Newsletter - 10 April 2022
Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday: I once heard it described as “the Sunday with a split personality.” It begins with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem - a joyful procession with waving palm branches and loud shouts of “Hosana” to welcome “the King who comes in the name of the Lord.” It ends with Jesus’ passion – the King’s cruel death on the cross to mocking shouts of another crowd, “If you are the king, save yourself.”
Why are these two conflicting responses to Jesus remembered on the same Sunday? Could it be the “personality split” is not in the day itself but in our own persons? Poet Malcolm Guite takes this perspective in his sonnet Palm Sunday (from The Word in the Wilderness, A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter).
Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,
The seething holy city of my heart,
The saviour comes. But will I welcome him?
Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;
They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,
And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find
The challenge, the reversal he is bringing
Changes their tune. I know what lies behind
The surface flourish that so quickly fades;
Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,
The hardness of the heart, its barricades,
And at the core, the dreadful emptiness
Of a perverted temple. Jesus, come
Break my resistance and make me your home.
Deacon Ted
Wood ccn
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