Reflections for Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday
Luke 19:28-40
The following are archived reflections from our contributors:
Palms, Permaculture, and the Passion by Ragan Sutterfield (2019)
Last Fall, I spent ten intensive days studying permaculture with Chris Grataski–a theologically astute, justice driven, ecological designer. Sitting with a group of students around folding tables in a cramped upstairs classroom in my church, we had our minds opened to a whole new way of thinking about life and human relationships with the whole of creation. Chris offered many definitions of permaculture, but the most robust, if my notes serve me, was this: “Permaculture is a principled design discipline concerned with the cultivation of high-biodiversity human habitats where the needs and desires of the human community are met through serving the needs and desires of the non-human community.”
Chris went on to reflect theologically about the nature of the permaculture design philosophy, arguing that it is essentially kenotic, and more that, there is an underlying kenotic nature to the whole of creation. If we seek to serve our own ends, we end up with a world that is depleted and diminished; if we seek to make room for the life of others, for their own flourishing, then we will join in wholeness that is also health–our own humanity will come into its fullness.
I thought about Chris’s teachings and the permaculture design philosophy, as I began to explore the scriptures for this Palm Sunday. It is a strange Sunday for many of us, mixing two liturgical traditions into one. We have the “Liturgy of the Palms” with Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem in celebration of Palm Sunday. Then, by the end of the service, we’ve moved to Christ’s passion in advance of Good Friday. How do we make sense of the whiplash of this Sunday? How do we preach at the intersection of Jesus the god/king come to set the world right and Jesus the suffering human who feels all of the abandonment and alienation of human life? The inclusion of the kenosis hymn of Philippians in the Revised Common Lectionary is a gift that provides us with a key for understanding.
I’ve found Sarah Coakley’s essay “Kenosis and Subversion,” to a be a great help in discerning the meaning of the kenotic act of Christ. In answering the objections of some feminist critics of the idea of self-emptying, Coakley agrees that there are parts of the tradition that “insidiously fuel masculinist purposes, masculinist vision of the subduing of the weaker by the stronger.” She means here particular ways in which early theologians understood the relationship of Christ’s divinity to Christ’s humanity.
To return to our agricultural metaphors, this idea reflects the practice of industrial agriculture. In industrial agriculture, the landscape is simply a place to play out human vision. Marshes are drained, creeks rerouted, rivers damned, hills made plane. It is human vision and mind that forms the earth, shaping and crafting it to human ends.
This is not unlike the view of Christ’s nature that “teetered towards the ‘docetic’” in Coakley’s reading; a view that saw Christ’s humanity as a thing more of appearance than actual weakness or limit, a view that saw his Passion as something more pretended than actual. It is as though the human body Christ occupied were simply a tool for a very present divine puppetry not unlike the landscape simply being a tool for industrial agriculture’s mix of chemicals and engineered seeds.
This dominating strain is also in view, I think, in the celebrations of the people during Jesus’s triumphal entry. While Jesus rode into Jerusalem as a deliberate sign of the servant king he is, it seems that some of the people saw him instead as a conquering warrior god/king who would vanquish the agents of oppression through violence. That Jesus failed to live into this vision offers much for our understanding of the whiplash that comes with the quick move to Christ’s Passion.
In the Passion we see the fullness of Christ’s kenotic form of life, the most poignant expression of his vulnerability. Though he could obviously have saved himself as voices from the crowd call for him to do, Jesus refuses the control and power of such an action, choosing instead to live into the full fragility of human life, even the suffering that brought ultimate alienation. In doing so, Jesus opened for us the possibility of new life, that our own minds might be as Christ’s own.
A permaculture garden, or farm, is a place of diversity, attention, and care. It is a place of continual work and astonishment that embraces the power of vulnerability. It is also a place of patience, which seems to be a common trait of all non-coercive paths. But when it begins to work, when the relationships of plants and animals, water and soil, that have been carefully cultivated begin to live into their flourishing, it is a far more resilient ecosystem than anything industrial agriculture could imagine.
In the kenotic path of Christ, we see such a path of resilience and more than resilience. In Christ’s powerful vulnerability the possibility of resurrection is opened for us all as we follow the one whose name is above all others, before whom every knee shall bow, not because of his violent victory, but because of his self-emptying vulnerability.
Blessed is the King Who Comes in the Name of the Lord! by Heather Carlson (2013)
Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
These celebratory words plunge us into Palm Sunday pageantry: greens waving, draped cloaks, children processing, and hosannas resounding. Six weeks into Lent, we may be looking for an escape. We hear the cry, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” and we catch a brief glimpse of Jesus as coming king. Finally there is light in the darkness!
The crowds that gathered some 2000 years ago are also relieved; it’s not simply six weeks from which they seek reprieve, but a lifetime (and an ancestry) of heaviness, oppression and fragility. At last Jesus will take hold of Jerusalem! Maybe even a wisp of smugness laces the festivities; finally the powers that reign are going to be put in their place. “That will show those Roman occupiers who our God really is!”
Mixed with our anticipation, we also are prone to gather with a waft of conceit. Unlike the original Palm Sunday crowds, we stand in history after the events of this most Holy Week. We believe Jesus is not only a worthy king, but we know that this humble donkey-rider will conquer even death itself in resurrection. This Biblical crowd has no idea the depth of what lies ahead., but we think we do. So we smile confidently and hurry our children to the aisle to wave a palm branch in celebration.
But what the crowd then, and so often now, seeks to avoid is the truth that “if we follow Jesus into Jerusalem, humiliation and death will follow.”
Because if we really enacted Luke’s gospel text, the next part of our liturgy would have someone stand up and demand the jubilation cease.
Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”
The triumphal entry is cut short as the opposition strikes, and gives voice to the discord. In the chapters that follow we see the Temple cleared, traps laid, fatal betrayal, arrest and crucifixion. Those who are celebrating the Passion liturgy this Sunday will walk through two jam packed chapters of Luke’s gospel. In five short days the triumphant crowds cry has twisted from “Blessed is the king” to an ugly “Crucify Him!”
Then a mighty roar rose from the crowd, and with one voice they shouted, “Kill him…”(Luke 23:18 NLT)
In light of this, what are we to make of this palm parade?
Catherine Gunsalus Gonzalez notes in The Abingdon Women’s Preaching Annual, that the crowd on Palm Sunday “seemed to recognize him. Even during the week, their presence protected him. But we know that their mood changed by Friday. Once Jesus was in the hands of the rulers, once he no longer seemed to have power, then the recognition faded that in this man God was visiting his people…. We like a God who seems ready to do something for us. On Palm Sunday when Jesus seemed powerful, the multitude followed. But when Jesus is Pilate’s prisoner, the same multitude turned away from him and back to the old leaders who again seemed in control.”
It is great to celebrate Palm Sunday when the surroundings are festive, but it’s even more important to sing “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord” when it looks like the powerful are back in charge. When lies and betrayal stock us. When accolades dry up and criticism prevails. When mockery, arrest and death pursue us. When the one we thought would conquer Jerusalem hangs on a cross outside the city gates.
It’s here that our pride can be laid down and we can admit we did not know the cost of our Palm Sunday proclamation.
Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
It cannot be silenced by the opposition. Jesus tells these foes that if the crowds were silent, even the stones would shout out.
In the days ahead may we not relinquish our participation in the persistent refrain.
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
We bless you from the house of the Lord.
The Lord is God,
and he has given us light.
Bind the festal procession with branches,
up to the horns of the altar.
You are my God, and I will give thanks to you;
you are my God, I will extol you.
O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever. (Psalm 118:26-29)