A Strange Love: or how I stopped complaining and learned to love The Palms

We have a tradition at our church. We sing The Palms as our opening hymn on Palm Sunday.

These are the bare facts. And, as this is a church which does not have that many traditions in worship, it is that much more obvious and important. It is one of the first things that come up when a new pastor wants to know what our inviolable customs are. Liturgically, we are pretty much Christmas and Easter. Ascension Sunday? What's that? Transfiguration of the Lord? Nope. Baptism of the Lord? huh? Pentecost we do. But there we don't do anything differently except sing different hymns-and none, I recall from last year, was specifically related to the Day of Pentecost, or even the Holy Spirit. We are more of a Sunday-go-to-meeting congregation, in which the procedure never varies, and there is a relatively small change in content except to reflect the message of the day.

There are, of course, those festivals in the life of the church. The annual Bazaar, the Rummage Sale, the Seasonal Mice. These things proceed apace every year, and they are sacrosanct. But in worship, there seems to only be one custom. That, and the organist is required to play the Widor Toccata on Easter. I'm used to that--it was the same at my last church. It doesn't bother me much--I like the piece, and I only play it once a year, so, unlike some of my colleagues, you won't get much invective from me.

But The Palms? "Les Rameaux" was written in 1891 by an operatic baritone named Jean-Baptiste Faure. I find it rather mawkish. Of course, mawkish translates to "much beloved" in the Dictionary of the Masses, and this tune has apparently been a part of the Third Church lexicon for some time. Perhaps this summer I'll go find the Old Bulletin Archive and see how far back it goes. The piece itself is not as old as the congregation itself but older than our present building (1903).

Naturally, there have been various attempts over the years to replace the piece with something else, but they have not been successful. Last year, our outgoing pastor thought perhaps it was time to retire it. As a substitute organist I was party to the daily drama of will we or won't we sing The Palms. It was quite entertaining. I threw my hat in the ring as not really a big fan, but when the pastor was overruled, probably by a sobbing (or threatening) parishioner, I played the piece. We sang. It could have been worse. We have a semi-pro choir and they not only can hit the high notes, they are not accustomed to hamming them up. The congregation at large doesn't sing too badly either--they just aren't very loud. But as I was very new last year, I may not have noticed. Perhaps they will sing this with extra enthusiasm. I plan to be on full gusto alert on Sunday to find out.

I hope when we sing the piece on Sunday that the portion of the congregation that can't live without it (I'm guessing they are mostly in their 80s) feel truly blessed and ministered to. And I hope we can minimize any side effect caused by younger persons or persons new to the congregation taking this as a symptom that we have our heads buried in the sands of time and are too hopelessly sentimental to have much to say to the world as it is.  And maybe if anybody who is young and hip (or on their first one) wonders, we can tell them that we do it because it's retro. You know, it's so uncool it is cool again. It's worth a shot.

Anyhow, there may be a virtue in loving things that are old and clunky.

Remember I said that in 30 years.