Marching Orders

Holy Week begins with a journey—or rather, picks up in the middle of a journey to Jerusalem. Now technically, the liturgical calendar says Holy Week begins on Monday, not Palm/Passion Sunday. So, maybe today is not so much a beginning as a prequel, a setting up for the events of Holy Week to unfold. Either way, we’ve chosen to start this Holy Week worship series with Palm/Passion, because the palm procession gives us context for all that follows. Indeed, Palm/Passion Sunday is a day for joy, but not joy in the resurrection. That’s next week. Today is a day for joy in the promise of salvation. As we journey with Jesus to the cross—the journey then and the journey now—we find our joy in the promise of salvation, a promise that will not fail.

Yet, this is also a journey that calls us to face the truth—the truth about religious- and state-sanctioned violence, the truth about sin and evil in our world, the truth about the distance between the power of this world and the kingdom of God, the truth about the harms we face and our complicity in harming others. What room is there for joy when faced with the truth of Holy Week?

The lectionary offers us a possible answer—sing! The psalm for Palm/Passion is Psalm 118, a psalm about God saving God’s people from destruction, a song rooted in the promise of God’s steadfast love. So, when stuck between the truth of sin and the promise of salvation, we join our voices in proclaiming God’s steadfast love. As you plan worship for Palm/Passion Sunday, consider how you can speak, sing, pray, and/or preach Psalm 118. Perhaps you draw on a hymn that paraphrases Psalm 118, or you incorporate one verse as a repeated prayer response. Remember, this is also a psalm that Jesus and his disciples would have known. When we sing or read this psalm, we join with them, as well as generations of believers who came before and after them.

As we begin this series focused on the journey from palms to the cross to the empty tomb, think about ways you can use the worship service to move from the joyful palm procession toward Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. If you begin the service with a palm procession, perhaps you conclude with a silent recessional, carrying the palms, a cross, or a candle out of the space as a symbol of the journey ahead. If you do not have other services this week, consider how you might demonstrate the shift from the palms to the cross by stripping the altar and/or draping a cross on the altar with a black cloth. Holy Week can bring up difficult emotions for many congregants, so it’s important that whatever we pray, sing, do, and preach this week tells the truth in love and invites us as a gathered body into prayerful reflection on God’s steadfast love incarnate in Jesus Christ as we move toward the table, the cross, the tomb, and beyond.

Dr. Lisa Hancock, Director of Worship Arts Ministries, served as an organist and music minister in United Methodist congregations in the legacy Northwest Texas and North Texas Annual Conferences, as well as the New Day Amani/Upendo house churches in Dallas. After receiving her Master of Sacred Music and Master of Theological Studies from Perkins School of Theology, Lisa earned her PhD in Religious Studies from Southern Methodist University, where she researched and wrote on the doctrine of Christ, disability, and atonement.