Palms

On Palm Sunday when we were little, Amanda and Karen and her sister and I used to go to church and receive our crosses made of palm. I don't suppose they were shipped in from the Holy Land, more likely some African republic that we were currently patronising, but somewhere other than Europe.

I'm guessing that across (an ever-shrinking) Christendom - point taken Simmi - the sermon this Sunday will be about leadership in some way, how Jesus was born for / achieved / had thrust upon him, the mantle of leadership. And that's fair enough, the people were needy, all occupied peoples are needy and want a great hero to rise up and throw off the yoke of oppression, even if in some cases they're better off. And under Roman occupation you generally were better off, they were cruel and ruthless until they subdued you then they improved your life no end.

But my thoughts are stalled at this road leading into Jerusalem, little Jewish bloke on the back of 'the colt of an ass' while a hopeful populace threw palms in his path. Palms. And this is what we remember - as well we should. Because while we Celts were running around wearing animal skins and bonding with the earth, and I am in no way disrespecting that, and eating gruel, oh, ok and somehow mysteriously building Stonehenge, the Old Testament was writing itself.
I found the leather bound, gold-edged Bible that my father had given me when he came back from sea, the one with the pictures of the desert and the sea and the golden gate of Jerusalem. The OT finishes on page 800 in my Bible, and the New Testament finishes on page 247.

It's the palm that sticks in my mind. As a child, a world away from cosy, rainy Britain, I was given a reminder of a land of figs, dates, honey. A land where water was turned into wine when we didn't even know what a grape was, although to be fair, that wasn't for the want of trying to bring it to us, Caesar had a good crack at Britain about 40 years before the birth of Christ.

Exotic Holy Lands. Where creation was accounted for. Where battles had been fought and where the twelve tribes of Israel had given us a history that we little British children who went to church every Sunday and who listened in assembly every morning, knew as well as our own. The characters in those tales, Abraham, Joseph, Isaac, Benjamin, Jacob, David. And the women, Esther, Ruth, Sarah, Naomi, Rebecca. Strong women, just like our Celtic ones.

From the pulpit every Sunday we heard about the stories of Jesus's forefathers. And then we would hear the stories of Jesus's life and ministry. And once a year we children held in our hand a reminder, not just of the shape of the cross, symbol of Roman occupation, but of the Holy Land, of strangeness, a small piece of exotica that stood for thousands of years of history.

We celebrate Christmas with our northern pine and spruce trees, and we celebrate Easter with our hares and bunnies and chicks, but on Palm Sunday we had the real thing, our own piece of the East, our very own palm.