The Psalm for Palm

PSALM 118

Palm Sunday tends to arrive visually. Branches. Movement. A liturgy that begins outside and travels inward. It is one of the few days in the Christian year where the Church quite literally walks her theology.​

And yet the day rests on something less visible, a psalm.

Psalm 118 formed part of the Passover Hallel. Pilgrims sang it as they walked toward Jerusalem. Its words would have been familiar, almost bodily. When the Gospels record the crowd crying, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” they are not improvising. They are calling up a tradition. They are reading Scripture into the moment.

There is a strange gravity in this psalm. Some notice that Psalm 118 sits in the middle of the Bible. Psalm 117 before it is the shortest chapter. Psalm 119 after it is the longest. By one traditional count, there are 594 chapters before and 594 after. If you exclude Psalm 118, the total is 1188 chapters. And Psalm 118:8 becomes the middle verse of the Bible.

Should the central verse not carry weight? It does. “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.”

The verse is simple and stark. It does not flatter the imagination or the ego. It refuses to let human expectation govern faith. The crowd may be caught up in hope for a king, but the psalm calls for another kind of trust.
The Hebrew word for refuge suggests seeking shelter, leaning into protection, letting oneself be covered. It is not a strategy or a plan. It is surrender, dependence.

And suddenly Palm Sunday shifts. The crowds cry, the branches wave, the city hums with tension. But the psalm asks where trust ultimately lies. Where do we place our weight when the world trembles?

There is a contemplative echo in the words, “Open to me the gates of righteousness.” Not only a physical gate. A threshold within the soul. Saint John of the Cross speaks of the dark night, when every lesser support is stripped away so that only God remains. The psalm anticipates this. It teaches us to stand at the gate and let ourselves be held.
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Even the famous line (22) about the rejected stone becomes quieter when read this way. Rejection does not transform because humans declare it so. It is lifted into foundation by God alone.

Psalm 118 invites us to follow the procession inward, to notice what we lean on, what we hope in, what we trust. Branches will fade. Crowds will vanish. Human security will disappoint. The psalm remains.

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.​

Palm Sunday begins in movement, in acclaim, in light. The psalm reminds us of the hidden work beneath it. Refuge is what endures.