Palm Thinking

In the Midwest palms are few and far between, so we have to order them for Palm Sunday church services.  As a kid it meant that I swung my palm branch around, and eventually made a cross with it.  Palm Sunday is a unique time of celebration, followed by the sadness of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and then peaking with the joy of Easter.

The instances of seeing palms during my lifetime were also few and far between.  We would see them as a family as we drove to visit my grandma in Florida. I remember watching the palms blowing around the beach and in my Grandma’s backyard.   When I drove to California as an adult, I noticed palm trees all over.  The difference, of course, was that they looked dead on the bottom.  Because of the lack of seasonal change, there were palm branches that looked liked they had died before, but had not long enough to fall down, thus allowing more palms to become green.  Florida seems to have more of the seasonal feel and more rain so this is less of a problem.

The first sermon I wrote about Palm Sunday, I totally tanked because I used all kinds of connections to donkeys.  I remember all the things I learned from my amazing teacher who was, and still is a great preacher.  He taught us to look into the Law and Gospel and not dig too deeply for odd connections and twists.  While I still have a love for a new connection or twist in Scripture, I did see his point to not miss the obvious and powerful meanings.

We call today Palm Sunday, and we recognize that Jesus is our Lord and Savior.  Yet on that first Palm Sunday, many appeared with their palms that day because they wanted to see what this miracle worker named Jesus would do.  In those days, waving palms was a traditional way of recognizing and honoring greatness or royalty; yet Jesus took a donkey that no king in his right mind would ride upon..  He came riding humbly on a donkey, knowing what would happen.  The funny thing is that we are the ones who ultimately face humility in this story.  As did the people in the story, we also go from one minute recognizing Jesus, and the next minute we find ourselves yelling, “Crucify him!”  Sometimes, like my first experience in writing a sermon, I was looking for the wrong connection.  The people were still looking for that miracle worker, and when they came looking for the wrong thing, they just didn’t find what they wanted.  But the amazing thing was that it was a good thing they didn’t find what they were looking for.  As our story continues, we find Jesus on the cross, thereby rescuing us from all of our lack of humility.  And the cycle starts all over in the Church.  Traditionally we burn the palm branches and use them for Ash Wednesday the following year.  This brings us back to the humility we were missing by waving palms and looking for something else, while Jesus was showing us true humility. This weekend we spend time diving into this tradition of the Church as we recognize the power of Jesus in this story.