What do palm trees say? (A meditation for Palm Sunday)

Da Paolo Tessione - April 5, 2020

by Byron L. Rohrig

Byron L. Rohrig is pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Indiana.

“A reflection on the meaning of the palm branches with which Jesus was welcomed when he entered Jerusalem. The tradition of shaking the branches is not what we think. "

One year while serving as a pastor of a congregation just outside Indianapolis, I met with a two-member worship committee to plan Holy Week and Easter services. The budget was limited that year. "Is there a way to avoid paying a dollar a palm branch?" I have been asked. I moved quickly to seize the teaching moment.

"Definitely," I said, and explained that only John's Gospel mentions palm trees in connection with Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem, however. Matthew, for example, simply says that people "cut branches from trees". From what trees or shrubs would the people of Pittsboro have cut branches if Jesus had approached the city limits? we asked ourselves. We also considered the deeper question: what are the branches that will come out in early spring? Thus was born the idea of what we could have called "Pussy Willow Sunday".

Happy with our idea, we sat for several moments exchanging satisfied smiles. Suddenly the spell stopped when half the committee asked, "What do the palms say?"

My heart was strangely heated. No question could have brought more joy to a preacher who had spent the previous weeks preaching about the Gospel of John. "When you read John, always be careful to look for a symbolic message behind the story," I repeated several times. Apparently a listener had heard me say that apparently accidental details often indicate deeper truths in John. So the question: what do the palms say?

What we don't read, but we can presume, is that the fringes of John 12: 12-19 that come out to meet Jesus move towards the city gate with the vivid 200-year history of Simon Maccabeus in mind. Maccabeus emerged at a time when the brutal and genocidal Antiochus Epiphanes dominated Palestine. In 167 BC the "abomination of desolation") Antiochus was an apostle of Hellenism and intended to bring his entire kingdom under the influence of the Greek ways. The book of the first Maccabees in the Old Testament Apocrypha testifies to his resolve: “They put to death the women who had circumcised their children, and their families and those who circumcised them; and hung the babies from their mothers neck "(1: 60-61)

Wounded by this outrage, Mattathias, an old priestly man, gathered his five children and all the weapons he could find. A guerrilla campaign was launched against the soldiers of Antiochus. Although Mattathias died early, his son Judah, called Maccabeo (hammer), was able to purify and rededicate the besieged temple in three years thanks to a turn of events that emptied the occupant's army. But the fighting wasn't over. Twenty years later, after Judah and a successor brother, Jonathan, died in battle, a third brother, Simon, took control and through his diplomacy achieved the independence of Judea, establishing what would become an entire century of Jewish sovereignty. Of course, there was a big party. "On the twenty-third day of the second month, in the one hundred and seventy-first year,

Knowing the first maccabees allows us to read the minds of those who shake their palm branches. They are going out to meet Jesus in the hope that he will come to crush and remove another great enemy from Israel, this time Rome. What do the palms say? They say: we are tired of being kicked around, hungry to be number one again, ready to strut once again. Here is our agenda and you look like the man we need. Welcome, warrior king! Ave, conquering hero! The "big crowd" on Palm Sunday recalls another multitude in the Gospel of John. That crowd, 5.000 forts, was miraculously nurtured by Jesus. As the bellies had filled, their expectations were high, like those of the Jerusalem crowd. But “sensing that they were about to come and take him by force and make him king, Jesus withdrew. (John 6:

Like that of the prophets of yesteryear, this was a blatant act designed to bring home the truth of the whole affair: a king bent over in war riding a horse, but one seeking peace rode a donkey. John's crowd was remembering another triumphal entry, what Simon had decreed would be marked each year as a day of Jewish independence. Jesus' mind, however, was on something else:

Rejoice very much, 0 daughter of Zion!

Shout out loud, 0 daughter of Jerusalem!

Behold, your king is coming to you;

he is triumphant and victorious,

humble and riding a donkey,

on a foal the foal of a donkey [Zech. 9: 9].

Palm shakers rightly see the triumph in Jesus, but do not understand it. Jesus came to conquer not Rome but the world. He comes to the holy city not to make death or to evade death, but to meet death with his head held high. It will conquer the world and death itself by dying. Immediately after his triumphal entry, according to John, Jesus clarifies how he will win: “Now is the judgment of this world, now the ruler of this world will be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will attract all men for me "(12: 31-32) His being raised to glory is immediately his being raised on the cross.

We confess our misunderstanding. We too come to the city gates, with the agendas in hand, in the midst of crowds lined up as if Santa Claus was arriving in the city. In a world that routinely attaches maximum value to less than fundamental things, even the faithful are tempted to come up with their wish lists. Our nationalist or consumerist religions preach that keeping the rest of the world scared or guessing while satisfying our seemingly infinite material desires should not be far from the Kingdom of Heaven.

Palms or pussy willows say that such an approach has been taken before, but has been found missing. The glory worthy of the name, the promised glory, will not be found in a new hero, system or political movement. "My kingship is not of this world," says Johannine Jesus (18:36) - who also says of his followers, "I am not of the world" (17:14) The glorification of Jesus comes through an act of self loving love . Life of eternal dimensions is the gift of the here and now for those who believe that this sacrificial One is the Son of God. The swaying branches say that we have misunderstood as his disciples. Our hopes and dreams are too busy for the condemned and dead. And as in the case of the disciples, only the death and resurrection of Jesus will clarify our misunderstanding.