Palm or Christ the King?

This Sunday is the hardest in the Christian year for me to understand. Is it time to celebrate or foreshadow?

The whole dilemma is captured in a Richard Wilbur hymn we sing at Christmas. The words that wreck the celebration are:

And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God’s blood upon the spearhead,
God’s love refused again.

The whole text follows below.

Are we celebrating God’s coming out in Jesus in  Jerusalem or foreshadowing God’s “loved refused,” which we know is imminent? In Sunday School we always celebrated as if there would be no betrayal, denial, trial, conviction and execution.  We closed our eyes to events that would transpire in less than a week.  We did not know how to handle the cruel irony of Jesus proclaimed a king, only to be executed as a king within five days.  But that is what happened in the PG-13 version, or “R” if you watch the Mel Gibson version of Holy Week.

The “stones cry out,” but what are they crying? Are they crying “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”? Or are they crying for the stony hearts of men?

Maybe Holy Week is where we live: between the glory of kingdom come and despair of kingdom refused.  It is not a comfortable place, not unlike the place between quarantine and “all clear,” if that is a reasonable expectation.

It is easier to think of Palm Sunday as a bookend with Easter Sunday. Both ends celebrate a kingdom, one an earthly kingdom, the other heavenly, the promise of a risen Christ.  Maybe we anticipate the Resurrection, because the interim is so tragic and painful. And who could blame us?

Yet we would not forget what it took to get to Easter, what humiliations and torture were suffered within hours of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. We should face the disillusionment and despair that brought Jesus down, because we can see it every day among people we love. Jesus lived it; he understands.

So we wave the banner of hope, still conscious of the opposition, the crosswinds of anger and jealousy that can rip it apart. Palm Sunday is not a one-dimensional holiday, but a moment among many moments in time. We are on our way to Gethsemane and Golgatha en route to the garden of Joseph of Arimathea.  It is all a process.

And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

A Christmas Hymn

by Richard Wilbur

“And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.

And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.”
—St. Luke XIX, 39-40

A stable-lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

This child through David’s city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And lie within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God’s blood upon the spearhead,
God’s love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

Bill Tucker