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Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday
Apr. 9th, 2006 10:01 pmThose of you from non-liturgical backgrounds might not know that today is Palm Sunday, which (in the Lutheran church, at least,) is also the Sunday of the Passion. I think the Catholics might break that up into two sundays, but I could be wrong.
This means we have two gospels. The first is the Palm Sunday gospel sometimes read in a processional: Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, with crowds singing Hosanas and lining his path with palm fronds and cloaks. The second Gospel reading is the entire Passion narrative, i.e. everything from the Last Supper through the Crucifixion. In my home congregation, we read it as kind of a dramatic presentation, with verses to the Gospel Hymn interspersed to break it up. This year, the lectionary is taken from the Gospel of Mark, the most concise of the Gospels. And we take out the sermon to make room. Still, it's a long service when you put in the whole Passion narrative. For those of us who go to all the Holy Week services, as I do, it means we hear everything twice: the Last Supper on Maundy Tursday, and the Crucifixion on Good Friday.
Anyway, there's a really cool poem by Robert Cording, called ( The Man Running Naked into the Dark )
It was written in 2004. I'm not that big on most modern poetry, and I don't tend to like free verse, and this poem is both. I heard it during Chapel my senior year at Luther College and fell in love with it.
This means we have two gospels. The first is the Palm Sunday gospel sometimes read in a processional: Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, with crowds singing Hosanas and lining his path with palm fronds and cloaks. The second Gospel reading is the entire Passion narrative, i.e. everything from the Last Supper through the Crucifixion. In my home congregation, we read it as kind of a dramatic presentation, with verses to the Gospel Hymn interspersed to break it up. This year, the lectionary is taken from the Gospel of Mark, the most concise of the Gospels. And we take out the sermon to make room. Still, it's a long service when you put in the whole Passion narrative. For those of us who go to all the Holy Week services, as I do, it means we hear everything twice: the Last Supper on Maundy Tursday, and the Crucifixion on Good Friday.
Anyway, there's a really cool poem by Robert Cording, called ( The Man Running Naked into the Dark )
It was written in 2004. I'm not that big on most modern poetry, and I don't tend to like free verse, and this poem is both. I heard it during Chapel my senior year at Luther College and fell in love with it.
