April 10, 2006
Palmistry
It’s the week of the palms, and it’s Monday and counting.
I’ve never been so sure whether there were palms handy for the crowds to strew, but that something was thrown about seems to be a fact, even if it was just new wishes and old tires. One point of this week seems to be that those who were for Jesus today won’t be come Friday. Whatever the latest old fragment of a codex says about whoever gave Judas the idea, he’s still figured to be the palm artist who helped things turn from what we thought was good to what we knew was bad to what we now for some crazy reason think is Good again.
Maybe they didn’t have palms, but we do, and that’s what matters. It is our palms, after all, from which the tree was named. It is our palms that we hold up in praise, hold down in disapproval, and hold out for help. It is our palms that we slap with and clap with and pat with and palm off and greet with.
We are the same ones who lined the streets to welcome our Lord and who then maligned and condemned him. It is in our spiritual DNA, that language that makes those words that become flesh, our flesh, the flesh that we live with, worship with, plead with, and honor with.
Come Easter Day, surely it’ll be no wonder why we’re wholly weak.