It's a busy time as we make our preparations for Palm Sunday: the Sunday of the Passion and Holy Week. To make my many thoughts more manageable, I'm organizing them around alms, palms, and psalms.
Alms
Your Ash Wednesday Lenten alms have purchased 180 pounds of whole milk powder, over 5,000 vitamin tablets, several dozen packets of tuna, and many pounds of coffee for our siblings at San Juan Evangelista Iglesia Episcopal in Coliseo, Matanzas, Cuba. I will deliver these much needed items on a very quick trip during my Easter Week break. Rest easy: I am traveling by air.
Palms
Please bring palms and/or other branches with greenery with you to Palm Sunday services. We are again borrowing palms from MARC House for the Garden of Repose, and Petals and Vines florist is again generously donating palms for the altar. But for the blessing of palms and Palm Sunday procession, please bring palms and branches from your yard or someone else's yard (preferably with their permission).
Psalms
One of many learnings for me from studying with Dr Alexander John Shaia is the nature of Psalm 22. For many years when I heard its opening words, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" on Good Friday, I, like many others, understood that Jesus the Christ upon the cross felt completely abandoned by God.
Dr Shaia has opened for me an understanding that for Jesus to utter, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" was a kind of shorthand for the Jewish Christians whose communities composed the gospels. It's the equivalent for us of hearing, "Our Father, who art in heaven...": we know what comes next. So it was for Jews in Jesus' time and since who pray to die with the words of Psalm 22 on their lips as we might hope to have the Lord's Prayer as our last words. For them to hear the beginning of Psalm 22 was a cue to recite the entire psalm.
Psalm 22 starts in despair, works through a number of uncomfortable emotions and admissions, and concludes in renewed hope in God's deliverance and saving power. Palm Sunday starts in joy and then moves us through the deep and difficult passion of our Savior ushering in Holy Week and the Paschal Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Great Vigil of Easter). As we make this journey once more, we do so knowing that there is no Easter Sunday without Good Friday and Holy Saturday and knowing also that Easter will bring us through to renewed hope in God's deliverance and saving power. I look forward to sharing with you these holy days that lie just ahead.
Photo credit: Mike Kindinger
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