Luke 19: 28-40 (Patms)
Is.50:4-9a
Phil. 2: 5-11
Luke 22:39-23:56 (BCP)(Script used)

Palm Sun. C (RCL)
10:00 HE 2B/Ser

FRONDS FOR EVER

(Credit.: USCatholic 3/04,p.47 by Greg Kanda,CBSNews, rev.)
Latin Palma=palm of hand, of tree, of victory
Previous: 04,07

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On Palm Sunday, as we come into church, we gather and carry long leaves of palm, and bind them into crosses. Maybe we fold them to tuck behind pictures of our Lord, or behind crosses, when we get home. Some people tack them to bulletin boards. Others put them on the visor of their car. I have noticed people during the church service who weave palm leaves into elaborate designs. And I've known some who slip the leaves unceremoniously on the top of the refrigerator, where they gather dust and dry out.

Some people mark the seasons with a calendar. Some Church people mark this season with leaves from a tropical tree. The fact is, that these palm leaves are tangible symbols that we can hold in our hands, to make the story of the last days of Jesus something that we can literally grasp. Holding those leaves, we are given the sudden sensation of being there, in Jerusalem over 2000 years ago, waving palms. Time and space vanish. We are ready to greet Him - and then, as we play our part in the Gospel reading of Palm Sunday, we are ready to kill Him.

The palm leaves remind us of our complicity. And we take them home; so we do not forget it. But why palm leaves? Some of it is geography. Palm trees have flourished around the Holy Land for thousands of years.

The Book of Leviticus describes people carrying palms on the Feast of Tabernacles (23:40). The Psalms tell us that the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree (92:12). And at the end of the Bible, the Revelation to St.John tells us (7:15) that palms are held in the hands of the great multitude standing before the Lamb of God. So it is understandable that in a land of desert and sand, the soaring palm tree inevitably came to represent resilience and triumph - a fitting way to pay tribute to an arriving dignitary, even if He did ride into town on a donkey.

It is not clear exactly when, but early Christians latched on to the idea of collecting palms on the last Sunday before Easter, and the custom was in writing as early as the fourth century. Evidently the idea stuck. Over the years, people of different countries and cultures found novel ways to use the branches blessed on Palm Sunday. They were displayed in homes, and sometimes thrown into the fire in a trusting prayer to protect family and livestock during storms. To this day in parts of Europe and America, palms are often used to decorate graves in cemeteries. And in places where palms are hard to get, faithful people use branches from olive or boxelder or spruce, sometimes wrapping them in flowers.

But it's the humble palm leaf that has captured our imagination and has become a fixture in so many Christian homes. It may be one of the most familiar and beloved of our sacramental signs, and one of the most versatile, since blessed palms have an afterlife as the ashes that mark our foreheads on Ash Wednesday. Thus they are returned to the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,

But when all is said and done, the powerful hold that palm branches have on us and our faith may run deeper than anything we have mentioned so far.

The name PALM actually comes from the way that the leaves resemble the shape of an outstretched hand - as we see in the palms on the altar. And there is where we find their deepest meaning.

Look at your hand, and see the rivers of texture that are uniquely your own. Your palm print is the significance of who you are. Fortune-tellers try to deduce your life story from your palm. Subtle shadings of flesh and bone and blood enable you to grip, to hold, to write, to release.

With that hand, earth can be tilled, clay can be formed, empires can be built. In that hand, you can hold an egg to be warmed, a flower to be given, or a stone to be hurled. You can grasp the hand of another to squeeze away fear or to offer friendship. A hand can heal a hurt brush aside a tear, or play a Beethoven sonata.

In the palm of your hand, you can find the humblest and most personal expression of who you are - the part of you that lifts and carries, that mends and makes amends.

And so it was, on that first Palm Sunday, the people of Jerusalem offered to a Man riding on a donkey something of themselves, those large leaves that resembled their outstretched hands. And in the end, that same Man gave back something of Himself - the most personal expression of who He was -when He offered His out stretched arms to a broken world, and felt the first crushing sting, there, in the palms of His hands, on the Cross.