It's Palm Sunday.
This morning, I found myself thinking about all those Hosannas at the entrance to Jerusalem. Once you let these gospel stories into your heart, they have a tendency to stay for a long time. They shift in meaning; they sharpen and fade. But the basic image remains: Jesus and his disciples, donkey and palm fronds, singing and shouting praise at the "triumphal entry." I remember too, in at least one of the gospel accounts, there is a strange little text in which Jesus says that even if the crowds were silent, the rocks and stones would begin to shout.
But today, I find myself wondering what would the stones say? What are the stones saying if I stop to listen?
The crowds were shouting out their expectation of victory - Jesus as legal King of Jerusalem, Jesus as a just ruler in a time of corruption...shouting their affirmation of hope. But every hope would be dashed. Jesus would not overthrow the government; he would not assume political leadership. In fact, after the triumphal entry, more than at any other moment in the gospels, he just seems annoyed. He overturns the money-changers tables in the temple. He curses a fig tree for not having a ripe fig for him as he passes by. He all but picks a fight with the chief priest and the elders when they question his authority. And he preaches these strange metaphors - trying, I suspect, one more time to tell people what he knew...and, knowing that they wold misunderstand him no matter what. He speaks in riddles about vineyard owners, tax collectors, wedding servants, and coins. He seems bored by questions of whether people will marry in heaven and in something that must have sounded like a rant, he lists off the seven woes - woe to the blind guides, woe to the teachers of the law, woe to hypocrites. He rattles off the signs of the end of the age, and before you know it, he appears to have offended everyone around him so completely - except perhaps the woman with the expensive oil that she poured on his head - so completely alienated everyone that the betrayal of Judas comes as no surprise, Peter's denial seems predictable, and sure enough it all goes downhill so fast - in a few short days.
So why were they shouting Hosanna? These are the same ones, we are taught, who seven days later shout "Crucify him." This morning, it seemed to me that maybe this propensity we have to shout is part of the problem. Maybe we should be a little less willing to jump on in there and say Yea or Nay...Maybe we should just shut up and move on. But, then, as the day wore on, and I finished my taxes (rendering unto Caesar...), I started to think about how tenderly God must love us - if God is love after all. We are so easily charmed, so quick to speak up, so wrong, so in need of a little divine intervention. How could you not love us, even if we are annoying and blind?
I found this little triptych in an old pile of postcards - the title: The Annunciation with Saint Joseph and kneeling donors. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan. I looked at it for a long time before I thought to post it here. (I don't think I am violating any 15th century copyrights; if I am, I will pull the image down.) The longer I looked, the more fond I became of the two donors in the left panel - look at those faces - kneeling and hoping to see in through the open door, across the frames of time, to see Mary and the angel, Joseph and his tools. I like them...these two. I like they way they hope.
Another Palm Sunday, another year of anticipation, another shout of hopeful longing for the coming of whatever comes. Maybe that is what the stones would cry out...bring it on - more time, more life, more death, more of all of it - and save us, help us...one and all, in our ignorance, in our hopeful longing....
Hosanna means: "strictly, a cry expressing an appeal for divine help "save! Help, we pray!" According to Wikipedia (the non-definitive source!). I ought to say it every day. And, if I tell the truth, I do. No matter what I hope for, or long for, or think I know or understand - at center...Hosanna.
Love you - and miss you.
Amanda
