Sunday, March 24 will mark Palm Sunday, and the start of Holy Week.
According to brandeis.edu “Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christian communities celebrate Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday recalls the story in Christian Scripture of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, greeted by people waving palm branches. It is a reminder for Christians to welcome Jesus into their hearts and to be willing to follow him. The service on Palm Sunday also includes a reading of the Passion, the story of the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus.”
Pastor Jamie Tyrrell of the First Presbyterian Church of Delhi said the day is rife with historical and religious import. Tyrrell will lead the 4 Clinton St., Delhi church’s Palm Sunday service, offered virtually and in person, at 10:30 a.m. For more information, visit fpcdelhi.org.
“Palm Sunday is the commemoration of the day that Jesus got onto a donkey and rode into Jerusalem,” he said. “It was understood by his contemporaries that this was a victory march of their king, except they hadn’t had a king in quite some time. They were looking for God to restore the royal house of David and there were a bunch of people that they didn’t much care for that they were hoping this new king would get rid of. This was a prophecy of Zachariah, from about 500 years before Jesus did this, but everybody knew the passage. Then Jesus comes, they’re waving palms, and this is a victory celebration of the Messiah, the king.”
In a written statement, Tyrrell added: “Palm Sunday was the closest Sunday to Passover, the highest holy day of the Jewish people. Sunday was the day the lambs were brought into the city to be held in the Temple holding pens for sale. The lambs were sold to the representatives of families who then engaged a priest to sacrifice them. This was designed to happen at the time the Pascal or Passover lamb was sacrificed on the high (altar). Both with the Pascal lamb and those bought by ordinary people, some of the meat was burned. The rest was taken by the person who bought it so people could eat the Passover meal with their families. The Passover is the remembrance of the night the Angel of Death (passed over) Jewish households and marks the event that freed Israel from slavery in Egypt.”
Father Bernard Ampong of Sacred Heart Church in Sidney said, too: “Palm Sunday recalls what happened in the life of Jesus Christ when he went to Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago. God sent him into the world to complete a mission, and that mission is that he was the savior and so he would die for our sins and bring us salvation. As prophesized in the Old Testament, the Messiah would have to go to Jerusalem, so Jesus did that and Palm Sunday is the commemoration of that event.”
Ampong said Palm Sunday requires much preparation. Ampong has been with the Sidney church since January 2016. For more information on services, find “Sacred Heart Church, Sidney NY” on Facebook.
“For us, Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week, and it is a very busy week,” he said. “It’s the holiest of weeks in the church’s liturgical year and it is the beginning of that holiest time when we get to celebrate the great events of our salvation. We know Jesus suffered and died and rose again, and that is the great mystery, the Pascal mystery, and these events are very important for us, and it begins from Palm Sunday.
“So, we have the palms, and we will order the palms and have the business of that,” Ampong continued. “We already have them ready, then, when we gather for the celebration, the first part is the blessing of the palms and the distribution of the palms. In the front of the church, we’ll put the palms on the table and cover it with a very nice red cloth, then we have the rites; we bless the palms and we will distribute them to the parishioners — the worshippers — and then there’s a procession and we’ll sing a song. That event is a recall of what happened to Jesus Christ when he went to Jerusalem, because, as he was entering the city, the crowd sang a particular song: ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, blessed is the son of David.’”
Ampong said his Palm Sunday service, 10:30 a.m. on March 24 at the 15 Liberty St., Sidney church, centers around sacred storytelling.
“The second part of the celebration is the reading … of the Passion — a long story, a narrative of all that Jesus went through before dying on the cross,” he said. “There are several characters — one of Jesus’ disciples arranged with the religious leaders to get Jesus arrested and all of that … and then the crowd, chanting that Jesus should be crucified … and we have Peter, a disciple of Jesus’ that, out of fear of the crowd, denied that he knew Jesus three times.
“All of it is a vivid description that shows that Jesus went through a lot even before being nailed to and dying on the cross,” Ampong continued. “When we do that, it kind of brings us to appreciate what Jesus did for us, that he shed his blood on the cross to take away our sins and bring us salvation. It’s not just to make a mockery of Jesus; some people think that, but no, we bring him to mind and all that he did. He offered his life for us and that’s a big sacrifice. All that Jesus went through, when we recall it, it tells us to overcome weaknesses. When we talk of the crowd … here is a jubilant crowd, cheering Jesus and welcoming Jesus as their savior, but then, within weeks, this same crowd turned against Jesus and, in our life, we see that. It could happen to any one of us.”
Jesus as victor and sacrifice, Tyrrell and Ampong said, are integral Palm Sunday concepts.
“Passover started about 1,500 years before Jesus was born, but it was within the context of that celebration that he got on the donkey,” Tyrrell said. “Jerusalem was normally a city of about 25,000 people, but about 100,000 people would turn up for the Passover and thousands of lambs were brought to the holding pens … then examined to be sure they were males and without blemish, then sold to all of these pilgrims that came to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem.
“Jesus was saying, ‘I am the Passover lamb that has come to take away the sins of the world,’” Tyrrell continued. “‘You’re expecting somebody to come in and kick all these people’s butts that you don’t like, but that’s not what I’m here for.’ Jesus had to explain to the world, including his own disciples, then and now, that were not expecting a spiritual figure but a military one, what he was doing. Messiah means ‘king,’ but it also means ‘anointed one.’ There had been no battle, there was no army and no one had been defeated, but Jesus comes in celebrating victory, so that immediately raises the question, ‘What victory?,’ but they all celebrate — ‘Yahoo, here comes the king’ — and they’re waving the palm branches and having a whale of a good time, then they started thinking, ‘Who did he defeat?’ He was saying the new covenant would be written on people’s hearts, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their god and they will be my people. Jesus was clearly saying, ‘Look, my father has told you he’s going to do something new and different from what you’re used to, so go ahead and be confused and I understand that because what I’m doing is writing the law of God in your heart.”
“Jesus’ suffering is also teaching us to spend our life in love and service for others,” Ampong said. “In our society and our country, we need to think of people who have that spirit and who commit themselves to the service of other people. We talk of the military or the police or our servicemen and -women, and they’re people that put their life on the line for other people. Jesus wasn’t afraid to do that for his brothers and sisters, and we are all called to do the same thing.”
The story of Jesus’ suffering and Palm Sunday, sources said, is, then, the epitomizing lesson of Christianity.
“How do we speak something healing and an invitation into that mess of insanity that’s out there but is also inside of us?” Tyrrell said. “Jesus’ struggle was the same struggle we all have: How do you say really important stuff to people who don’t want to hear it but know they should? It’s perennial and there’s nothing dated about the human struggle to be what we know we can be.
“As a contemporary Christian, I believe that our struggle is between being caught up in this world and living the vision which God has given us,” he continued. “And that is that, ultimately, we’re neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female; we are all one in Jesus Christ. We slice and dice ourselves up into various, competing groups as though there’s not enough food or shelter or water … but there really is enough. What there isn’t is a heart that trusts there’s enough. Our second prison is the future; it makes us very nervous when we can’t see what’s going to happen, but Jesus has said, ‘Now, look. It’s taken care of.’ So, the best you can do each day is loving people as people.”
“When Jesus was crucified and he died and they buried him, that wasn’t the end; he rose again and that will be what we celebrate at Easter,” Ampong said. “For us in the Catholic church, this is a great event. His resurrection is the foundation of our Christian faith … and it gives us that hope of new life and that, when we die, we have that hope that death becomes a door through which we can enter a new life.
“There are some people able to have that spiritual endurance and able to stay tall, be close to God and that is what Jesus did,” he continued. “He saw suffering come in and he remained united with God. Suffering comes to us and sometimes we are afraid of suffering, and we don’t want to suffer, but suffering is part and parcel of human life. It’s not easy, but we need to understand that Jesus is teaching us that there’s meaning in suffering. The Passion story has a lot to teach us about our human life.”