I’ve no idea what our Palm Sunday palms will look like this year. Two weeks ago I called our usual palm supplier, a floral outlet in our area, only to learn he was no longer dealing in our usual lovely fan or emerald palms. So I was directed to a local florist where I ordered fewer than usual of an unfamiliar type of palm (“Commodore”) for more money than we used to pay.
I was bemoaning this year’s palm deficit to one of our members, an older gentleman who has seen a lot of life. He brought me up short by saying, “Well, isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? On the first palm Sunday, do you think all the palm branches they cut down were beautiful and perfect?”
My friend was right, and reading the Palm Sunday story from Mark’s Gospel this year (Mark 11:1-11) made that even clearer. We tend to dress this Sunday’s celebration up in all sorts of details borrowed from the other Gospels, palms from John’s Gospel, two donkeys from Matthew, complaining Pharisees and praise to Jesus as a king from Luke. But Mark’s account has none of that. Reading Mark, one can easily get the impression that this little parade of Jesus and His disciples was pretty unimpressive, hardly a “Triumphal Entry.”
Palm Sunday, then, was probably less impressive than we imagine it. Yet that fact in itself is full of significance. Our Savior came to us taking on our complete humanity in all its usual drab and unimpressive reality. Even arriving as our King, he comes on the humble animal which kings rode in peacetime, rather than on the warhorse of a conqueror.
Jesus doesn’t even accomplish much at all on Palm Sunday according to Mark. Matthew and Luke give us the impression that He cleansed the temple that same afternoon, but Mark shows us that Jesus arrived in Jerusalem late in the day. All He had time for before dark was a look around the temple before retreating back out of the city to where they were staying in Bethany. The cleansing of the temple happens the next day.
So Palm Sunday is a good time to remember the slow, gentle, humble way in which God saved us, and in which He still works in our lives. Whenever we are tempted to display a Jesus of pomp and glory to the world, a Jesus who takes impressive action, let us remember our true Lord who came riding into the capital city of His kingdom pretty much unnoticed and unremarked, and who didn’t do all that much except die. That was good enough for Jesus. Maybe it should be good enough for us.