Why did Palm Sunday become Palm-Passion Sunday? It’s really an attempt to go back to the earlier tradition of the church’s worship practice. An ancient text written by a Spanish nun on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, The Travels of Egeria, records a procession with Palms and then the reading of the Passion. It clearly was an opportunity to open the doors to Holy Week, to all of its events, and to all of its significance for us as followers of Jesus Christ. It continues to be that – it opens the doors to a glorious and painful love.
If we walk through those doors the ‘great week’ before us holds keys to understanding who we are and what it means to be followers of Jesus Christ. His triumphal entry quickly turns sour and by Wednesday Jesus is betrayed; traditionally called “spy Wednesday” and the reason why Christians used to fast on that day. He shares the Passover supper with his disciples and gives them a new commandment, mandatum novum, “to love one another as I have loved you,” instituting the ongoing symbol of that love in the Lord’s Supper or ‘Eucharist’ (thanksgiving). Thus we have Maundy Thursday. Then “God’s Friday,” become “Good Friday,” and the day of the cross and its self-giving offering which marks the essence of Christianity. Christ rests in the tomb and, according to tradition, goes to preach to the souls in the netherworld (the clause “he descended into hell” in the Apostles’ Creed refers to this) so that they might be freed. Then comes Easter and the Pasch, the Christian Passover from death to life is completed as God raises Jesus from the dead.
I think one of the reasons we have Palm-Passion Sunday is also because in our day most people don’t get to the middle parts of the week. It goes from Sunday to Sunday. Palms and glorious entrance… “Hosanna to the Son of David!” and then to Resurrection … “He is Risen!” It’s “let’s get to the good part, without all of the other parts” and, quite frankly, it just doesn’t make sense without them. As the Biblical commentator Eugene Boring has said, “When the crowds cry ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ and ‘This is the prophet,’ they use the right words, but they still miss the point. They have all of the notes and none of the music . . . What one social psychologist said of university students is also true of the kingdom. . . . ‘It is possible to make an A+ in the course on ethics and still flunk life.’” [The New Interpreter’s Bible (vol. 8, Matthew), p. 404] This whole course of events only really makes sense if we allow it to effect our lives at their deepest point and transform us into the people God calls us to be – people who live lives of self-giving love, people whose lives give life to others. To not “flunk life,” as a Christian, is to live as Jesus did and that means knowing and understanding how and why he lived.
Palm-Passion Sunday is about a painful and glorious love. The best way to say it is this, that God has loved us until it hurts. God has identified with us, in our weakest and most desperate moments. God knows our temptations. God knows our sufferings. God knows our hurts. God knows what it means to have trust betrayed and relationships broken. God knows and God cares, because God took those into God’s self in Jesus the Christ and transformed them through this painful and glorious love into a new way of intimacy. In Christ we are shown a way of life and love to which all of us are welcomed – if we choose to follow it. Thus Paul tells the Philippians, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. . .” He’s talking about a mind, a heart, a life that is made one with God and shown in the concrete actions of self-giving, unselfish love.
So, why do we celebrate Palm-Passion Sunday? Because we need to remember this painful and glorious love that God has demonstrated for us. There is no better summary of this day or of the week ahead than the great hymn “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” Isaac Watts penned words which show forth the deep meaning of the events of this great and holy week which we begin today. And his closing lines tell us just what our response ought to be – especially if we want to not only ‘ace’ the course, but life as well. “Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.” Walk through the doors of Holy Week, even if it’s while you’re off on Spring Break, and experience this painful and glorious love of God for you