Palm Sunday as Protest

This Sunday we will celebrate the beginning of Holy Week with Palm Sunday, including the Liturgy of the Palms. For this liturgy, we start outside in the churchyard, where we hear the story of Jesus’ triumphant entrance into Jerusalem as people waved palms and threw down their coats like a tapestried red carpet. On Sunday, we will reenact this procession together. We are remembering – not just recalling but re-membering – the story in an embodied way.

But the truth is, oftentimes the palm processional can feel awkward, even for longtime church-goers. We are called to wave branches and shout the well-known but perhaps not well-understood phrase, “Hosannah in the highest!” The liturgy can fall flat as people can’t quite decide how we’re supposed to show up for this part of the service. There is this gap between the liturgy and the people coming together to celebrate that liturgy. So what do we do?

At that original procession, the cry of “Hosannah in the highest!” was a declaration of joy…and resistance. The people believed their messiah had finally arrived and that messiah was Jesus. An answer to the people’s prayers and a rejection of the Empire that controlled them. In our own time, we might think of people who stand in line for hours to attend a rally for a political candidate. Or fans crowded outside of a concert or after a Broadway play, waiting for a glimpse of their favorite artist.

Another contemporary example would be a protest, an organized action to highlight injustice and call for change. If you’ve been to a protest, you know there are no halfhearted mutters or shuffling feet marches. People are loud and connected and hopeful even while being angry or scared. There’s more connection here to those Judeans 2,000 years ago than we might realize. What would happen to our procession if we saw Palm Sunday as a protest?

Join Rev. Sarah in the Parish House to talk more about the original context of Palm Sunday and how we might translate it to our own.