It happened again. The ushers hesitantly offered palms to children. The choir processed with fronds neatly tucked under their music. The children in the procession laid down their branches in front of the table before taking their place to sing. It has always bothered me – our apparent fear of palms on Palm Sunday. I grew up in a church much more formal and polished than the one I belong to now, but somehow that congregation knew how to wave a palm branch. With energy. With joy. With freedom.

I’ve been trying to figure out why our reserved approach to Palm Sunday bothers me so much. It has to be more than just the fact that the crowd was not politely holding their palms still as Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey.  Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week, the week that Jesus entered Jerusalem and spent his final days before being crucified on Friday and resurrected on Easter Sunday.  Perhaps I’m afraid the feelings reflected in my limp palm held quietly in my hand will be my feelings toward all the events of this week.  And that cannot, should not be.

Friday and Saturday of this past week, I spent all day in a parenting seminar.   One of the speakers told a story of a friend involved in a car accident. He was trapped in the car, waiting on the Jaws of Life to free him. He could smell gas and feared explosion. He screamed and begged the rescue workers to hurry. A firefighter broke out one of the windows and wiggled into the car with him. “Look at me,” he said. “Those guys are working as hard and as fast as they can. I’m here with you now. What happens to you, happens to me. We’re in this together.” (So, if you didn’t already think highly enough of firefighters…) The friend and the firefighter were rescued. The speaker added this: “When we bring our children home, through birth or adoption, we actually don’t bring them into our home, we climb into the car with them. We say, ‘I’m here now. What happens to you, happens to me.'”

Wow. This really struck a chord with me. And it’s exactly what Jesus did, isn’t it? He didn’t wait for us to figure out how to get it together and free ourselves so we could be with him. He climbed into the car with us. He took on our experience. He waited with us, suffered with us, until the God of Life had rescued us all. And maybe I want to wave palm branches in the air with abandon because I need an excuse to wave my arms and shout, “Help! Over here! Hurry! Save Me!” The people shouted, “Hosanna!” which means “Save us!” It’s a shout of praise because God saves, and at least for that joyous procession, they believed Jesus was the savior.

I want the palm branches to tickle my nose on Palm Sunday. I want to laugh every time someone gets a mouth full of fronds as children shout and wave with enthusiasm in the pews. I want to put my own arms in the air in praise. Because I want to see, to touch, to smell, to taste the events of this week. I want this story that has given me so much life to come alive again. I want to taste the bitter and the sweet of the Passover meal with Jesus.  I want to feel the warmth and smell the clean scent as he washes my feet. I want the chance to once again refuse to go along with the angry mob shouting, “Crucify him!” and to sit at the foot of the cross and feel the weight of it. I want to grieve for my sin and the sin of my people. I want to grieve for the suffering of my savior. And I want my heart to explode on Easter morning with the awe, the joy, the unimaginable truth of the resurrection.

At our church we always end Palm Sunday with a reading of the passion narrative. We do it because otherwise, so many people who can’t join us for Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, would jump right from the joy of the procession to the joy of Easter.  And it didn’t happen that way. It doesn’t happen that way. The way to life, to light, to joy is made through suffering. If we didn’t read both the palm and passion narratives, we also would miss the juxtaposition of the two crowds in Jerusalem. One shouting “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” The other shouting “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Which crowd would I have been in? Were there people who shouted both things? What changed between Sunday and Friday?

Today’s challenge is to write about something you feel strongly about. Argue for it, praise it’s positives, for 3 minutes. Then turn around and argue against it for 3 minutes. Finally, for 3 minutes, report on it as a journalist. Try to be as neutral as possible. Why do you love it? Why do you hate it? What would it look like to observe with no strong feelings? Maybe we can identify with those crowds a bit better after this exercise.

Here’s my 3 minutes for, against, and neutral on whether or not Jesus should be crucified.

This man Jesus has caused trouble from the very beginning. He showed up after forty days in the desert of all places and started preaching like he was a well-schooled rabbi and not a carpenter’s son. I’ve never listened to him teach that he doesn’t challenge and question the religious leaders at every turn. Who does he think he is? The final straw was the day I heard him say to a man before he was healed, “Your sins are forgiven.” Everyone knows only God can forgive sins. This week when I saw those crowds gathered along the road, waving their palm branches, laying down their cloaks as he entered the city, shouting “Hosanna!” to this imposter on a donkey, treating him like a king, I knew it had to be put to a stop. He’s leading people astray. The stability of our city and the future of our faith requires that we put this blasphemous fool to death.

Jesus is the most amazing teacher I have ever heard. He takes things the rabbis have always taught, but I understand them like never before. His voice puts me at rest, and his eyes. His eyes are kind, and they twinkle. How could anyone not trust him? I once saw a blind man touched by Jesus and afterward he could see.  Another time, a paralyzed man was lowered right into the room where I was listening to Jesus talk, and that man left on his own two feet carrying his mat. And not only that, Jesus forgave his sins.  It was the most powerful thing I’ve seen, the change in that man. I feel a change in me when I’m with him, too. Now religious leaders are starting to be more aggressive with him. Jesus himself says he’s going to have to die. It’s unthinkable. How could anyone but the most brutish power-hungry animal nail such gentleness, such wisdom, such truth to a cross?

I’ve been following the crowds following Jesus for a long while now. There is no denying his teaching draws the multitudes. Many in the crowds tell me it’s his honest, humble approach that speaks to them. Some who have been close to him tell me there’s an inexplicable peace that comes over them when they’re with Jesus. He’s not popular with everyone, though. You can see on the scowling faces of many religious leaders that they do not like everything he has to say. As time has gone on, they raise more and more questions to him. Recently it sounds as if they wish to trap him somehow. He certainly does not follow all their codes. I’ve seen him allow a scandalous woman to empty an entire alabaster jar of perfume over his feet and dry it with her hair in a room full of Pharisees. I’ve seen him kneel like a common servant and wash his own disciples’s feet. I’ve observed him leaving the home of a tax collector and sitting on the side of a well in the controversial region of Samaria, talking to a woman. So it is no surprise that this week, some grieve and some rejoice at the news that the Roman Governor, Pilate, allowed the crucifixion of this anything but ordinary man. 

This exercise is good because it forces you to think from different points of view, something we don’t encourage enough in our culture.  I can’t imagine ever arguing passionately for the death of anyone, but I can imagine being a neutral bystander, just letting it unfold and somehow thinking it doesn’t affect me, the way I watch so many sad events around the world. We don’t have to be passionate about, can’t be passionate about everything. But on somethings we can’t remain neutral either. I’m reminded of that every Holy Week. Jesus isn’t just some interesting historical figure, and I don’t want to be a bystander in what he’s doing in this world. So maybe I’ll let go of my hang ups about palm branches, and focus my energy on the one for whom we wave them.

What do you feel strongly about? Can you make yourself be for, against and neutral about it for just three minutes? Let me hear from you at shannon@lifeprompted.com !