We ought to call it “Leafy Branch Sunday” or “Cloak Sunday,” for there is no mention of palms. And those leafy branches weren’t being waved around – people were placing them on the road before the colt that carried Jesus through the streets. People even put their cloaks on the colt, and on the road the colt would walk on. So revered was Jesus in this moment, people didn’t even want the hooves of the beast on which he rode to touch the ground:
“Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.”
In just a few days, we will see this same man whose feet were too holy to touch the ground walking these streets, bloodied and bruised, ground into the mud by the weight of the cross beam he must now carry. How did the people go from excessive reverence to contempt in such a short time?
The human success of Jesus’ earthly ministry reaches its apotheosis in the Palm Sunday story. And maybe the very over-the-top frenzy of adulation directed toward Jesus helped to fuel the degradation he endured later that week. We do like to put people on pedestals, and then watch them topple down.
But Jesus wasn't here for human success. He had his heart and mind set on a victory that would be impossible to explain to those who knew him best. I can only imagine how dislocating this event must have been for him.
It’s hard to know where to place ourselves in this story, especially in worship on Palm Sunday, when we make this transition from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify him!” in a matter of minutes, not days. Each year, we might find ourselves in a different place in the story, and in a different relationship to the man at its center.
I wish I could meet this Jesus for the first time. I wish I could feel the zeal and the love I’ve seen in people who have more recently come to know him. Even in my own prayer life, my experience of Jesus is domesticated and muted. He is too familiar – and not well enough known – to engage my feelings the way I wish.
How might I experience the reverence of those who spread their cloaks on the road? I don’t think Episcopal fussiness about what we do with the consecrated wine counts. I believe we need to get back in touch with the God-ness of this man who came to make God knowable. It’s a hard balance to find. Jesus didn’t want to be on a pedestal, or on the back of a colt. I believe he wants us to have tea with him in the ordinariness of our lives. And yet, this one who invites us to make ourselves known intimately to him, to speak the desires of our heart and confess our blemishes, is God!
I will begin by adding back some reverence into my spiritual practice – the consecrating of the time, the lighting of the candle, the closing of the Ipad (which is hard if that’s where you’re reading the daily office…), the focus on gratitude.
Jesus doesn’t need our hosannas, I don’t think, but I do believe he wants us to be real, "uncloaked," if you will. Maybe laying our cloaks on the road before him is a way of letting him know us fully, as we truly are.
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