Palm Sunday always gives me two opposing feelings about my faith. First, the praise and honor given to Jesus in his procession in Jerusalem, where we hear “Hosanna to the son of David” lifts my spirits not only in the divinity of Jesus, but in the goodness of humanity. It gives me optimism about humanity because we see a crowd getting something right about religion. This crowd ignored the pressure to remain neutral or reject Jesus as the Messiah. We hear many times in the gospels about the Pharisee’s warnings. Apparently, the crowd’s trust in what they saw in Jesus motivated them to ignore those threats. They were in danger of being “cancelled” by their religious leaders, but they rightly gave glory to God that day. It’s not unusual to find an individual or even a small group of people getting faith right. But it is a rare blessing when a “crowd” gets something right, especially when that “something” is a controversial something. But Palm Sunday shows us these people got it right. In a strange twist of what happens too much today, they followed their believing eyes. I say this is a twist, because it seems we are encouraged by many to “ignore your lying eyes” today. This phrase of course reminds us of the great Groucho Marx who famously said, “Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?” It means, don’t trust what you see, trust me because your eyes are lying to you. It’s easy to laugh at Groucho Marx, but it’s sad when significant leaders try to convince us to ignore what you know to be true. The Pharisees were saying, “ignore the fact that Jesus cured the sick, raised the dead and brought hope to the hopeless.” The crowd ignored their assessment of Jesus. The crowd wasn’t fooled or intimidated. Peer pressure worked in the right direction. Palm Sunday then is filled with optimism.

But, Palm Sunday is also the day we listen to the Passion narrative. So, 30 minutes after we hear the crowd get it right, the crowd shouts “crucify him”. Our spirits fall from optimism to pessimism. It’s easy to lament, “I love people, it’s just humanity I dislike”. What happens to the crowd between “Hosanna” and “crucify him”? Fear takes over. False assumptions about the Kingdom of God appear as the deceptions they are. Easy solutions to life’s problems evaporate. We listen to the crowd that rejects the necessity of self sacrifice and patient waiting. This quick change in the nature of “the crowd” makes us feel humanity is stuck in darkness and can’t change. One of the brightest minds of the modern church, Pope Benedict XVI referred to something St Basil said about the church long ago. He meant for us to contemplate the sad state of our world today. It proves the more things change the more they stay the same. Basil wrote, “Harsh rises the cry of the combatants encountering one another in dispute; already all the Church is almost full of the inarticulate screams, the unintelligible noises, rising from the ceaseless agitations that divert the right rule of the doctrine of true religion,” What a lesson. It was true in the past and it is true today. Chaos appears as the right rule of the doctrine of true religion disappears.

Such are some common feelings for Palm Sunday.But Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week. And we must stick with the program all the way through. At the end of Holy Week is Easter. We can’t forget God always wins in the end.