Love me some Palms

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week - AKA the busiest week of the year for pastors. This is like April 15 for accountants or the week before Christmas for retailers or the last week of August for Disney World. My holy week will end with me preaching 4 times between Thursday night and Sunday Morning, but fortunately it started out fairly easy - I didn't preach yesterday!

Instead of a sermon, our Sunday School student and some adult helpers did a dramatic reading of the passion narrative from Luke (Luke 19:28-40 and 22:14 -23:56). They did a wonderful job!

We started outside, though cold with our palms and the reading of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. We then processed inside singing All Glory, Laud and Honor. Our narrative then brought us to the Last Supper and we then celebrated communion. Afterward we heard of Jesus providing for his disciples and we gave our offering as Jesus has provided for us.

We prayed for all people after hearing of Jesus praying in the garden, and confessed our faith after Peter denied knowing Jesus. Then towards the end of our worship as we heard of Jesus' trial, sentencing, crucifixion, death and burial we sang verses of the spiritual Were you There.

I was a little nervous about worship since it was something so different - what we are having communion before the prayers?! And there were a few snafus, like the ushers disappearing during communion, luckily the sanctuary is not that big so I don't think anyone got lost on their way to the altar railing. But overall things went very smoothly. And the speakers did a FANTASTIC job!

Are we doing it again next year? Probably or at least something like it. Next year the reading will be from Matthew so it will be a bit different.
Would I change anything? I think I would have some longer pauses between when a reading stopped and when our liturgy began. Also I forgot to give Lyudmila, our organist, a copy of the script so I had to nod to her whenever it was time for her to play.
Was it a great start to Holy Week? You betcha! Many people told me they thought it was great and very meaningful. It was a great teaching tool to help people connect portions of our liturgy (worship elements) to scripture, plus it allowed those not able to make it on Thursday, Friday or Saturday (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil) to hear important parts of the Holy Week story which you miss if you go from the triumphant entry into Jerusalem to Jesus' resurrection with no betrayal and death in between.

So what did I do this last week without having to write a sermon? Well I actually wrote two sermons: Maundy Thursday and Good Friday - Easter Vigil and Easter morning are still left to write. But those will be posted later this week along with my exciting Saturday! (Okay it wasn't that exciting but it was dusty, fun, and well needed.)

Happy Holy Week!