On Palm Sunday, we celebrate Jesus by waving palm branches, as the people did in Jesus’ time. Not long before the tide turned and he was arrested.

¹² The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. ¹³ So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!”  – John 12:12, 13   Holy Bible  NRSV

Things got very complicated (v. 10), because many Jews had deserted traditional worship in the Temple and believed in Jesus.

The chief priests were not happy.

I wonder, though, at that going from Hosanna to crucify him.  Were those same people incited? We know the outcome and why Jesus was meant to die, but Roman death on the cross was not comforting in any way. And yet…

In my poem published in Esprit, a Lutheran Women’s magazine, “Sacrifice” contrasts the Hallelujah’s with what’s coming.

Sacrifice

My borrowed beast

climbs the rocky path

treading cautiously over robes

that carpet dusty earth

 

shaded

by a canopy of palms

his body trembles amid shouts of

 

Hosanna

 

such a young colt

he does not hurry –

as if he knows what is to come

 

outside the city gates

the crowd thins and hosannas fade

inside

a poor man empties his pocket

to buy a dove

 

my beast of burden can rest now

my time is coming

-Carolyn Wilker  Esprit, Spring 2006

Photos by blog author, C R Wilker, unless otherwise noted