Palm Sunday - Towards Easter ...

Well, now it is Palm Sunday, and yes what a party at church. Everyone was in a great mood – especially the children. And yes, there was lots of jubilant singing and branch waving.

(No one even seemed phased by the fact that the statue of St. Francis had just been stolen from the church grounds. I wonder who would have stolen St. Frances?? Due to his great love of animals and the natural world – he’s quite the relevant fellow these days as people are more and more focused to ecology and our spiritual connection to nature… but really?? Was it necessary to abscond with the statue? Oh well. Hopefully he’s happy wherever he is. As long as he’s outdoors, I guess he’ll be o.k.)

Anyway, as soon as my family got a hold of our palm branches, my husband got busy transforming his and the children’s branches into small crosses. This is done through a series of folds. I think maybe it’s an Anglican tradition, because I wasn’t aware of that activity until I met Judson.

The amusing thing was that as soon as my son’s branch was turned into cross, he immediately flipped it upside down and proclaimed that it was his sword. I tried to explain that these were crosses and not swords. “They’re a different sort of …execution tool”, I told him. The similarity between crosses and palm branch swords is interesting though, because in both cases we have a product of Nature, in fact a product of the trees in Nature (such great symbols of life and growth)… cut down and transformed into something re-crafted by human hands, and re-envisioned as a instrument of destruction and death. Isn’t it so true that, overall, we humans have done so much of that corrupting of the Earth’s natural resources – turning our original blessing into so much wounding.

Indeed too, if Christ’s arrival in Jerusalem was greeted with fanfare – the recognition of a great blessing, it didn’t take long for people to turn it into some pretty serious wounding. We see such a pivotal cosmic playing out of the original theme of Eden – great blessing > then a wounding (a falling away or detachment from the blessing).

Ah, but what’s the next part of that pattern in the Christ story? It’s all about regeneration, restoration, resurrection. Life goes on. There is a transforming divine energy that moves life through and beyond wounding and death.

So if we connect with and understand the image of Christ resurrected, what does this foretell in terms of Creation, ultimately?

Matthew Fox talks about the ultimate coming of the Cosmic Christ in every aspect of Creation – every leaf, species, rock, person. It’s like Thomas Berry’s vision of a move from the Cenozoic Era that we’re in now, to an “Ecozoic” era where there is a restoration of the connection between humanity and its habitat – a healing of the Earth, and a return to a natural and spiritual harmony.

In the Gospel of Thomas, we read of Jesus speaking the words, “Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.”

In John’s Gospel, Christ is also identified as “the Word” which was there at the beginning of time, the light of the universe - so the Divine Utterance in Creation. In Saint Hildegard von Bingen’s words, this is “the word that flashes out in all creation”. In eastern spiritual practice, an echo is heard in the peaceful and meditative "OM" – the sound of the Universe; the peace of the universe.

The phrase “the Christ” means “the anointed”. It’s as we move away from crucifying, and return to the joy of the waving of palm branches - as we begin to “anoint” or embrace or recognize the sacred presence of the Christ both in the figure of Jesus Christ and in the presence of the fuller Cosmic Christ that transformation begins.

When we see the fullness of Christ - the great peace and blessing of the Universe in all manifestations, then we begin to truly live in loving spiritual harmony with Creation. That’s when we connect with Divinity – the Holy Spirit, so immanent in our Universe - and every fiber of our soulful existence.