This haunting, beautiful song is a plantation hymn, a song composed by Black enslaved persons in the nineteenth century. It has become a staple in worship services, particularly those of Holy Week, exploring the pain and anguish and deep sadness of Jesus’ suffering - and that of his followers.
The song touches a deep place in the human spirit.
There’s something about it that just pierces through and reaches the tender places inside us in a way only music can - music forged in the furnace of deep suffering and oppression.
If today’s worship service has felt like a bit of a roller coaster to you, you are probably not alone. This Sunday, “Palm/Passion Sunday” is a bit of an odd day. Some of you might remember a time when only the Palm Sunday story was shared on this day -- the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey, that makeshift parade over on the east side of Jerusalem. A moment of joy and celebration. But then the mood shifts. We jump over several chapters containing stories we’ve been reading this Lent, stories of Jesus’ dialogues and conflicts with the authorities. And we get to the natural end of those conflicts: the story of crucifixion. The tone shifts, the celebration quiets. Why would we do this on the same Sunday?
For a long time I believed that this was a sort of recent invention, a mashup of two stories in response to the reality that Good Friday attendance is pretty low these days. As the story goes, the “lectionary people” who plan this sort of thing wanted, rightly, to make sure that more people heard more of the story before Easter. After all, going from the celebration of Palm Sunday to the celebration of Easter skips a pretty important part of the story in between. So they just sort of glommed it all together.
The problem is that’s not actually true, and I’m embarrassed to admit that I learned that about a month ago. It turns out that reading the story of the Passion on this day is a very old practice, and the Palm Sunday only thing is new! When you take a deeper look, there is a deep wisdom in hearing both stories on this day.
They are like two sides of the same coin. On the one hand you have this moment of joy and celebration, and on the other, death and desolation. The story of Jesus being surrounded by an adoring crowd is incomplete without also hearing the story of the crowd calling for his death.
There’s a lot of guesswork about who exactly was in each of these crowds. Were there people in the Palm Parade who later switched teams and called for Jesus’ crucifixion? There’s no evidence and I think it’s unlikely. We do know that there were people who witnessed both events: those twelve men traditionally named as Jesus’ disciples, and as Mark notes, “there were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome….and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.”
If you think it’s a roller coaster hearing both stories today imagine being among those who watched it all play out. But here’s the thing: neither story is complete without the other. We can’t have the Palms without the Passion. You don’t just get to enter into Jerusalem in a parade mocking Roman displays of power and not then be a victim of Romans displays of power. It’s all wrapped up together, and we can are ready to receive the gift of Easter when we can hear those stories together.
And not just hear those stories, but hear our own stories. The most faithful people in both stories were those who showed up for all of it. So often we focus so hard either on the good stuff or all on the bad stuff. As if we can only maintain joy by pretending nothing bad could or would ever happen. Or as if we cannot find joy because there are bad things in our lives and the world.
So much difficulty comes when we believe things are supposed to be a certain way, instead of accepting things as they are. Accepting isn’t the same thing as liking or supporting. It’s just acceptance: this is how it is. I might be able to change it. I might not. But this is how it is. Acceptance allows us to be more present to all aspects of our stories. Many in the crowd on Palm Sunday knew and accepted the great risk Jesus was taking; they shouted and celebrated anyways. And, I imagine, as they watched and grieved Jesus’ death that joyful memory surfaced once more.
This isn’t just in our individual lives. It’s also as a congregation. It simply does not do to have our head in the sands and ignore our challenges, the pain and losses that in many ways have defined this community for decades now, the continued letting go required to discover something new. But neither can we focus everything on “The Problems” and miss the real experiences of joy and celebration among us today. Today! Regardless of what tomorrow may bring.
Our story is only complete when we can show up for all of it. And the story - the story of God’s entrance into human flesh is only complete with the Palms and the Passion, the joy and the sorrow, the hope and the devastation -- all bound up in One Story, the story of this holiest of weeks, the story of our lives and of life itself. Amen.
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