Through the window on the other side

We're coming up on Palm Sunday, the most conflicted observance in the church calendar. At least, it is for me. Every year, our worship service opens with a grand parade of the kids of our congregation around the sanctuary, waving their palm fronds and singing "Hosaaaaanna, Hosaaaaanna, Hosanna in the hiiiighest." And we have more than a few hundred kids in our congregation, so it's quite a spectacle. The adults get palm fronds, too, although none of them seem as enthusiastic about waving them around. (What is it about the palm fronds that makes kids go crazy for them? I remember feeling the same way when I was young. Is it just that you only get them once a year? Is it because you can swordfight your little brother with them?) After the kids open the service, our band sings all the songs we know with the word "Hosanna" in them, including one that the music director requested several years ago.

Him: You should do that one that goes "All I wanna do when I something something something is dah dah daaah, Hosanna, Hosanna"
Us: ...You mean "Rosanna"?

Instant classic.

So that's all fine and fun. The church is full, we're welcoming our King with open arms, and the kids are cute. But I can never fully enjoy it. Doesn't anybody see what we're doing here? Does anybody remember what happened the last time a bunch of people waved palms and sang hosannas for Jesus? They, which is to say we, which is to say I, FUCKING STRAIGHT UP MURDERED him a few days later. How can we celebrate the day Jesus showed up to get not just killed but REALLY FUCKING KILLED, without any sense of irony or even recognition of the blood that has never left our hands?

The cynical part of me thinks that this is just typical American church triumphalism, mixed with a little cheap grace theology. It goes like this: Jesus has already won the victory over sin and death. It was so many generations ago that it hardly seems necessary to dwell on it more than once, and we'll do that on Friday. So why bother with it today? After all, we are post-baptism people living in a post-resurrection world. Our sins and their eternal consequences were swept away before we even considered them. Our happy ending is assured. All that seemed wrong is now right, and everyone who deserves to is sure to live a long and happy life. Ever after.

It's tempting to cycle quickly through the "downer" parts of Christianity and just focus on the fun stuff. We breeze through confession or eliminate it entirely from our worship, couching it in the language of "mistakes that we made" rather than "innocent guys in whose deaths we are totally fucking complicit." And when was the last time you saw a Christmas pageant where Herod's army was skewering a bunch of babies and toddlers? We are terrible people, and being forgiven doesn't mean we get to ignore our terribleness.

It feels icky to me that we celebrate Palm Sunday by marching confidently toward the altar instead of crawling in shame. Palm Sunday is a shameful day, or it ought to be. But maybe we need to do it this way. Maybe the violence we are about to commemorate is made even more awful by its contrast with the misplaced joy of Palm Sunday. I began this season and this blog believing that in order for Easter to be meaningful, I really had to live with the melancholy of Lent and the misery of Holy Week. Maybe in order for the horror of the coming days to be full, I need to remember that I am at best, little more than a hypocrite. Maybe the only way to get down in the depths is to fall off the highest cliff.