Thank you, drive through, amen; Lebanon church offers unusual Palm Sunday service due to coronavirus

From Oregon-

Florence Christ drove into the parking lot at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Lebanon and rolled down her car window. “Are we your first customers?” she asked.

Her husband Kenneth Christ, in the passenger seat, leaned forward to peek around her and get a better look at the makeshift altar on the sidewalk by the house of worship.

Priests and church leaders were gathered outside. The church organist Ray Hendricks also was there, playing hymns on an electronic keyboard, safe from clouds under a sky blue pop-up canopy.

After exchanging pleasantries, Rev. A.J. Buckley, clad in a surgical-style mask and gloves, used a grabber tool to pick up a plastic bag that included a palm frond folded in the shape of a cross, as well as the church bulletin and Bible readings for the day. Mindful of keeping six feet away, Buckley used the grabber to transfer the items into the car.

More here-

https://lebanon-express.com/news/local/thank-you-drive-through-amen-lebanon-church-offers-unusual-palm-sunday-service-due-to-coronavirus/article_b4b0b2fd-4282-5ad9-a263-051b5da0b2f6.html

No palms on Palm Sunday: Philly church using local grasses for lighter footprint

From Philadelphia-

St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia’ Society Hill is one of the oldest churches in the city. At more than 250 years old it is an historic landmark, one not afraid to change.

This weekend its congregants, along with Christians around the world, will observe Palm Sunday and mark the day Jesus entered Jerusalem to an adoring crowd waving palm fronds in his honor. It is the official start of Holy Week.

Instead of waving palms, St. Peter’s will wave ornamental grasses, in accordance with the church’s environmental theology.

“We had been using eco-friendly palm, which are sustainably harvested,” said Rev. Claire Nevin-Field, the church rector. “But even given that, most of those are imported from Central America or driven in trucks from Florida. That still is a pretty big carbon footprint. There has got to be stuff growing around here that we could use.”

More here-

https://whyy.org/articles/no-palms-on-palm-sunday-philly-church-using-local-grasses-for-lighter-footprint/

Egypt declares state of emergency after bombings of Coptic churches

From Episcopal Cafe-

Yesterday, two Coptic churches in Egypt where hit by suicide bombers. The first blast took place at St. George’s in Tanta, a Nile delta city, at around 9:30 in the morning. Several hours later, another bomb went off at the gates of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Alexandria. Both bombings have now been found to be suicide bombings. In Tanta, the bomber made it into the church and detonated his bombs in the front pews. 27 people are reported dead there, with 71 injured at least. However, police in Alexandria were able to intercept the suicide bomber outside the cathedral, preventing him from entering. He detonated his bombs there, killing the two officers who stopped him, along with 11 others, and leaving 21 more people injured, according to the Health Ministry. Pope Tawadros II was at the Cathedral, but he was not injured in the explosion. Daesh/ISIL immediately claimed responsibility for both attacks. “Crusaders and their apostate allies should know the bill between us and them is very big and they will pay it with rivers of blood from their children, god willing. Wait for us, for we will wait for you,” the jihadist group said in a statement quoted by Reuters news agency.

More here

http://www.episcopalcafe.com/egypt-declares-state-of-emergency-after-bombings-of-coptic-churches/

Two Explosions Kill at Least 31 at Egyptian Coptic Churches on Palm Sunday

From The New York Times-

Two explosions at Coptic churches in Egypt on Palm Sunday left at least 31 people dead and injured dozens of others as a day of worship in the besieged Christian community turned to destruction and carnage.

The first blast ripped through St. George’s Church in northern Egypt in the Nile Delta city of Tanta, 50 miles north of Cairo, during a Mass about 9:30 a.m., according to an official from the Health Ministry.

The deputy minister of health put the preliminary death toll at 25.

Hours later, a suicide bomber set off an explosion outside the main Coptic church in Alexandria, St. Mark’s Cathedral, killing at least six — including three police officers — and injuring 21 others, the Health Ministry said.

More here-

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/09/world/middleeast/explosion-egypt-coptic-christian-church.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=0

ON THE PRECIPICE OF HOLY WEEK

From The Living Church-

Palm Sunday is to me the most disorienting liturgy of the year. We begin with a festal procession, waving palm fronds and shouting our Hosannas to the Messiah. Then suddenly it is as though the brakes are applied and there is a screeching turn. The colors change. The mood darkens by several shades. The Passion is sung. Yet more bitterness is portended: betrayal, torture, death. Holy Week is here.

We know what lies ahead, on the other side of the middle distance. Easter is but one week from today. It’s a funny feeling when one makes an effort to engage these mysteries with a more deliberate attention, like looking at contour lines on a familiar map. It’s a pilgrimage we make every year. Unlike the apostle Thomas, perhaps, by now we ought to “know the way” (John 14:5) — every turn, every landmark. And yet. Today, as ever, it only manages to be portended. The destination is somehow a long way off.

More here-

http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2017/04/09/on-the-precipice-of-holy-week/?platform=hootsuite

Paschal mystery

From The Living Church-

Years ago, in a diocese far, far away, a colleague surprised me one day by saying how much he disliked the reading of the Passion Gospel on Palm Sunday, particularly when members of the congregation were assigned the various dramatic parts (in precisely the way that over the past forty years or so has become fairly common in churches of all sorts). What he found objectionable was the role assigned to the congregation, the part of the crowd, calling out “Crucify him, crucify him!” in the midst of the solemn liturgy of the day. He was scandalized by the suggestion that his congregation, good Christian people, might be identified with Jesus’ killers.

Just telling this story reminds me of the joys of theological conversation at a certain age, of the thrust and parry over great ideas that can take place in an informal setting. My sense is that theology is often best done in such a setting. I have the sense that much of this give and take happens on social media these days, but that’s another story.

More here-

http://livingchurch.org/covenant/2016/03/21/paschal-mystery/

Is Palm Sunday a Rainforest Killer?

From The Daily Beast-

For years, Latin Americans were stripping the landscape bare to sell palm leaves to US florists and churches, until an eco-friendly Guatemala program turned things around.

I sat in the passenger seat of Juan Trujillo’s pickup truck, careening through a dense forest in northern Guatemala. The road we were driving on—and I use the word road here with some hesitation—was simply a deeply grooved dirt trail that had been coarsely etched through the jungle so that trucks like this one could travel between the town of Flores, a lovely little place overrun by tourists on an island in the middle of a scenic lake, and the many tiny villages and Mayan ruins that dot the northern jungles. Rains had turned parts of the road into muddy mush, and the trip was about as smooth as the swirling teacup ride at Disneyland. I was being jarred in all directions, my head occasionally thumping up against the roof of the truck, as I tried to do some basic fourth-grade mathematical calculations using the numbers that I had written down in my little notebook at the village we’d just departed.

More here-

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/20/is-palm-sunday-a-rainforest-killer.html

Carry message of joy, pope urges

From The Post-Gazette-

As 250,000 people waved olive branches they had brought to St. Peter's Square for his Palm Sunday blessing, Pope Francis called on Roman Catholics, especially young ones, to bring joy to the world.

"Do not be men and women of sadness: a Christian can never be sad! Never give way to discouragement!" the 76-year-old pope said Sunday.

"Ours is not a joy that comes from having many possessions, but from having encountered a person, Jesus. [It comes] from knowing that with him we are never alone, even at difficult moments, even when our life's journey comes up against problems and obstacles that seem insurmountable ... [H]e accompanies us and carries us on his shoulders. This is our joy, this is the hope that we must bring to this world of ours."

The newly elected Argentinian has brought joy to Catholics across the spectrum. Acts such as personally calling his newspaper carrier in Buenos Aires to cancel his subscription have endeared him to common people. His first regular public Mass was the first Mass of Holy Week, Palm Sunday.


More here-

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/world/carry-message-of-joy-pope-urges-680758/

MG Kids follows a donkey through Palm Sunday in Morristown

From New Jersey-

Dixie the donkey returned to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown on Palm Sunday to lead parishioners at two services on a ceremonial reenactment of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Dixie balked temporarily on her first stroll through the graveyard but otherwise took most of the walk in stride, including her journey between the pews through the interior of the church.

MG Kids correspondent Carl Hausman, 11, a parishioner at St. Peter’s, provides a kids-eye view of the day’s proceedings.

More here-

http://morristowngreen.com/2012/04/02/mg-kids-follows-a-donkey-through-palm-sunday-in-morristown/

Eco-Palms bring sustainability to Christian holy day

From The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-

Today as members of St. Andrew Lutheran Church wave palm fronds to commemorate how Jesus was welcomed to Jerusalem, they will do so believing that Jesus would approve of how their palms were harvested.

The Shadyside church uses Eco-Palms, which are harvested by workers who earn fair wages and practice preservation of tropical forests.

"They're more expensive than other palms, just as the coffee we serve here is more expensive because it is fair trade. But it's a statement of social justice that we're glad to make," said the Rev. Janet Grill, pastor of St. Andrew, a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

"It makes sense that when we celebrate the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, it's done in a way that honors Jesus in those who work for very little money."

Eco-Palms are full fronds attached to stems, not the long, narrow strips of torn leaf that many churches use.

"The kids love it because you can really wave them. I love them because you can't use them as spears," she said.

Palm Sunday, one week before Easter, is based on John 12:13. It says that when Jesus' admirers heard he was entering Jerusalem "they took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the king of Israel!' "


Read more:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10087/1046239-323.stm#ixzz0jT2Bhn4d

Palm Sunday service goes eco-friendly

Nearly 2,000 years ago, an excited crowd welcomed Jesus by going green: spreading fresh-cut branches before him on his last, fateful trip into Jerusalem.

For Palm Sunday today, Second Presbyterian Church is going green, too, by displaying "eco-palm" fronds harvested in an environmentally friendly, economically sustainable way.

More than 640,000 eco-palm fronds will be waved today by 2,500 congregations, including seven in South Hampton Roads. The palms are marketed by the Center for Integrated Natural Resource and Agricultural Management at the University of Minnesota.

Waving and displaying palm branches is a tradition at many Protestant and Catholic churches on Palm Sunday, which starts the Holy Week devotions that culminate on Easter.

The practice commemorates Gospel accounts including John, chapter 12, saying Jesus' admirers "took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, 'Hosanna!' " as he rode into Jerusalem.

The Rest-

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/04/palm-sunday-service-goes-ecofriendly