unto thee”
Fr. David Curry,
Palm Sunday 2021