Palm Sunday is a celebration, but also a remembrance of human hypocrisy.

Religious hypocrisy is the easiest kind of hypocrisy to detect, because the biblical accounts of what Jesus taught are so clear.

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I hope that those who are celebrating Palm Sunday today, whether at home or in church, will keep in mind what the day actually means. While the palms symbolize peace and love, and the donkey symbolizes a king who came in peace and not in war, the day also notes the hypocrisy of the crowds that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem and then brayed for his death just days later—because of who he was and what he taught.

Thus I would urge those who go to church today not to emerge still celebrating the jailing and exile of a man whom the government admits has committed no crimes, while his pregnant wife is about to give birth. Neither should we emerge from Palm Sunday celebrations smirking at the terrible fate of a man our government admits was sent in error to suffer inhuman conditions in an El Salvador concentration camp, but refuses to lift a finger to save him.

I don’t have to ask what Jesus would have thought about these actions, because we all know the answer. Those who profess to be Christians, show us that you mean it. The sacred holidays at this time of year, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim, are not just meant to be occasions for us to get together and eat interesting food, they commemorate serious principles.

But Palm Sunday, in particular, commemorates the hypocrisy of the people of Jerusalem, at least most of them, who first hailed Jesus as their king and then turned on him so soon afterwards. I often post, here and there, the text of Dostoevsky’s chapter “The Grand Inquisitor” from “The Brothers Karamazov,” in which Jesus returns to earth during the Spanish Inquisition and is immediately arrested for heresy. In an important sense, that story continues today.

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