Palm Sunday: Christ Rides Among Us
I met my first Palmesel on a trip to the Cloisters Museum in New York when I was in college. This particular palm donkey was a 15th-century creation, and in towns and villages throughout southern Germany these figures held places of honor in Palm Sunday processions. They made tangible the story of Palm Sunday. That day I realized that not all Palm Sunday processions are created equal.
This Palm Sunday one particular verse from the Passion narrative struck me as never before. As Jesus hung on the cross, witnesses taunted him with one bit of sarcasm: “…come down from the cross that we may see and believe.” That’s exactly what Jesus did, and it’s the message that disciples of Jesus have preached ever since.
Psychologists today cite the loneliness that grips so many, but I would suggest that it’s been part of the human experience ever since a sense of the self-conscious arose within us. Saint Augustine was certainly not the first to notice this, but his oft-repeated phrase reminds us of this phenomenon. “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”
Whatever else it may have accomplished, the palm donkey that led processions in medieval Germany was and still is a reminder that Jesus did come down from the cross, and he does walk among us, even today. And if Emmanuel — God With Us is a phrase we recall at the Nativity, it’s consistent with the message of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. It’s our statement of faith that Jesus did come down from the cross, and he invites us to believe. He walks among us today — be it visibly in the faces of the poor and the sick and the wealthy and the powerful; or be it in the stirrings of the sacred that crop up deep inside us. And if it takes a carving of Jesus on a donkey to remind us of that, then so be it.
NOTES
+As is customary, our Palm Sunday procession at Saint John’s Abbey began in the Great Hall, where Abbot Douglas blessed the palms. Unlike previous years, the snow-storm outside forced us to find an alternate route through the first-floor cloister.
+Today’s post features photos of two 15th-century palm donkeys. The one at top is housed at the Cloisters Museum in New York, and the second is from the V & A Museum in London. At bottom is the Great Hall, where our Palm Sunday procession began.