How did I never notice this before?
Palms, expensive oils, jealousy, and incitement of violence in the Palm Sunday readings
I know, I’m probably the last to make these connections, but who knows? Maybe not. Maybe they’ll be as striking to you as they were to me, standing behind the piano for two Gospel readings this weekend.
1. People cut branches off trees.
Maybe this is less a culture shock for people who live in warm climates—people who live with palm trees. But for a girl from Deciduous Tree Zone, palm branches are exotic. It only just this weekend occurred to me that, like everything else in Scripture, the “accidentals” are drawn from what is normal and everyday for that culture. If the Gospels had played out in central Missouri, it might have been cedar branches. Or huge sycamore leaves.
And while this seems kind of a toss-off thing to notice, I think it’s important that we remember that the things we consider sacred to worship are all drawn from the ordinary. First, because we need to see the sacred in our own ordinaries. And second, because it’s a good reminder that those physical symbols we use are not, in and of themselves, uniquely holy. They’re just the things that were at hand when the Church was founded. Sometimes we get too attached to “but it’s always been this way!”
2. “Why has there been this waste? It could have been sold to feed the poor.”
This is an argument that persists right up to this very day. Even within my family, people grouse about expensive church renovations and the high price of the things used in worship. All that artwork in the Vatican museum! How many people could THAT feed?
As someone who does see a problem in social justice, I have struggled with this as well.
But as a musician, composer, and writer, I’m also excruciatingly aware that by and large, throughout history the arts have only been a sustainable living for people when very rich people and churches acted as their patrons.
Those who make stained glass and mosaics and artisan crafts for a worship space are expressing gifts given by God to specific people, meant to enrich the world. And artists (and musicians, hint hint) need a living wage, just as the poor do. How to reconcile these two realities?
Jesus’ response to this controversy runs by so quickly, buried in the big picture of nails and thorns and beatings and suffocation. But it’s there, and it’s a reminder that Jesus affirmed the good of “squandering” money in the service of God.
3. Testimony that didn’t agree.
Until Sunday morning, I never connected this to that Old Testament requirement that two witnesses had to testify before a person could be convicted. It was The Chosen that made that click. At the end of season 3, Shmuel & co. are trying to desperately to get two people to say the same thing so they can arrest Jesus for heresy. That small emphasis in the TV show made that reality in the Passion—words I’ve heard every Palm Sunday and Good Friday for 49 years—leap out of the narrative this weekend. They brought Jesus in and called witnesses because the law required two people to agree. In the daily readings last week, Susannah was saved because her persecutors gave conflicting testimony.
So when the high priest asks Jesus if he is the Christ and he says “I am,” the priest’s reaction— “What need have we of further witnesses?”—almost certainly contains glee as well as anger causing him to tear his garments. (I mean, who does that? Does that strike anyone as slightly or not-so-slightly performative?)
4. This line, too, stuck out at me this time: “For he knew that it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed him over.”
I’ve always looked at the little anecdote about Barabbas as kind of weird. Why would Pilate ask if they wanted Jesus or Barabbas? They’re the ones who brought Jesus to him in the first place. Why would they ask for his release?
But now it occurs to me there are political layers in this. Rome would have frowned deeply upon the people asking for the release of a revolutionary. It would look to them like a rabble in the process of rousing. Given the choice between getting on Rome’s bad side or releasing the preacher who healed them, why on earth WOULDN’T they pick Jesus?
This is why the comment about Sanhedrin arresting Jesus out of envy is significant. The demand for crucifixion wasn’t a grassroots swell. It was instigated by those in power, who were jealous of Jesus’ popularity.
It didn’t really occur to me until I started writing all this out, but now I have to wonder what, exactly, those jealous authorities said to people to get people to demand Jesus’ crucifixion.
I’ve always just seen this as fickle humanity, waving palm branches before Jesus one day and screaming “kill him” a few days later.
But this little detail, about jealousy and “stirring up” the crowd, makes me wonder if that wasn’t the case at all. What if those religious authorities, people afraid of losing power and influence over the hearts and minds of the faithful, made threats? Threats of “excommunication”? Was there disinformation? Conspiracy theories? Lies told?
Now that I think about it, we in 21st-century America know exactly what it looks like to when a crowd, hyped up on lies and fear of lost power and influence, is instigated to violence.
There’s a lot to ponder in the under-the-radar details of Holy Week.