This year, Year C in the lectionary, Palm Sunday is cancelled, so you need to do away with your palm crosses, and change the choice of hymns. The reason is that we are reading from Luke 19.28–40, and Luke makes no mention of ‘palms’ during Jesus’ ‘triumphal entry’ in Jerusalem, riding on a donkey. Instead, we only get mention (Luke 19.37) of people spreading their cloaks, or outer garments (himatia) on the road. So this year we celebrate Cloak Sunday. (If you are part of the tradition which keeps the palms and burns them for next year’s Ash Wednesday, I would advise against doing this with your coats.)
In this video, James and Ian explore the reasons for this, and how we can read this passage well and preach on it effectively. For full details see the article posted previously. We start with a brief reflection on the experience of preaching having had the conversation about last week’s passage.
Apropos nothing very much but years ago James BB was curate at my Parish. It was special to see him and it was a good video talk.
All passages we read leave more to be found and even though Luke’s gospel doesn’t have palms and hosannas there is still a lot to discover.
Whilst writing for S.U. I was talking to translators into specialist languages at Oxford. There is a tribe in Africa where if they go to a neighbour and fight, then if they win the women of the tribe use palms to clean the path before him/them, but if he/they loses then the women, out of disgust, throw the palms in front of him !!! For that reason the crowd are cleaning the road and not waving and throwing palms!!!
Great to hear from you Clive. What an extraordinary story re palms! Fascinating