Ride On, Ride On (Artful Devotion)

. . . Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”

—Matthew 21:8–11

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SONG: “Ride On, Ride On in Majesty!” | Words by Henry H. Milman, 1827 | Music by John Hatfield, 2017

Can’t view the embedded podcast player? Access the episode at https://hymnistry.simplecast.com/episodes/ride-on-ride-on-in-majesty-fae373c8. There you can also find a chord chart.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
Hark! all the tribes hosanna cry;
O Savior meek, pursue thy road
with palms and scattered garments strowed.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die:
O Christ, thy triumphs now begin
o’er captive death and conquered sin.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
The angel armies of the sky
look down with sad and wond’ring eyes
to see th’approaching sacrifice.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
Thy last and fiercest strife is nigh;
the Father on his sapphire throne
expects his own anointed Son.

Ride on, ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
bow thy meek head to mortal pain,
then take, O Christ, thy pow’r and reign.

This year’s Palm Sunday music selection comes from Hymnistry, an excellent podcast that ran from 2015 to 2018. I’ve always liked Henry H. Milman’s hymn text “Ride On, Ride On in Majesty!,” but not the traditional tunes it’s typically paired with. So I was thrilled to hear this contemporary setting by John Hatfield. Hatfield’s introduction to the hymn starts at 5:51. He discusses the cognitive dissonance of Palm Sunday, a celebratory occasion with somber undertones, because we’re really cheering Jesus on to his death. He’s hailed as king, Hatfield says, and “his first act in office is to give himself up for us.” Milman’s text captures this paradox of victory through a cross, and Hatfield seeks to do so as well in his retuning, maintaining a happy energy throughout but sneaking in a minor chord. The actual hymn starts at 10:32.

In the first half of the episode, the Rev. Jacob Paul Breeze, pastor of Holy Family in downtown Houston, gives some illuminating historical background. He says that when Jesus entered Jerusalem during Passover, the Israelites took out the Hanukkah decorations (palm branches) instead! Why were they getting their holidays mixed up? Well, they weren’t. Waving palm branches, which were a symbol of prosperity and triumph in Judaism, is how they celebrated their ancestor Judah Maccabee’s cleansing of the temple in the second century BCE. (He recaptured Jerusalem from the Syrian Greeks and restored Jewish temple worship, which gave way to the first Hanukkah, really a belated celebration of the fall festival of Sukkot; see 2 Maccabees 10:1–8, cf. 1 Maccabees 4:54–60.) The Israelites’ waving of date palms as Jesus processed into their most holy city was their way of affirming him as their chosen one, Breeze says, to lead a revolt against the Romans and secure their freedom.

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I love the colorful flurry of excitement in Jyoti Sahi’s painting Entry into Jerusalem, where crowds gather in effusive praise of their new liberator. Birds and angels wing overhead, while green palm branches spill forth from the bottom right to carpet Jesus’s path.

Jyoti told me he started this painting after visiting Jerusalem for an interfaith meeting—his first trip to the Holy Land—where he presented a paper on art and meditation. He was fascinated by the surrounding landscape. The theme of Christ entering Jerusalem is related to the idea of Christ entering the human heart, he says.

The painting was acquired in 2018 by a visiting Italian monk for a Christian chapel in Sicily.

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Palm Sunday–related posts from the Art & Theology archives:

• A simple, gradually quickening Hebrew folk melody on accordion accompanies a contemporary Bulgarian icon by Julia Stankova in “Hail to the King (Artful Devotion)”
• Modernist paintings by Australian artist Nathan Simpson meet Hiram Ring’s blues-inflected song “My Lord” (“My Lord is a donkey-ridin’ man . . .”) in “He Went On Ahead (Artful Devotion)”
• “The Burden,” a poem by Philip Rosenbaum
• Did you know Simon and Garfunkel adapted Orlande de Lassus’s motet setting of the Benedictus (“Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord”) and recorded it for their first album? Read more in my review of Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.

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This is the first in a series of eight Artful Devotions I’ve planned—one for each day of Holy Week and the Paschal Triduum. I’m posting this one several days ahead because it’s more substantial than the others; the rest I will endeavor to post in the early morning of the given day, from next Monday through Sunday (Easter!). Most of the world will be spending Holy Week at home this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Paul Neeley of Global Christian Worship has compiled a great list of resources to help individuals and families honor these days while in quarantine: https://globalworship.tumblr.com/post/613778966717841408/holy-week-at-home. I’m sure there are many more ideas and materials out there as well.

Also for Holy Week, I’d like to remind you of a digital gallery of contemporary global art I curated and commented on for the International Mission Board in 2017, with selections spanning six continents: https://www.imb.org/2017/04/07/journey-cross-artists-visualize-christs-passion-part-1/; https://www.imb.org/2017/04/12/journey-cross-artists-visualize-christs-passion-part-2/.

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This post belongs to the weekly series Artful Devotion. If you can’t view the music player in your email or RSS reader, try opening the post in your browser.

To view all the Revised Common Lectionary scripture readings for Palm Sunday, cycle A, click here.