Palm Reading

by Tim Lien

Palms. Palms silhouetted against a Southern California sunset.

“Classic California,” my son will say when we’re in the car driving westward, tired from basketball practice.

Other palms, waving in a frenzy.

“Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!”

Which is a Greek transliteration of two Hebrew words mashed together into a new thing. Like Spanglish. Or Grekrew or Hebreek. “Save us!” they shout.

They mean it, but they don’t know what they mean.

Most of the palm-wavers were not Jerusalem townies. They made the journey from rural outer regions for Passover. Many of them had already seen and heard Yeshua Jacobson. He was odd, to be sure, but he pierced the heart in ways both disconcerting and comforting. He afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted. The comfortable haaaated him; the afflicted loved him. “The poor have good news announced to them,” he told John. He sounded different, but quite similar to Isaiah and Jeremiah. The palm-wavers had seen and heard incredible things, but the package was ugly. Here he was, on a donkey. A donkey. Leave it to him to come buzzing in on a junky old Geo Metro smoking blue oil instead of a Tesla. Classic Yeshua; unironically, too.

There are other ways to make an entrance into a city, though.

When Caesar came into a city, he was blinging like a hip-hop artist attending an awards ceremony. Massive entourage. Or a North Korean military parade. Elephants and white muscular steeds. Displays of wealth, power, dominion, technological advances showcased from every corner of the known world. Slaves and prisoners of war showed that he had inferiors. Singers, trumpeters, and chanters proclaimed his superiority. Caesar called it a triumph. Ta-da.

The religious elite of Jerusalem also had a way to enter a city. It was just as showy, but in a different way. Loud prayers, phylacteries, conscientious adherence to rules not even found in the Torah. So much extra. They were good at being good. Which is a downer for everybody else who doesn’t have the time to be professionally pious. There were clear superiors— the proof being when you started tithing from your spice cabinet; the riff-raff don’t do that. Religious people look at others and clearly know: “You’ll never do as much, be as much, work as much, be as conscientious enough as me. You need to be better, and you’ll never be better than me.” Religious people have triumphs, too. Ta-da.

Yeshua entered into Jerusalem without the trappings of worldly power and external religiosity. Actually being good meant that he didn’t need any of the external cosmetics. He could be raggedy poor and still be loved by His Father. True goodness will always be shunned and attacked by those looking for better cosmetics.

Recall, if you will, that after the palm-waving, Jesus was judged by those same two triumphant schools of worldly triumph and moral triumph—Pilate (Caesar’s representative) and the Sanhedrin. In confounding frustration to both, they couldn’t find any real fault, but condemnation was issued anyway.

On the other side of the Cross and Resurrection, Paul saw it: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (I Corinthians 1:22-23)

When you wake up tomorrow, you, too, will enter a city.

Will you be justified (exalted) through action, achievement, power moves, smooth plays, shrewd decisions, accumulation of wealth—curating a growing cadre of clear inferiors while establishing superiority in dozens of achievement categories?

Or will you be justified (exalted) through moral rectitude, compliance, duty, conscientiousness, religious adherence to things-done or things-undone? Will your scrupulous moral codes and values— concocted on personal preferences or cultural defaults— enable you to face the day?

Or will you be justified (exalted) by the work of Another?

Again, Paul: “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. (I Corinthians 1:27-29)

Pick one kind of triumph. You might have to kill one or two of the others to let your favorite win out.

“Save us! Hosanna!” Why? We are always picking worldly awesome or moral awesome to exalt ourselves. Hosanna, from ourselves. And every time I re-read the accounts, Yeshua gets killed. Every single time.

That’s because your triumph—your entrance into the city today and next week—needs some palms, too.

God had let Isaiah know all about it:

I will not forget you.

Look here,

I have engraved you

on the palms of my hands.

(Isaiah 49:15c-16)

Those palms. Classic Yeshua.