Palm Branches and Shared Pathways: Interchurch Families and the Call of Palm Sunday

Palm Branches and Shared Pathways: Interchurch Families and the Call of Palm Sunday

As Lent draws toward its culmination, Palm Sunday arrives not with quiet reflection but with an outpouring of joy, tension, and paradox. It is the moment when Jesus enters Jerusalem and is greeted with palm branches, cloaks on the ground, and cries of “Hosanna!” It is a day of welcome—and a day of uncertainty, as the shadow of Holy Week looms.

For interchurch families, Palm Sunday can feel particularly resonant. This moment, so rich in symbolism, offers a lens through which to reflect on what it means to be welcomed, recognised, and accompanied. And perhaps more importantly, it raises the question: how do our churches receive one another—and us?

Palm Sunday speaks into this directly. The crowds who welcomed Jesus that day didn’t know the full story. They didn’t fully understand who he was or what he would do—but they still laid down their branches. They still shouted their welcome.

In the context of interchurch families, we often find ourselves walking a similar kind of path: not everything is fully understood, not every theological nuance is resolved, but love is laid down like palm branches. Mutual respect, hospitality, and even courageous vulnerability are the signs of our shared procession.

Our families embody something of Palm Sunday’s paradox. We are both welcomed and questioned. We experience joy and tension. We walk in celebration and in lament. Yet always we walk together. The journey of interchurch family life is itself a witness that unity is possible not only in the future but here and now, even if imperfectly.

What might it look like, then, for our churches to be more like those who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem—not waiting for perfect understanding, but open-hearted and brave in their hospitality?

Palm Sunday reminds us that receptivity is not passive. It is an act of courage. To receive another tradition, another family expression of faith, is to risk being changed, being challenged—and being blessed.

So as we move into Holy Week, perhaps Palm Sunday calls our churches to practice this kind of courageous welcome—not just to Jesus, but to one another. Not just in symbolic gestures, but in sacramental and structural recognition. To lay down more than palms—to lay down assumptions, fears, and barriers.

And for us, as interchurch families, Palm Sunday offers a glimpse of the journey we are already walking: branches in hand, grace in tension, hope in motion.

MJCarroll -Executive Officer of the Association of Interchurch Families.