Pope Leo XIV said Sunday that God doesn’t listen to the prayers of those who make war or cite God to justify their violence, as he prayed especially for Christians in the Middle East during a Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s…
Israel apologizes after barring cardinal from Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday
Following outcry from political and religious leaders for barring Catholic leaders in the Holy Land from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday (March 29), Israeli authorities apologized and gave them permission to worship at the church,…
Palm Sunday procession in Jerusalem cancelled due to war
Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, has announced that the traditional Palm Sunday procession, which goes from the Mount of Olives up to Jerusalem, has been cancelled and will be replaced by a moment of prayer for the city…
A Holy Week choice between two parades
Some years ago, I led an adult formation (Baptists, read “Sunday school”) series for the good people of Calvary Episcopal in Bastrop, Texas, on The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem, a book…
Israel’s war on Gaza and occupation policies are quietly erasing Christian culture and presence this holy season
While all eyes are on Gaza, Israel’s occupation policies continue to quietly erase the presence and identity of ancient Christian communities of the Holy Land. Israeli policies limit the ability of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to access ancient…
What did the crowds expect on Palm Sunday?
You may have heard someone, maybe a preacher, ask on Palm Sunday, “What did the crowds waving palm branches and laying coats on the ground expect?” And you may have heard a dozen different answers. What, in fact, did the…
Holy Week cannot be about personal salvation and nothing more
They entered the city on March 24. Many came by foot. Some of them from the mount, not of Olives but the various mountains and hills that surround Nashville, Tenn. They came with modern palm branches — protest signs. The…
Holy Week 2023: When Golgotha came too early
For me, Palm Sunday didn’t work this year. In the liturgical calendar, Palm Sunday introduces Holy Week, a momentarily joyous prelude to the agony of Golgotha. Palm Sunday is supposed to give us hope that will strengthen us to walk…
Holy Week and ‘Game of Thrones’: hospitality and welcome when our ‘winters’ inevitably come
How ironic that the final season of “Game of Thrones” debuted on Palm Sunday, when Christians remember how people welcomed Jesus and hailed him as the Messiah, though all the while, winter was coming.
Re-imagining Palm Sunday: Jesus – and Pilate – enter Jerusalem
Imagine that on Palm Sunday, both Jesus and Pilate, enter Jerusalem from the same gate. The tension created in this imaginary scene introduces us to the underlying tension of Holy Week. And we must decide which parade we will attend.
Getting political in the pulpit
The responsibility of the church in this current political climate should be clear. There’s no violation of separation of church and state to say from the pulpit that hitting people who disagree with us is wrong. Or excluding people who believe different things than we do should stop. Or accumulating wealth while many struggle to make a living wage cannot continue.
Springsteen and Lent: Born in the USA
I always thought Palm Sunday was such a fun day as a child. Each year, the choir or children would enter into the sanctuary waving palm branches to a celebratory hymn of some sort. And each year, someone would awkwardly…