In 2006, the German artist and sculptor, Anselm Kiefer created an installation called Palm Sunday.
Prompted by the story of Jesus’ triumphant Entry into Jerusalem, shortly before his arrest and execution, when people laid palm branches before him, the story symbolises for the artist, the moment between triumph and destruction.
As the image shows, the installation consists of a massive felled Palm Tree, its roots still clogged with earth. Laid on the gallery floor, the fallen tree echoes the body of Christ before his resurrection, suggesting both mortality and eventual renewal.
Accompanying the fallen tree are around 40 panels worked in a multitude of materials, paint, clay, sand and metal and on which a palm branch or frond is daubed in whitewash. Most have the word ‘Palm Sunday’ scrawled on them in the artist’s distinctive hand and in a multitude of languages – French, German, Swedish, Russian English.
The multilingual inscriptions imply not just that this is a festival for people of every tribe, nation and tongue, but also that the festival spirit of Palm Sunday springs from a place beyond language. What chord of common humanity does it touch?
In a single word, I suggest it is hope, or more precisely, the expectation of hope fulfilled. Wherever there is hope in the world, wherever there is belief that life’s promises are not in vain, Palm Sunday can be understood.
Hope fulfilled, disappointed and then renewed is the theme of the Easter Story, a story that conveys the truth that the end of things belongs to God no less than the beginning. It is the possibility of hope that keeps humans human and Easter tells us that with God there are no dead ends but always new beginnings.
If the adulation of Palm Sunday is one image to hold onto, another is the large stone that closed the tomb in which Jesus’ body was buried. For that stone appeared to mark the end of all dreams, imprisoning the present and blocking off any kind of future. On Easter morning the stone was found to have been rolled away and a new future of unimaginable possibility lay open.
So if Holy Week begins with the waving of palm branches, it ends with a stone that has rolled away. For all of us life contains disappointments, fears, regrets and compromises. But for life to be life, it must also contain hope. Easter tells us that out of disappointment and defeat, hope can be renewed.
Wave the palm branches, watch the stone roll and God will ‘easter’ in us all.
