Arma Christi (I): Palm Sunday
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| Omne Bonum manuscript, England (London?), around 1360-1375, British Library, London |
For Christians of times past who lacked access to books, knowledge of these scenes and stories was deep, but not because of personal reading of a text; the visual and sometimes tactile were how the story was remembered. So not only was the Passion dramatized, but it was depicted, on glass, on vestments, painted on vellum and woven in cloth, and carved in stone and wood. And in time the objects in the story, or "instruments" of the Passion as they have been called, floated free of the narrative, and became independent symbols of what Jesus had undergone in accepting death for the life of the world.
So these objects--whip and lance, crown of thorns and purple robe, sponge and rooster, and indeed dozens more, became ways of referring to parts of the story, and then to the whole. Collectively they are known both as "instruments" of the Passion and somewhat more pointedly as the arms, the weapons, of Christ in his battle with the forces of evil, in Latin the Arma Christi. This use of the word "arms" has a double meaning; as knights and nobles used their own decorated arms and armor not just in battle but to assert their identity and achievements, adorning helm and shield with images that conveyed their family name and accomplishments, so too Christ was thought of as a great warrior whose panoply took the form of these objects used to enact and display his paradoxical victory.
Often, including here at St Thomas', the arma Christi are featured in the decoration of Churches, arranged on shields literally as coats of arms, proclaiming Jesus' glory by showing, without flinching, the objects of pain and shame. You may not be able to see them, but arranged around the Cross at the center of the great reredos in the East of this Church is an array of these instruments. In their silent speech they too proclaim the Passion.
In the stories we associate with this week, we move then not just from scene to scene but from object to object, symbol to symbol. On this Palm Sunday, the crowds that meet and accompany Jesus as he enters Jerusalem are not content to speak or shout his praises with their own voices and words, but famously perform their acclamation of him with branches and cloaks; both of these are sometimes found among the traditional instruments of the Passion. In throwing the cloaks, in waving and throwing the palms, so they make their concrete statement, with their own possessions, as well as with the found material of trees, about the claims he has on them, as on us.
Cloaks seem to us odd things to throw on roads I suspect, but for the ancients they were more precious and more significant; an individual might own just a single cloak and use it as garment but as protection from the elements, as bedding when traveling - as some of these acclaiming Jesus had presumably been doing - and as a significant form of property. The Book Deuteronomy describes a legal case where a poor person would offer their cloak as security for a loan, since it was assumed to be the most valuable thing they owned; but that same law prescribed that it had to be returned to the debtor each night, because it was bed as well as clothing.
So throwing their cloaks in the path of Jesus was not simply creating a festive atmosphere with the color and texture of the fabrics, it was the offering of their own wherewithal in his service - literally throwing everything they have at him. Then the palms and other greenery of some Gospel accounts when added to the cloaks seem to join nature and culture, the world of things that grow and the world of things we make all being offered in tribute to the man on the donkey.
These, like the other "instruments" of the Passion suggest that this upstart King who rides into Jerusalem is laying claim, not merely to the belief of the people or to their religious allegiance, but to their whole material existence. Hence all this stuff, all the things that make them and us not merely bodies but families and farmers, merchants and makers and molders and wearers of things.
As he enters Jerusalem, Jesus observes that the stones of the city themselves would acclaim him if the people did not; straight away he enters the Temple to deal with even more things, to the place where buying and selling takes place, where, with the children still singing "Hosanna to the Son of David" in the background, he imposes his authority over the merchants and dealers, the commodity traders and their wares, those seeking not to serve God but themselves in their arrangements of stuff.
Across these days of Holy Week, we will see human beings turn from the scenes of adulation and hope of his Palm Sunday ride to scenes of scorn, bitterness and abuse; today they bring objects to revere and adore, but as days go on people will bring all their property and all their creativity, all these instruments and arms, to the art of killing him. Yet we will claim that the love of God is great enough to turn weapons into tools, missiles into playthings, and to bring what is dead to life.
All these objects and their varied possibilities as weapons or as gifts, as means of destruction or tools of creativity, stand also for what we are and what we have, the means by which we inhabit the world: our property, our environment, even this great city and its stones. What are they for? To whom do they belong? To whom do we belong?
He will not be satisfied with hearts and minds, with thoughts and prayers; he is coming to claim everything, and to give everything. He comes, now as then, daring us to imagine following him will make us not poorer, but freer, and that going after him on the way, even the way of the Cross, will allow us to see anew the beauty and the purpose and the meaning of all things around us as we throw all we have at his feet.
From Solemn Evensong for Palm Sunday, St Thomas' Church, Fifth Ave., New York, April 13 2025.
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