You can get whiplash on this Sunday. We go from palms to passion, from glory to grief, from cheers to jeers, from triumph to tragedy, from joy to despair, from “hosanna” to “crucify him,” from praise to crucifixion in the seeming blink of an eye. What is going on here? Why can’t we just stay in the “Palm Sunday” moment? It must have been great for Jesus to feel for at least a little while some of the good vibrations, some of the positive strokes, some of the high fives that had been absent in his life. It would be easy to stay in the happy times. But the liturgy doesn’t let us. We almost can’t catch our breath to celebrate Palm Sunday before we are plunged into the passion, into the suffering, into the harsh reality that confronted Jesus too soon after the triumphal entry.
The liturgy takes us on the roller coaster because this day is not a mere memory of what happened to Jesus in the long ago and far away. Rather, we are meant to put the events of Jesus’ life in the present tense. We participate by asking ourselves how we would have stood as Jesus moved from Palm Sunday to the trial and crucifixion. With what character in the narrative do I identify myself? The distribution of palms in church may too quickly assure me that I would have been among the crowd that hailed Jesus appreciatively. I’m one of the Jesus people, right? Of course I would have been at his side. But the challenge of the liturgy is that chances are I might have been among the disciples who fled from danger, abandoning him, denying him.
So this whirlwind of a day is the occasion to find God no matter is going on. How tempting it is to imaging that God is with me in my Palm Sunday moments. When things are going well, when the Doctor says I’m cured, when there is still some money in the account after paying the bills, when people act normal when the family gets together – at times like that we easily recognize the blessing of God’s presence. But what about those other moments, those Gethsemane moments when you beg God to change what you are going through, those Sanhedrin moments when you feel judged and disrespected, those Golgotha moments when you feel abandoned, deserted, betrayed, those Calvary moments of ultimate loss – where is God in that?
Palm Sunday invites us to find God in all things. Jesus was just as much the Son of God when he was being honored and praised by the crowd as he was when he was mocked and jeered. God was just as much with him in the “Hosanna to the Son of David” as he was crying out “My God, why have you abandoned me?” And our story is similar. God abides with us no matter how things seem to be going. We can relish God’s bounty in the good times and we can rely on God’s mercy in the bad times. But at all times we can trust in God. Palm Sunday exhibits a kaleidoscope of emotions because such in the reality of life.
