As I read this coming Sunday’s four lectionary readings, The Revelation of John 7:9-17 spoke the loudest to me: In John’s vision, upon Jesus’s victory over evil in the very end times, a crowd of people from all nations stood before the throne of God and before the Lamb holding palm branches and saying, “Salvation comes from our God upon the throne, and from the Lamb.”
Having celebrated Palm Sunday on 10 April 2022, with the waving of palm branches of our own congregation, led by our children marching in joy around the sanctuary, I wondered why palm branches were so honored on that Sunday and in John’s vision in Revelation.
Not only were palms common at that time in ancient Jerusalem (think “sugar maple” here in our time), they also had great significance to the ancient Hebrews and to the Jews in Jesus’ day (and in the late 90s AD), who would be reading John’s revelation and looking to decipher the code of John’s writing as we do today.
The Old Testament contains many examples of palm branches representing the victory of a King over his enemies. Solomon had palm trees carved onto the walls of the temple; some Hebrew coins contained images of palm trees engraved on them. By hearing and understanding their shared Jewish history, people of Jesus’ day well understood this reference to victory and kingship and honored Jesus by hailing him as their King as they waved the palms on His entry into Jerusalem.
However, the palms meant even more, which becomes significant not only to the ancients, but also to us. Because the palm meant “victory,” many Jews of Jesus’ day connected it to a
nationalistic interpretation of political victory over Rome, and “Hosanna” became not only a reference to victory, but also a cry to “Save us! Give us freedom!”
Symbolically, it is not a huge jump of logic to associate the waving of the palm branch with, as it is in Revelation, a victory of the faithful over the enemies of the soul. The resurrection of Jesus completes the image that, as Christians, our salvation has been given to us, and is celebrated by us, and we are now free to live as people saved by our King.
I am looking forward to waving the palm branches next Palm Sunday.
