READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Zechariah 9:9-12
Philippians 2:5-11
- St. Matthew 26:1-27:66
Grace to you and peace. (1 Thess 1)
Jesus speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:
Traditionally, this Sunday of palms is day of confirmation and baptism. Where catechumens have spent the extra time in Lent intensely studying and memorizing God’s Will in Scripture and catechism. And so as not to overshadow the Great Day of Resurrection, our celebration for that would happen today.
For today, we may be dealing with a trail of palm branches, but later this week, we will be following a trail of blood. If you could’ve looked closely at those palms strewn in Jesus’s way, you may have seen tinges of red here and there, for in Jesus’s human nature, He sweats drops of blood in anticipation of His crucifixion.
Now we all assume that it was palm branches thrown about on that Palm Sunday, but the only Evangelist that tells us this is St. John, who’s account we did not hear today. And palms are what we’ll focus on today, because first, we want to know what all these palm branches are doing in our church this morning, and second, what all these palm branches have to do with me and my faith.
In trying to determine how to celebrate Palm Sunday, we may think that the best idea is just to imitate and ape what we hear in the Bible, in a nice, sanitized way of course: a children’s play or musical.
We hear St. John say “palm branches” and immediately run to
the flower shop and buy some. This makes sense to a point, but where are your
cloaks? Where are your Apostles? Where are your persecutors?
The Church has not lasted thousands of years by merely copying biblical actions, just because they’re in there. There is more to the palms than you think, and it begins with a celebration of freedom and victory.
The Feast of Booths is one of three proscribed festivals that required a pilgrimage to the Temple. The people were commanded by the Lord in Leviticus 23 to celebrate this feast for 7 days, by living in booths, topped with branches from different trees, which included palms. All in order “that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt” (v. 43).
So important was this festival that it not only included no working and a pilgrimage of varying distances, but this is the first festival of the Lord where He commands His people to rejoice (Lev 23:40). Now, you must remember that, at this time, Jesus was also in a Booth, though the Bible calls it a tabernacle, and even when the Jews took Israel, He didn’t get His own house until Solomon became king, 480 years after the Exodus and 400-some years after everyone got their own home in the Promised Land, first.
So we have a decorated booth with palm branches and no house for God. Yet when God’s House is finally built (smaller than the palace, I might add), Solomon is directed to decorate it in this way:
“For the entrance to the inner sanctuary he made doors of olivewood; the lintel and the doorposts were five-sided. He covered the two doors of olivewood with carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers. He overlaid them with gold and spread gold on the cherubim and on the palm trees.
So also he made for the entrance to the nave doorposts of olivewood, in the form of a square, and two doors of cypress wood. The two leaves of the one door were folding, and the two leaves of the other door were folding. On them he carved cherubim and palm trees and open flowers, and he overlaid them with gold evenly applied on the carved work” (1 Kings 6:31-35).
He also decorated the baptismal fonts the same way (1 Ki 7:36). All of this to say that the Temple will be decorated, and it will be decorated with palms. Even True Jerusalem, which Ezekiel describes in chapters 40 and 41 of his book, has palm trees all over the place.
Thus, when we get to Palm Sunday and Holy Week, we find Jesus’s way littered with Palm branches. But this is still not enough, because the palms are supposed to be in or on the Temple and in the progression of this week, that happens.
Jesus is the true Temple, as He says, and He is decorated with palms, too, but these palms are the rods and reeds of sinners, which pile upon Him violent wounds. They inscribe upon Him the wounds of our salvation. From St. Matthew 27:30 “And they spat upon him, and took the reed and smote him on the head.”
The palms that decorate for victory on Sunday, continue to decorate the true Temple with wounds as He prepares to accomplish eternal victory and freedom upon the cross. Just as Israel and the Lord dwelt in the booths of the wilderness, so does God make His own tabernacle in being made man, decorating it with the sins of the world, razing Him to the ground, to the tomb, and rising again to eternal life, never to perish again.
In this way, the Church does not simply have a new party favor or church art in the palms. what we hold in our hands today are one of the very means our Savior used to pay for your sins and secure your position at His side for all eternity. What you hold in your hand was one of the instruments that it pleased almighty God to use for His own torture and humiliation, and His own exaltation.
In fact, in the Greek word for palm is the word for victory. So it is that once again, what we find in God’s Church is more than meets the eye and much more than the world could even imagine. For, even though there is not magical quality to these palm branches, yet they still are able to convey to us the Gospel of Jesus Christ fairly clearly.
Not only that, but they are also able to transport us to that Palm Sunday with Jesus. Though we were not there and though the same thing does not happen today, we still have in our midst the path of palms, the “Hosannas”, and the ever-living, resurrected King, come to commune with His people in His Body and Blood.
See how our Old Testament makes sense now! Our King is humble. He humiliates Himself with palm branches which He created, and allows them to strike Him, unleashing His Blood which sets the prisoners free.
So also our Epistle. Our humble King is highly exalted by His humiliation. The suffering and death of God made man, Jesus Christ, is the reason His Name is above every name. Though the palms should be bowing to Him, He bows to their blows. Though we should be serving Him, He comes to serve and give Himself as a ransom for many.
When the palms appear in our hands, our sin is revealed to us. We are the ones who struck the blow to God, humiliating Him on the cross. But it please our Lord to do just such a thing in order that we believe and confess His great love in accomplishing all things for us. Even death on a cross, that we would be brought into the true Temple, Body and Blood, by His Baptism.
Jesus speaks to you on this day from His Gospel heard, saying:
“But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man
seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
Traditionally, this Sunday of palms is day of confirmation and baptism. Where catechumens have spent the extra time in Lent intensely studying and memorizing God’s Will in Scripture and catechism. And so as not to overshadow the Great Day of Resurrection, our celebration for that would happen today.
For today, we may be dealing with a trail of palm branches, but later this week, we will be following a trail of blood. If you could’ve looked closely at those palms strewn in Jesus’s way, you may have seen tinges of red here and there, for in Jesus’s human nature, He sweats drops of blood in anticipation of His crucifixion.
Now we all assume that it was palm branches thrown about on that Palm Sunday, but the only Evangelist that tells us this is St. John, who’s account we did not hear today. And palms are what we’ll focus on today, because first, we want to know what all these palm branches are doing in our church this morning, and second, what all these palm branches have to do with me and my faith.
In trying to determine how to celebrate Palm Sunday, we may think that the best idea is just to imitate and ape what we hear in the Bible, in a nice, sanitized way of course: a children’s play or musical.
The Church has not lasted thousands of years by merely copying biblical actions, just because they’re in there. There is more to the palms than you think, and it begins with a celebration of freedom and victory.
The Feast of Booths is one of three proscribed festivals that required a pilgrimage to the Temple. The people were commanded by the Lord in Leviticus 23 to celebrate this feast for 7 days, by living in booths, topped with branches from different trees, which included palms. All in order “that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt” (v. 43).
So important was this festival that it not only included no working and a pilgrimage of varying distances, but this is the first festival of the Lord where He commands His people to rejoice (Lev 23:40). Now, you must remember that, at this time, Jesus was also in a Booth, though the Bible calls it a tabernacle, and even when the Jews took Israel, He didn’t get His own house until Solomon became king, 480 years after the Exodus and 400-some years after everyone got their own home in the Promised Land, first.
So we have a decorated booth with palm branches and no house for God. Yet when God’s House is finally built (smaller than the palace, I might add), Solomon is directed to decorate it in this way:
“For the entrance to the inner sanctuary he made doors of olivewood; the lintel and the doorposts were five-sided. He covered the two doors of olivewood with carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers. He overlaid them with gold and spread gold on the cherubim and on the palm trees.
So also he made for the entrance to the nave doorposts of olivewood, in the form of a square, and two doors of cypress wood. The two leaves of the one door were folding, and the two leaves of the other door were folding. On them he carved cherubim and palm trees and open flowers, and he overlaid them with gold evenly applied on the carved work” (1 Kings 6:31-35).
He also decorated the baptismal fonts the same way (1 Ki 7:36). All of this to say that the Temple will be decorated, and it will be decorated with palms. Even True Jerusalem, which Ezekiel describes in chapters 40 and 41 of his book, has palm trees all over the place.
Thus, when we get to Palm Sunday and Holy Week, we find Jesus’s way littered with Palm branches. But this is still not enough, because the palms are supposed to be in or on the Temple and in the progression of this week, that happens.
Jesus is the true Temple, as He says, and He is decorated with palms, too, but these palms are the rods and reeds of sinners, which pile upon Him violent wounds. They inscribe upon Him the wounds of our salvation. From St. Matthew 27:30 “And they spat upon him, and took the reed and smote him on the head.”
The palms that decorate for victory on Sunday, continue to decorate the true Temple with wounds as He prepares to accomplish eternal victory and freedom upon the cross. Just as Israel and the Lord dwelt in the booths of the wilderness, so does God make His own tabernacle in being made man, decorating it with the sins of the world, razing Him to the ground, to the tomb, and rising again to eternal life, never to perish again.
In this way, the Church does not simply have a new party favor or church art in the palms. what we hold in our hands today are one of the very means our Savior used to pay for your sins and secure your position at His side for all eternity. What you hold in your hand was one of the instruments that it pleased almighty God to use for His own torture and humiliation, and His own exaltation.
In fact, in the Greek word for palm is the word for victory. So it is that once again, what we find in God’s Church is more than meets the eye and much more than the world could even imagine. For, even though there is not magical quality to these palm branches, yet they still are able to convey to us the Gospel of Jesus Christ fairly clearly.
Not only that, but they are also able to transport us to that Palm Sunday with Jesus. Though we were not there and though the same thing does not happen today, we still have in our midst the path of palms, the “Hosannas”, and the ever-living, resurrected King, come to commune with His people in His Body and Blood.
See how our Old Testament makes sense now! Our King is humble. He humiliates Himself with palm branches which He created, and allows them to strike Him, unleashing His Blood which sets the prisoners free.
So also our Epistle. Our humble King is highly exalted by His humiliation. The suffering and death of God made man, Jesus Christ, is the reason His Name is above every name. Though the palms should be bowing to Him, He bows to their blows. Though we should be serving Him, He comes to serve and give Himself as a ransom for many.
When the palms appear in our hands, our sin is revealed to us. We are the ones who struck the blow to God, humiliating Him on the cross. But it please our Lord to do just such a thing in order that we believe and confess His great love in accomplishing all things for us. Even death on a cross, that we would be brought into the true Temple, Body and Blood, by His Baptism.
No comments:
Post a Comment