Palms & Passion

Most of us grew up remembering the fun of Palm Sunday and processing around with palms. Years ago at LCC, this church followed the old tradition of parading around the neighborhood with palms and even a donkey! The last week of Jesus’ life is truly the greatest, fastest downward spiral from power ever in history. It’s what makes Holy Week an amazing journey that the church has reenacted in liturgy from ancient times.

For many of us that didn’t grow up in more mainline liturgical churches, the Sunday that started Holy Week was only about the Palms. No long reading of the Passion, no talk about what happened later in the week. Historically, Passiontide Sunday was two Sundays before Easter and included the entire reading of Jesus’ Passion. The story of his last night with his disciples, his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, his arrest, trial, crucifixion and then death. Then the next Sunday was Palm Sunday with no story about his passion. Decades ago the church decided this didn’t make sense as a timeline. So Palm Sunday became Passion Sunday with the palm procession and liturgy tacked on the front. And that has always led to some really long services.

It is nice to observe the stark difference between Jesus being hailed as the promised Messiah to him being rejected and executed. But it is hard to give the palm occasion its due in such a tight, one-worship format. So this year we are splitting the palm observance so we can give it more time, and focus on Jesus’ triumphal entry and what led to it, but still observing the injustice that that the one the crowd hailed as Messiah, they later called for his crucifixion.

March 22^nd will be our Palm Prelude Sunday. We will observe Jesus’ last days leading up to his triumphal entry and join in his acclamation as our king. We will bless the palms and joyfully parade out following our Savior. But on March 29^th, our Palm/Passion Sunday, we will return with palms and our shouts of “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” which will gradually turn to “crucify him” as we mark the events of Holy Week. We will include old traditions of worship from Holy Week in place of a long reading of the passion story from the gospel. And between services we will have our Palm Sunday Fair which includes many crafts and activities that mark Jesus’ last week.

Even though we still call the Sunday before Easter Palm Sunday, it is actually called the Sunday of the Passion with the Palm Procession in our Lutheran practice. We wish to give our old memories of the palms and the joy of Jesus’ acclamation as king more time and focus. So we invite you into experiencing the joy of following Jesus out with palms on March 22^nd, only to return waving palms that we later abandon at his Cross.