Palm Sunday

If you appreciate this A Course In Miracles resource and all that the Community Miracles Center does for ACIM students please consider giving a financial donation to support our work. Click on the Piggy Bank.

All credit card transactions are transmitted through our secure web server.

If you would like to navigate this web site through a Site Map then click on the image to the right.

Community Miracles Center is a spiritual organization based on ACIM with numerous activities, among which is the maintenance of this web site.

This set of 6 navigational buttons appears on every page in this site. By clicking on the button you will go to the lead page of that group. The background "watermark" of every page contains a pastel yellow number. This tells you what group of pages you are in.
[Navigation_Buttons]

Palm Sunday

by Rev. Tony Ponticello

Palm Sunday is here again. Obviously, we have been through many Palm Sundays at the Community Miracles Center. I've never written a specific Palm Sunday article before, so I decided to "seize the day" and go for Palm Sunday. After all, it is mentioned in A Course In Miracles but Miracles teachers rarely (never?) talk about it. Yet, there is an entire section on Holy Week in the Text that relates to Palm Sunday.

I distinctly remember when I was young and going to St. Agatha's Catholic church in Canastota New York, whenever we went to church on Palm Sunday we got "palms" to take home, or what they called palms. Actually, they were more like reeds (I don't think they were palms at all) but they were long thin leaves and the Priest would talk about their significance. It was on this day that we celebrated Jesus' triumphant return and ride into Jerusalem.

Frequently, in Course circles, we don't like to focus too much on the Biblical stuff because many people who have gravitated towards A Course In Miracles have turned away from the more traditional Bible approaches. Also, there's the whole discussion of whether the Bible story of Jesus actually happened anyway and how could we ever know? I don't think the significance of the Bible is in whether or not the story actually happened, that's a very interesting discussion and that's all that it will ever be, interesting. It will never be a significant discussion.

It is significant though, that these stories exist and that millions of people all over the world relate to these stories as a cultural teaching mythology and this I don't think any of us would deny. I believe it is important for us to look at the Bible now and again to see what it says and to see what these stories are telling us. Hopefully, being New-Age Christians, we can come to a different interpretation of the Bible. This month, I want to look at the Palm Sunday story and see what we A Course In Miracles students can glean from it. How can we can relate to this myth, factual or not?

Returning to the Bible, for me, always seems a little like the story of JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL. He spent years away from the flock of his birth as an outcast. During those years he perfected his flying and his metaphysics, however, at a certain point in his evolution, he gets a very clear message that he has to go back to where he originated -- he has to go back to the flock. Jonathan Seagull fights that guidance for a while but finally surrenders into it, realizing how important it is. At the outset J. Seagull sees that the flock needs him and thinks that this is why his return is so important, but later he realizes how he so very badly needed the flock! J. Seagull understands that there is a significant journey that they are undertaking together and even though they may have expelled him as an outcast, he still is very connected to them. J. Seagull knows they will evolve together -- he can't do it apart from them. (If you've forgotten just how spiritual and Course consistent the story of JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL is, watch the movie available on V.H.S. video made in 1973 with an inspirational soundtrack by Neil Diamond. It's one of my all time favorites! Rev. Tony says, "Check it out!")

Going back to the Bible, for me, is like the odyssey J. Seagull made. I had rebelled against my traditional Catholic upbringing, but at a certain point in my evolution I realized that we were all in this journey together. The traditional Christians are here with us too and we can't find salvation apart from them. We are all going to find it together and that victory over the world will be a shared one.

A Course In Miracles speaks of this victory when it addresses Palm Sunday. "This is Palm Sunday, the celebration of victory " (T 396/425) It is time for us to understand what Palm Sunday is about, it's about the celebration of victory -- the acceptance of truth. The Course gives us another instruction, "Let us not spend this Holy Week brooding on the crucifixion of God's Son, but happily in the celebration of His release, for Easter is the sign of peace not pain." (T 396/425) Palm Sunday is Celebration Sunday.

The image of the palm, relates to the story of Jesus' triumphant, celebration ride into the city of Jerusalem. Remember, that at this time his ministry was at the pinnacle of its popularity. The crowds were starting to adore him, worship him and boisterously honor him. On this occasion, as he was coming into town, they cut down fronds of the big palm trees, branches of the palm trees, and waved them dramatically in front of him. This is also what they used to do for their victorious armies. When their armies had gone out to battle and returned in victory the citizen would wave palm branches in adulation, celebrating the triumph.

That's what they were doing with Jesus 2,000 years ago. Maybe some of the little children had small reeds in their hands like the ones they gave us at St. Agatha's. I don't know, but if you read the Bible it always tells of how they cut the branches from palm trees and waved them in adoration. I remember when I saw The Last Temptation of Christ that was the first time I ever saw a depiction of the people of Jerusalem waiving big palm branches. I said to myself, "Oh that's what this 'palm' thing is about!" I never understood the shaking of little reeds. That image never worked for me. When I saw the broad waving of palm branches it all fit together. Another interesting thing about the Palm Sunday story, as far as Bible stories go, is that it is one of the few stories that's in every Gospel. It's in Matthew; it's in Mark; it's in Luke and it's in John. Many of the Bible stories we use to teach with are not in all four of the Gospels. Certainly, by Biblical scholastic standards, if it's in all four Gospels it has special level of interest -- maybe it's even significant?

There are several facets of the Biblical Palm Sunday story that I think we, ACIM students, can relate to and identify with. An important thing about Jesus' ride into Jerusalem was that he did it on the colt of a donkey. He told his apostles that they would have to go out and find the colt (the young offspring) of a donkey and bring it to him because that's what he had to ride into Jerusalem on. Again, this part of the story is in all four of the Gospels. The apostles apparently did not understand why they had to do this, but at this point they didn't question Jesus much because he was healing people and raising the dead so if he said to do something, they did it. They went out and found a colt of a donkey and brought it to him. Again, in all four of the Gospels it is stated that the reason he did this was so the scriptures would be fulfilled. It had been prophesied that the Messiah would ride into Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey. It wasn't that this just happened naturally and it wasn't how Jesus wanted to go into Jerusalem. It was that Jesus, being the religious scholar, realized what was expected of him and he simply surrendered into it. He might have said to himself, "Oh, it's written that I'm supposed to do this so let's just be on with it and do it. Bring me that colt!" If you read the Gospel, it is described just like that. He did it only because it had been prophesied. As a religious scholar he would have, of course, known of this prophecy. You find this frequently in many stories in the Bible. Jesus fulfilled the prophecies not because it happened naturally but because he knew what they were and so he just did it. He surrendered to it.

I think about my own tendency to rebel against everything. I rebelled against the Catholic Church and my early religious upbringing. Probably, Jesus rebelled too because he spent so many years traveling around in foreign countries but, at a certain point, he stopped rebelling. Maybe like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Jesus returned to his "flock" and did his flock "shtick." He did what was expected of him. He got his apostles to find the colt of the donkey. (Of course they never called it a "donkey," they just called it an "ass".) He didn't have to justify why he was going to do it. He just did it! There are two images here. One, that Jesus was able to surrender to the image people expected, not necessarily the image that Jesus found natural, but the image that people wanted, that the prophets wanted. Two, that the prophets wanted their Messiah to ride into Jerusalem in a very humble way. There is a no more humble way to ride into Jerusalem than on the colt of an ass. I'm sure that was considered the most humble way you could do it. Jesus was willing to do that. He was willing to take on the trappings of humility because that was what people expected of him. He didn't fight it.

Now, I think that there's a lot for us to relate to here because I was certainly part of a generation that fought everything. I certainly never wanted to surrender to anything just because somebody else wanted me to do it. I needed intellectually good sounding reasons. As I progressed in my spiritual studies, certainly within the last few years, I have learned that all that tendency has ever done was to separate me from masses of people. It just put up walls and differences because I was declaring my separateness and specialness. Rugged individualism, "Nobody's gonna tell me what to do!" attitudes ruled the first two decades of my adult life.

I still do not have to do anything that I feel strongly I do not want to do, but I also don't have to have a knee jerk reaction of rebelling and rejecting everything asked of me either. There is a middle road and there are some times when it would probably be best to surrender into certain things in order for our lives to have significance. This is the surrender issue that many of us need to deal with and the Palm Sunday story can be a help. Are you willing to "ride" into your home territory on the "colt of an ass?" It's a good question for us all to entertain.

[Please support this work and give a donation to the Community Miracles Center.]

Here is another interesting (significant?) thing about the story, as Jesus is riding into Jerusalem all the people waiving the palm branches are saying something to him. If you read the different Gospels you can find the different quotations. It is always derivations of a very simple phrase. It's interesting how none of the four apostles got it the same way. None of them have the same phrase, but it's some form of "Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord; hosanna to the highest." (Matthew) That's where that phrase comes from. Another Gospel states "Hosanna; Blessed he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Blessed the Kingdom of our Father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna to the highest." (Mark) Four different gospels have four different derivations of that. Now, many of us rebellious ones simply shut out these religious sounding words without ever even listening to what they were saying. Maybe we've come far enough now to let that rebellion go for just a moment and see the meaning in these words. In more modern English they become, "Glory to You, You who come not as yourself, but You who come with God's word, You who come with God in your heart, glory to You." Isn't this just what A Course In Miracles tells us to do? Come humbly, not as ourselves but as God's messengers, letting go of our personality and our worldly goals. Surrender into our Heavenly role. We can let go of the different names we have taken on, the different purposes we have assumed and truly go only in the name of God. If so, then we are the saviors of the world. Then we are in glory. Then we are triumphant.

Remember, the citizens of Jerusalem were honoring him as a triumphant person. He came into the city through the wave palms. They waved these tree branches because they were the biggest, easiest things they could waive to make a big display. They were doing it because he was the victorious one. So, how do we become victorious? We let go of our worldly goals and we go wherever we go only in the name of God. A Course In Miracles and the Bible are here giving us the same message.

An often quoted section from the Text states, "Once you accept His plan as the one function that you would fulfill, there will be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not arrange for you without your effort." So once, you surrender to the Divine plan, everything is going to be arranged for you and you will not even have to exert effort! I surrender! It continues, " He will go before you making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. Nothing you need will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away before you reach it." I think they cover all the possibilities there, don't you? Finally it states, "You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill." (T 404/433) Once we come only in the name of God everything else gets arranged. All the obstacles that block our path get cleared. All the stones, all the little annoyances that we might trip on, go away and the details of life get arranged by the Whole Spirit of the Universe, Holy Spirit, because we have surrendered. We certainly have every right to celebrate that victory, because that is a true triumph. We will have realized how to be in the world, to make the world work for us.

In the Workbook it speaks of us letting go of our little ego goals. It states, "Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible." (W 252/260) That's an amazing statement. All I can say is I aspire to that. I don't think I've risen to that level yet, but I understand what the Course is saying. If we truly do what Jesus did (or at least what the myth says Jesus did on Palm Sunday), which is to come only in the name of God, in all earthly signs of humility, on the colt of an ass, then our health is fully guaranteed. The world will work for us. We will have the victory that is our right. "Hosanna to us!"

It's interesting that sometimes A Course In Miracles teachers take the above quotation that states, "The body's health is fully guaranteed" (W 252/260) (It's such a simple quotation. It's five simple words.) and they interpret it metaphorically. They say it doesn't really mean that, "The body's health is fully guaranteed." They say it means something else. (Don't worry, "they" know who "they" are.) There is a peculiar tendency for people in the Course community to relate to this material as if were not English! I know that many of us come from spiritual disciplines where we interpreted Hindu and Sanskrit and I think that is where this odd tendency originates. We encountered words like: dogma, dharma, karma, and shakti. I never knew if my kundalini was supposed to be rising or falling! We didn't know what these words meant, so we did have to translate and interpret them, but now we take that translation tendency and apply it to the English of the Course. I don't think it works that way. I think that when it says "The body's health is fully guaranteed" that, son-of-a-gun, it means the body's health is fully guaranteed!

I know this is controversial in the Course community, but I'm willing to say that I think it means it. Maybe I haven't risen to the level where I can fully realize this teaching yet, but I'm patient because I truly believe this realization is coming. I would much rather think this way than say that it doesn't mean what it states because I know intuitively that it does. Thinking the other way is a depressing game to play and the adherents to that point of view and teaching seem to take on a very pedantic affect. They're so scholarly, so boring! If we don't play that game then hosanna to us! Glory to us and victory to us because obstacles won't be in our life and our health is fully guaranteed -- for we will be coming in the name of God! That's what Palm Sunday is all about and that's why it's a celebration of victory.

In the section on Palm Sunday and Holy Week the Course also states, "This week begins with palms and ends with lilies, the white and holy sign the Son of God is innocent." (T 396/425) Beginning with palms means it begins with the celebration of victory. However ending with lilies means that a transformation is about to happen during Holy Week. We need to be expectant of that transformation. What do lilies stand for? " the white and holy sign the Son of God is innocent." Let's explore this transformation distinction between palms and lilies. On Palm Sunday we come in victory. We have been victorious over the world. We figured out how the world works; we now have a way to be victorious in it. Still, this doesn't necessarily declare our holiness and our innocence. Think about it, sometimes the victorious have to do things that aren't the most innocent and most holy things to do. Ego thoughts and goals may have been in the midst of our victorious overcomings. We may be victorious in the earthly battlefield but how holy can a battlefield be anyway? Yet there may be battles we have to fight. Study the BAGHAVAD GITA if you want more insight of the "dharma" of battle. Still, there is a transformation that needs to happen once we've achieved a level of victorious mastery if we are to evolve into a higher spiritual form. At the new spiritual level, mastering the world becomes meaningless. It just doesn't matter anymore because we don't really have worldly goals with which to be concerned. Now we just move into a level of absolute innocence, purity and holiness. That's what Easter symbolizes and that's what the beautiful, white, single petalled lily symbolizes, letting go of the world's many goals and achieving the single goal innocence and peace. That is the Easter transformation ahead, a transformation from the victory of palms to the true spiritual peace of lilies.

Let's review. So far, there have been three things Palm Sunday has taught us:

1) It taught that we can surrender. We can surrender into the world. We don't have to fight the world and if the world wants a certain thing of us, we can be open to it. It doesn't mean we have to do blindly whatever the world wants, but we can be open to not fighting, not rejecting, in the same way Jonathan Livingston Seagull went back to his flock.

2) It also teaches a quality of humility that needs to be in all of us. Sometimes we do take on the garment of humility and ride in on the colt of the ass, so to speak. That's an O.K. thing to do if that's what the world wants.

3) We do, whatever we believe is the right thing to do, by only coming in the name of God. We come with only God's purpose. If so, we will be victorious and we will have tremendous overcomings. We will have overcome the world and we will be full of victorious good cheer. "In this world you need not have tribulation because I have overcome the world. That is why you should be of good cheer." (T 51/56)

These are the three points.

However, there is one last part to the Palm Sunday story that is also in all four of the Gospels and it happens right after Jesus goes into Jerusalem. He does one thing first every single time. He goes straight into the temple and he throws out the money changers, the dove seller s and all the people doing business transactions. This is one of the main things that Jesus always did. He always reestablished true religion, true religious worship. He got rid of the unnecessary trappings or the ways that it had deviated and he reestablished what was true about religion, spirituality and worship.

If those of us who have been studying A Course In Miracles for a long time are honest, that's where it takes us all. It challenges us on all the ways that we've thought of religion, thought of spirituality and it heals us. It cleans it all up and gives us a new true way to be spiritual, to be religious, that can work for us. Whenever we are thinking of Palm Sunday, don't forget what Jesus did on that day right after he rode into Jerusalem victorious. He went straight to the temple and healed it, he cleaned it up, and he didn't do it in the nicest and gentlest of ways either. All the stories talk about how he overturned the tables, pushed over the chairs and casts them out. He did this in a very powerful way. A victorious, triumphant way.

Sometimes we're very reluctant to use our God inspired power in our dealings with the world, but the true victorious person, the Palm Sunday person, is willing to take that glory, that power, and use it in God directed ways that can appear to be quite forceful. Jesus was not shy about this and I think the myth is teaching us not to be shy about it either.

Last year, the Community Miracles Center tackled the issue of true religious practice by instituting a monthly communion ritual. We approached this quite seriously and in a true victorious spirit bought wonderful glass communion cups for wine and grape juice. We acquired beautiful silver trays for the bread in our symbolic eucharistic meal. We stirred up the usual amount of controversy and resistance. Yet we sailed victoriously through as was our clear and constant guidance. We now have a ritual meal that symbolizes our oneness with each other and the ever abundant nourishment that comes spiritually from our connection with God and to each other. The communion service celebrates the material and spiritual gifts that come to those who come in the name of God. "Hosanna to the highest. Blessed are we!"

This communion service happened in an organic way, coming up from committee through the congregation, and it's been a very useful process for us. We strengthened our ability to surrender of this church and ministry to a greater purpose. We don't have to be a ministry that fights and rebels all the time. We can be a ministry that embraces tradition and ritual and transform it into something higher and personally significant. Our communion ritual that takes place every month fulfills that last teaching of Palm Sunday. We are reestablishing true religious practice for us. Our next Communion Service will be Easter Sunday. Join us.

There is something about a communion celebration, with its ritual partaking of wine and bread, that instills thousands of years of great psychic, spiritual and metaphysical significance inside our minds. The Community Miracles Center has embraced this in a victorious way, not in an embarrassed or shy way. We decided just to go for it! The idea of making it very New Age with flowers and fruit instead of bread and wine just never felt right. (We did add grape juice so the 12-Steppers could participate.)

I believe we embraced the victorious spirit of Palm Sunday and reestablished true religious practice and we can really allow ourselves to be glorified. Maybe we can see that symbolized in the palm trees that now line Market Street right outside our front door in San Francisco. They wave in the wind in a perpetual Palm Sunday salute. I am certainly willing to embrace this Palm Sunday myth. As I said, I don't know if it really happened or not, but here is a story that has been around for thousands of years that has great symbolic teaching significance. If I can remember: it is all about surrender, it is all about true humility, it is about coming in the name of God in victory and finally, it is about the reestablishing of true religious practice. When I remember these ideas then I can learn from them and move forward into a personal Easter resurrection. I can move into lilies. Palm Sunday is leading us from this worldly experience of victory to a true transcendent experience of Easter's spiritual innocence. I challenge you all to take this teaching offered here and apply it significantly to your own life experience. Move from palms to lilies in your own life. Embrace your glorious victory as a way of readying yourself for a transformational resurrection.

It's a humble honor to be able to share these thoughts with you. Thank you.

©copyright 1996, Rev. Tony Ponticello.
All rights reserved.

This article has 4,434 words.

[Look through our miracles Classified Ad page. Seek and you shall find.]

Rev. Tony Ponticello
c/o Community Miracles Center
2269 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94114

(415)621-2556
miracles@earthlink.net
www.miracles-course.org

This article appeared in the March 1996 (Vol.10, No.1) issue of Miracles Monthly. Miracles Monthly is published by the Community Miracles Center in San Francisco, CA. The CMC is supported solely by people just like you who give donations and purchase books and products through us.

Send e-mail: miracles@earthlink.net

1) Home 2) Miracles Monthly 3) Bookstore Order 4) Financial 5) Events/Classes 6) Members Only

Last update: March 9, 2006 by Rev. Tony Ponticello. (syntax checked 3/06)