Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
Original Manuscript:
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If you look at today’s service in the Book of Common Prayer, you may find something there that will surprise you. It doesn’t say “Palm Sunday” at the top. Instead, it says “The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday”.
What we have often seen as one service is really the combination of two that were placed together in the early days of our Faith. Even in those early days, no mention was made in the Sunday of the Passion service about the triumphal entry service. The same, we should note, is true even now.
It is also the Sunday of the Passion title that comes first, not Palm Sunday. The Passion is what frames the entrance into Jerusalem and it the Death and Resurrection that makes it a triumph. We should never forget that, and it seems especially poignant to focus on the Passion on this Sunday now.
Thanks to COVID-19, we have lived a year plus in the midst of the reality of death. We celebrate Lent, Holy Week, and the Sunday of the Passion now because of the calendar year, although in actuality we have been living in these liturgical states for a while now.
We aren’t quite in the time for a triumphant entry. It isn’t completely safe just yet. We don’t know when it will be safe, but it will be soon. It is appropriate to hold off the Liturgy of the Palms for some time. It may be another calendar year before we celebrate the service of Palm Sunday, but in our hearts and as a community, we will celebrate the triumphant entry with all its hope as soon as it is safe to do so.