Sermon April 13 2025 – Palm Sunday Elbows Up       Rev. Betsy Hogan

So it’s been a few years now since I began to think about Palm Sunday differently.

Because I’d always found its annual observance in the church, and all its annual ritual, to be a bit bewildering. 

Not just in the sort of buttoned-up Canadian context which still bears the significant marks of its buttoned-up British provenance… which makes enthusiastically waving palm branches above our heads, at church where people might see us, only slightly less alarming than running naked through the streets –

But also more generally. Because why annually observe Palm Sunday? 

Why annually re-enact the great triumphant arrival of Jesus into Jerusalem, with its joyous cheering crowds? Why annually re-enact the actual joyous cheering and the whole palm-branch-waving celebrating –

When we know quite well that the vast majority of them were cheering the arrival of a kind of Messiah that Jesus wasn’t. And that within a mere week they’d all realize it – that he arrived bearing love and not an intent to crush their enemies – and they’d turn on him.

It always seemed to me to be a bewilderingly odd place to put ourselves. Annually. Cheering with the crowds who missed the point. 

It seemed to me not just strange, but actually somewhat manipulative. As though the Early Church Fathers, and the generations of church theologians who followed them, needed for us to feel implicated in that guilt.

Needed for us to identify with those traitorious crowds. Needed for us to feel that identification in our bodies, in our own physical waving of palms, so that we’d doubt our own faithfulness. And miserably concede that we’d probably missed the point too. 

Even if we didn’t. Not that we’re perfect, as we’re only too aware – but that kind of liturgically-enforced unilateralism, in which the church not only ritually repeated the scene of people missing the point, but made us be those people – 

It really is AT BEST bewildering. IF we’re generous of spirit enough to look away from some pretty unpleasant shadows that I suspect were only too real. 

But these things happen. Meanings get added after the fact. And early church scholars have long established that the observance of Palm Sunday – like many other observances of other Christian festivals – was initially established in order to translate into Christian meaning an indigenous or cultural practice that was already popular.

In the case of Palm Sunday, in the context of the Roman Empire, the Roman festival called the arrival of the tree – a celebration of the Spring Equinox in which branches were paraded through the streets. 

Which would be kind of a perfect fit. Palm Sunday and Easter are associated with Passover, which is itself associated with the spring equinox, so if the church was keen to “christianize” a festival that people really enjoyed instead of trying to get rid of it -- which is how they tended to deal with these things – 

Then turning the Roman “arrival of the tree” into “let’s re-enact Palm Sunday” was pretty much brilliant. If still, notwithstanding that explanation, a little strange on the ground. As we all wave palm branches with “those crowds who cheered… for all the wrong reasons.” 

Which is how I always thought of Palm Sunday. Until a few years ago. 

When I began to wonder whether the real reason Palm Sunday happened was that they all just needed a parade. Like it had really been feeling like a pretty long metaphorical winter, under the oppressive thumb of the Roman Empire, under the oppressive thumb of greed and prejudice and what seems like more and more ugliness, and they needed just the sheer release of a sense of shared hope, and a reason to cheer, and a sort of bonding in joyfulness -- 

And then here comes this Jesus whose teachings and miracles have been amazing and inspiring people all over the country – and it was just the release they needed. 

They all just needed a parade. And then the extra beautiful thing about this story is how much Jesus obviously understood that.

Because where else in the gospels do we see Jesus basically encouraging the crowds to make a huge deal about him? Nowhere. All throughout the gospels what we only ever see about him is humility and not wanting any fuss. His teaching is pointed and his miracles are awe-inspiring, but it's not like we've heard he's been walking around with a sort of circus barker working up the crowds by announcing his every move –

It's always humility, it's always just calm. The point is the message, the point is the healing, the point's always 'this is what love looks like, now go and do likewise'.

And then suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, there's this big production number. There are props he's planned in advance – "go before me to this house and you'll find this colt" – there are cloaks laid down and a whole crowd of extras and they all break into song – and he's THERE for it. All of it.

Never mind humility and bring on the fuss and let all the people say AMEN – because maybe, just maybe, they really just need a parade.

Something random and special and joyful and uplifting. And does it accomplish anything useful? Not a thing. 

Except, who really knows? Because WE can look at the rest of how this week ahead unfolds, and know now just as surely as Jesus knew then that things'll be looking quite different by Thursday night – 

But we don't know -- and maybe Jesus DID – whether that Palm Sunday experience, for all those who for whatever reason that day NEEDED that kind of random joyous abandon of feeling like they were part of something bigger than themselves, whether that Palm Sunday experience in fact DID make a difference for them. If not in the short term, maybe in the long.

Like maybe in the crowd that day were some of the people who in the weeks after the resurrection, as the news spread and the disciples began their own preaching, found themselves paying attention again. Remembering that Palm Sunday parade and how it had spoken to their spirits, made them feel hopeful, given them courage.

Maybe Jesus knew that'd happen. If when they really just needed a parade, there was a parade, and they’d had that sense they weren’t alone.

Not in their fears, not in their weary “onwards against despair,” not in their trying not to look too closely at “things fall apart.” 

Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe they remembered, and found their way back after the resurrection. 

But even if not, just the notion of Jesus understanding – even as he's facing down Holy Week – how much people who are worn out and worn down might just simply need a parade – it's kind of breathtaking.

Because what he invited them into that day was just the essential oxygen of “we are not alone.” Against the powers and principalities. Against the heaviness of fear. Against the weight of more and more greed and prejudice and upsetting ugliness. 

And then they knew. That they weren’t the only ones feeling bowed down.

I found it fascinating, how quickly Mike Myers’ evoking of “elbows up” on Saturday Night Live took off for people. I have to say, I found it equally hilarious, because predictable, how quickly the clergy discourse in which I participate immediately got all worked up about it – because they didn’t know enough about hockey to know that “elbows up” is a defensive move, and not deliberately provocative or aggressive or otherwise not “Christlike”. 

But it immediately took off. We needed a parade, and there it was. We needed to feel like we weren’t alone. We needed to gather in our anxiety and fear with a sense of solidarity so clearly and loudly articulated that even if we were silent, the very stones would cry it out.

I think Jesus understood how much people needed the parade of Palm Sunday, to lift their spirits and make them feel hopeful and give them courage. I think maybe the value of remembering and re-enacting it is the simple value of realizing that there’s nothing new under the sun. 

The weight of fears and anxieties about how things are has always gotten overwhelming for people. It’s always helped to realize we’re not alone. People have always… sometimes needed a parade.

But also this. Parades have always… only been the first spark of the hopeful light breaking through. And that light needs tending and the gentle breath of the spirit to really make it catch.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem when it didn’t catch there. When his gospel of outpouring love, and especially for the poor and most marginalized, wasn’t enough against self-protective greed and prejudice and ugliness. 

But the events of Holy Week and Easter are about this: that it wasn’t crushed. That wherever people are unwilling to allow each other, to allow their poorest and most vulnerable and most despised neighbours, to allow their most cherished values of care and safety and well-being, to be collateral damage – Jesus’ gospel still lives. 

Jesus’ gospel still lives. We know it does. The light shines and it cannot be extinguished and we’ve seen the parades. 

But as Palm Sunday makes only too clear – the light of the gospel needs tending. It needs the gentle breath of the spirit to catch. It needs shelter and it needs protection to really take hold. It needs elbows up. God being our helper. Amen.