Palm Sunday

We decided to visit the Anglican Church again this week for Palm Sunday. I suggested we take another route to get to the church. Jenny said it was God that directed me, for we ended up running into a group of about 100 people gathered with palm branches in the plaza near our house. It was the Anglican congregation preparing to walk to the church as Jesus entered Jerusalem. We prayed, read scripture and the youth holding a cross draped in royal purple lead the march, singing through town.

“Halleluiah, halleluiah, halleluiah,” we sang in procession, the father and church clergy following with incense in the rear. It was a very moving experience for the senses. Here was a church proclaiming faith as it walked past stores, houses and people going to work and bars blaring music which were muffled by the song of believers as they passed. It was as if we were walking the road in faith and it felt like it would only be natural to say, “Come join us in following the Christ,” to those who watched us pass.

What if we did this in our churches in our communities in North America? Could I imagine a procession on Palm Sunday through the streets of Shickley, walking all the way through the fields of corn to the church in praise of our Savior? Would we look weird? Sure, we would, but then maybe people would want to join us in the journey. Maybe it would look to ritualistic? Maybe they would find faith by our statement together as faith communities. Maybe we are too confined to our buildings? These are all questions that cannot be answered but are thought provoking.

We circled the church once, as the youth entered. The two groups echoed one another in song, inside and out, until all were in the church. The youth choir lined the aisles welcoming us and the celebration grew as we entered Jerusalem, the “New Jerusalem” (the church). The church was especially full. The singing of people and movement of palm branches flowed in rhythm to the drums, clapping and the occasional tambourine as it filled the space between the cement walls of the church. The whole story of the crucifixion from the entry to Jerusalem to the burial of Jesus body was read in song and a sermon was given on four characters in the story, Jesus, Judas, Peter and Joseph of Arimathea.

The service ended not in sobering words of the death but with Halleluiahs as if to say that Jesus death and trial is not intended for sadness but it is the beginning of joyfulness, the true joyfulness of Christ’s saving love.