Palms or Nails

Sermon

One Palm Sunday commentator used an unusual metaphor to unpack the mixed bag that was Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem: bagpipes. Writer Brian Maas tells of being called to a congregation whose tradition it was to have bagpipes lead the palm parade into the sanctuary. Although I enjoy bagpipes, I’ve never thought of them as using an indoor voice. My affection for bagpipes was called into question once at a presbytery meeting when one of my colleagues dismissed them as merely gang weaponry. If you saw Braveheart, you might remember the Scots’ use of bagpipes to unnerve the hated English. But gang weapons? Then there are all those Presbyterian funerals at which bagpipes express lament on behalf of the congregation. The aforementioned commentator fleshes out his bagpipe metaphor, noting that the pipes convey the “colliding narratives and competing themes” of Palm Sunday.

Which is Bible-geek gibberish for saying it’s a slippery slide from palms to nails in less than a week. Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg don’t suggest there were bagpipes that first Palm Sunday. Drawing on historical records, they cast Jesus’ parade as an alternative to the official state-sanctioned parade Rome used annually to intimidate the Jewish population as they gathered in Jerusalem for the celebration of the Passover liberation story. The crowd’s response to Jesus’ entry, scholars agree, was ambiguous (“colliding narrative and competing theme”).

It was a chaotic messianic entry, heavy on the “mess.” The parade threatened a delicate and tense balance of power between Israel and Rome. For many it was jubilant. For some it anticipated the grief played out for them every year as a captive and scattered people whose religion had been coopted. For the urbanites, tasked with keeping up their end of Pax Romana, the unwashed mob from the sticks was scary. Like bagpipes, there seemed to be no modulation, no toning them down. And even moderately educated Jews knew that the hoped-for Messiah would not arrive with tanks and banners and marching bands (as Rome was doing on the other side of town), but the Messiah would be in the first-century equivalent of a used delivery van. Given the contrast between the two parades, given what happened just five short days later, it’s hard to say whether palms or nails were more appropriate props for the day.

Jerusalem was supposed to be the holy dwelling of the Most High, but it currently served as the place where the wheels of Roman oppression and exploitation were greased by Israel’s religious and political elite. By the time Jesus arrived at the city gates, the mob was cheering. Fortunately, most Roman overlords didn’t understand enough Aramaic to know that “Hosanna!” was resistance talk. But how long before someone translated it for them? How many in that mob were agitating for home rule? How many just wanted revenge against Rome and its cronies for their atrocities? How many were willing to push the limits if there was something in it for them?

Feelings were running high. Change was in the air. Perhaps the Romish elite sneered at the audacity of this miserable little mob when Israel itself was so divided politically and religiously, so scattered across the known world. Pax Romana could squash them like a bug. It would as if a former Soviet bloc satellite country, with only a goofball comedian for a leader, would have the gall and temerity to exert their independence and resist Russia’s war machine. Or a mob trying to keep ballots from being counted. Rome had arranged things with Israel’s religious elite to do the heavy lifting of enforcing the peace. Although Rome’s parade proclaiming Caesar as LORD was blasphemy, Jesus’ parade was sedition. Here’s your Sophie’s choice: do you greet Jesus with a palm or a nail?

It would be so easy to paint the palm wavers as the good guys, and the nail grabbers (Temple elite, urban sophisticates, collaborators) as the bad guys. But it really isn’t that easy. We’re told it was the nice neighborly types who supported the Nazis in Germany. We’re told that it was the gracious religious sort who owned slaves in the South. We’re told that it’s the churchgoers who invented Jim Crow laws and three-strikes-and-you’re-out sentences. Nice people, doing what they can to preserve order. As do we. Palms or nails?

As story props, palms are not universally good, nor are nails universally bad. The people waving those palms may have been begging God for help or maybe they were sick to death of others reaping the benefits of Pax Romana and wanted in on it. Nails? They’re useful when you’re trying to build something or repair what’s broken, but on Friday they’re gonna be torture. It may be only post-modern slang usage that gives you “Nailed it!” when you get Wordle on the first try. Or when you urge the committee to stop the chatter and just “nail it down.” Don’t blame the humble nail for the violence of Good Friday. It’s like that slogan, “Guns don’t kill people; people do.”

This Sunday’s parade pivots so quickly from a raucous resistance march to ugly betrayal and execution. As if violence is the answer, palms are quickly traded in for nails. I can’t remember the last time my fire station flew its flag at full staff for an entire week. More often than not, it’s at half-staff out of respect for dead children. Did you know that the leading cause of death for children in the U.S. is not virus- or bacteria-borne? Since 2020, the leading cause of death for children in our country is bullets. It’s not only school shootings. The bullets come at home and in community, they come as homicides, accidents, suicides. Since the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, several online sources have simply listed the names of the schools where mass shootings have taken place in the last twenty years. The number is overwhelming. There has got to be another alternative to this than flags at half-mast. Is it palms or nails? All I know is, violence is not the answer.

Delores S. Williams was a womanist theologian and Presbyterian clergywoman. She was clear that cross atonement theology is not about “being saved from depravity and damnation.” For her, the cross’ atonement is about “being healed and empowered.” When we come to this table for the Lord’s Supper, we proclaim Christ’s saving life, death, and resurrection. Violence is not the answer; life is. If “hosanna” means “Lord, save!” can we use both our palms and our nails to receive and then USE that salvation? Is our faith all “yay, God!” and no “healed to be a healer, empowered to empower others”?

My favorite Palm Sunday scripture is Philippians 2: “ Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” In Biblish, we call that self-emptying kenosis. The Greek word we translate as “slave” is the word from which we got “doula.” Jesus took the form of a midwife, a doula. A slave. As you choose your response to the events of this week, I invite you to listen for your call to midwife another, the call to help another live into the fullness of life as God intends. Whether by ensuring their housing, or feeding them, by advocating for their meaningful work, by making healthcare accessible to all, by addressing gun violence. How empty (how much kenosis) do you need to be to doula? After you receive the bread and cup today, you will be invited to pick up a nail to take home. Let that nail be your invitation to kenosis, to midwifing. Let it help you “have the same mind as Christ.”

Oscar Romero knew something about kenosis. He was buried on Palm Sunday, 1980, having been shot at the altar the week before as he celebrated Mass. He defines kenosis as peace:

“Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.”