It is time to bring back Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday is a favorite Church Holiday at Redeemer—perhaps even more than Easter. Many of our young members traveled to visit family on Easter. Palm Sunday was our day to celebrate with Christian family with a stirring worship service, followed by a festive congregational dinner.
Our members love Palm Sunday music and joyous Hosanna anthems and the singing of the old relic hymn, The Palms (over the protests of our youthful organist).
We enjoyed our Hosanna Day, an important psychological part of the Holy Week saga.
This year, Palm Sunday falls on the first Sunday of the month, when Redeemer members, while locked out of our church, worship in our own neighborhood.
But our Ambassadors want to be with others on Palm Sunday.
We set about looking for a church that did more than hand out palms fronds and sing All Glory, Laud and Honor before plunging into the Passion Story for 90 minutes—a pshychological mood swing that doesn’t really work in the worship setting, no matter how hard we try.
This is a new development in liturgical practice—the brainchild of theologians who asked,”Why not combine Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday?” but didn’t take the time to answer their own question.
This was probably an attempt to compress the Holy Week experience into one worship service for the vast numbers of people who do not attend Holy Week services.
The triumphant entry into Jerusalem is now given a few opening minutes of worship. The Passion Story overshadows it by its sheer length. When we leave church on Palm Sunday, we are already experiencing the agony of Good Friday.
There are many good reasons to keep Palm Sunday pure.
We need Palm Sunday. We need the joy and the longing for salvation. We need to revel in the day—the whole day. Musicians need to have time to soar with anticipatory excitement. Children need the physical expression of joyous movement. We all need to sing and pray Hosanna! We need to enter Holy Week in joy! It’s part of the Passion Story!
So we vagabond Lutherans of East Falls may end up celebrating Palm Sunday by ourselves. But at least we will be celebrating Palm Sunday!