The Nerfed Palm Sunday

10 April, 2006. 392 words.

Yesterday I went back to church for the first time this year. I stopped last year for a variety of reasons, most selfishly because I rather liked having Sunday morning to myself. But I digress. Among other reasons, Mrs. Krehbiel is the music director at this particular Episcopal church, and I missed hearing her play. (She also missed having me in the choir.)

So my first service back was Palm Sunday. This is the service where I’ve always felt the Episcopal Church has done a huge disservice to its audience (pun intended). I don’t know if anyone else does this, but we lump Palm Sunday and Good Friday together into one emotional roller-coaster called The Liturgy of the Palms: Passion Sunday (or The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, depending on where you look). It goes something like this:

You start with a happy, fun procession waving palms around (yesterday we walked outside in the windy, freezing cold — uphill), singing Ride On, Ride On In Majesty. Then, a few minutes later, sometime between the first and second lessons I think, you’re singing Ah, Holy Jesus and then not too much later you’re hearing the crucifixion story and shouting “crucify him” and generally feeling pretty crappy and personally responsible for Jesus’s death. Basically, Palm Sunday lasts about 10 minutes. Then you’re time-warped into Good Friday for the rest of the service.

The only reason I can think of for this madness is that the Episcopal Church doesn’t want to inconvenience occasional church-goers with all those pesky Holy Week services (we have one every night this week). But, to me, this severely penalizes the devoted church-goer. You end up with an extra helping of guilt because you go through two Good Fridays. I suppose you could skip Palm Sunday so you don’t hear Jesus die twice, but then you’d miss the palms and your music director would hate you (especially if she’s your wife), because there’s always a big anthem on Palm Sunday. It’s definitely a lose-lose situation.

So I think they should quit pandering to the lazy church-goers. They’re not going to “get” the Holy Week experience anyway (most of the people I overheard yesterday were saying something to the effect of, “golly, what a somber service, what’s that about?”), so there’s no point in ruining it for the rest of us.

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