When I was a kid, Palm Sunday was my favorite Sunday of the year. It was the only Sunday where I could go to church, sit an hour and walk out with a gift, and not just any gift, but a palm frond.
And since I grew up in upstate New York, it wasn’t like I could just walk into my backyard any old time and get a palm frond. Palm Sunday was something special.
I joined Hope last Easter and this Sunday marks my first Palm Sunday with them and it’s actually my first Palm Sunday anywhere in many, many years.
Where Easter is a time of joy, Palm Sunday is much more solemn, something I definitely didn’t understand as a child. During Palm Sunday the Passion is read as we follow Jesus in his last days leading up to and including his death.
It is a heartbreaking read. Jesus is first betrayed by Judas. We all know that story, but then something even darker happens. Jesus is denied by Peter. I have always been bothered more by Peter’s betrayal, I think because Judas has always been portrayed as a villain, but Peter was very close to Jesus.
After Jesus is captured, all the other disciples flee, except for Peter, who follows at a distance to see what will happen next. But his fear gets the better of him and when confronted and accused of being a follower of Jesus, he denies it three times. To me that betrayal cuts deeper. We expect better of Peter.
[Peter later gets a chance to redeem himself after the resurrection. In the Gospel of John, Jesus asks Peter three times if Peter loves him and three times Peter responds yes.]
The Passion concludes with the death of Jesus.
It is an agonizing death.
Jesus is spit on, mocked, stripped, flogged and hung on a cross. It takes hours for him to die.
As he dies, the sky grows dark and when he finally takes his last breath, we see a scene of almost apocalyptic destruction. Matthew 27:51-52 says “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen sleep were raised.”
Then the centurion and the others with him declare, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”
“Ah,” I would say to them now if I could, “but just you wait. This isn’t the end. It’s only the beginning.”
If the story of Jesus ended with the Passion, well that would be a very different story. It would be dark and fraught with loss and bitterness and grief. But the Passion is only the end of that chapter. It is only a prelude of things to come.
The next chapter begins with Mary Magdalene waiting at the tomb and we all know what happened next.
