Palm Sunday
Anglican priest and poet Malcolm Guite is the author of many wondrous lyrics, including “Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year” found in Sounding the Season (Canterbury 2012). “Palm Sunday” captures something I’ve always noticed but never fully grasped—that days before the trauma of Good Friday, there’s a moment of euphoria that seems to clash with Lent. For a moment, hosannas ring out, after which each day becomes darker than the one before.
Guite compares the Palm Sunday celebration to an early and too-easy conversion that subsequently gets tested. We think we’ve seen the promised land and then all of our inner demons speak up. We rush out to join Jesus and then experience “the dreadful emptiness of a perverted temple.”
It’s like those horror movies that offer us a momentary lull before the monster strikes. When it does, in the form of self-interest, fearful guardedness, and hardness of heart, that’s when we must call to God. “Come break my resistance,” Guite pleads with the savior, “and make me your home.”
Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,
The seething holy city of my heart,
The savior comes. But will I welcome him?
Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;
They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,
And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find
The challenge, the reversal he is bringing
Changes their tune. I know what lies behind
The surface flourish that so quickly fades;
Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,
The hardness of the heart, its barricades,
And at the core, the dreadful emptiness
Of a perverted temple. Jesus come
Break my resistance and make me your home.