What is Palm Sunday?
Halden has up an interesting reflection on Palm Sunday, suggesting that the “Triumphal Entry” is not in fact the Jesus’ triumph at all, but the culmination of his temptation to claim earthly power. In fact: Christ comes to dash such hopes, to extinguish and transform such desires, to redefine our lives and our longings. He comes to replace our infantile and self-centered hopes with a vision of the fullness of God’s love. Christ comes, not to fulfill our hopes, but to dash them. He is the great disturbance, the ultimate interruption. What we learn on Palm Sunday is that we cannot even hope in God rightly until we allow God, revealed in Christ to define for us what the promises of God truly are. We are, all of us, bound and inclined to find in God’s promises the answers to our desires as they stand. We all think that God’s salvation will mean the fulfillment of our desires as they stand and the removal of all things holding us back from that fulfillment. Christ comes to dash such hopes.
