Palm Sunday, 13th April, by Fr Jack
On Palm Sunday we are caught in a strange net. It’s strange in lots of different directions.
Today is fun - there is the donkey and palms and we process and sing.
And yet we also by tradition hear the whole of the Passion, as we have just heard from the choir. We face the grim reality of what is to come in these days of Holy Week.
We cry ‘hosanna’ - that is ‘save us’ - and shout ‘welcome!’ to the King of Kings.
But very soon, we, the same crowds, will cry for His blood. ‘ Crucify!’
We are caught in a strangeness.
And the Liturgy reflects that confusion and unease. We are here, and we need to be here for these seven holy days, and especially on Thursday night, Friday afternoon, Saturday night/Sunday morning. We cannot escape this strange net. We cannot walk away from this, because if we do, we are walking away from life itself.
Each year we live this uneasy, costly journey, not a repetitious merry-go-round, but a screw thread, taking us with each Holy Week of our lives, deeper and deeper into the mystery of God. Into the mystery of the Lord’s death and resurrection.
This year our theme is Women of Passion, Women of the Passion. We will be noticing especially the company of the women we meet along this deadly road, and hearing from them.
It is important to recognise that all throughout The Bible women are at the heart of things - it’s just that they have often been overlooked, and at times purposely edited out. Too often and too easily the women get shifted into (quote, unquote) ’supporting roles’ to men. But that is not actually borne out by the events, and by the text. To read The Bible faithfully means carefully freeing their voices from subsequent, skewed readings. This is not new or a political ‘’woke’’ agenda, it is a matter of rediscovering riches that have been there all along. The truth.
And we can begin with the liturgy of Holy Week itself. This drama of Palm Sunday (donkeys and palms and everything) and all that will follow in this church and churches all over the world of many different denominations is because of one woman. One woman of the Passion that most people have never heard of. (Philip Pfatteicher, ‘Journey into the Heart of God’, OUP, 2013, p 174)
Let’s meet her now, seeing as it is her diary that will shape the next seven days for our lives, and the lives of Christians the world over.
Her name is Egeria. We know very little about her. She was educated, clearly. We know that from her writing. She is probably a Spanish-Roman woman. Probably wealthy. Possibly a nun, or member of a consecrated religious sisterhood. And she went to Jerusalem in the middle of the 300s for Holy Week and Easter, and she kept a diary of the services she joined there, with the Christian church of Jerusalem. She recorded in detail the practices, already long established, of the local church in Jerusalem. Palms and processions, going to the mount of olives, going to Golgotha, to the Temple, the veneration of the cross, the Liturgy of the Last Supper, Baptisms on Easter night in the darkened church of the Holy Sepulchre, Bishop, priests and deacons - all that we do now, she did, and the community in Jerusalem had been doing since very soon after the Crucifixion and Resurrection itself.
Quite probably, those liturgies which happened in the actual places they speak of in Jerusalem had already spread across the Christian world, but it is Egeria who gives us a vital paper-trail back at least as far as the 300s. What she did and saw, we do now, because what she did and saw, those who knew the people who knew Jesus and the Apostles did. Our Christian family story, τοῦτο ποιεῖτε εἰς τὴν ἐμὴν ἀνάμνησιν, in remembrance of Him. His presence, with them, with us.
Egeria is one of the most important women in Christian history that many have never heard of. She went to Jerusalem because she loved the Lord, and she met Him there in these days. St Giles’ Church is Jerusalem for us in this parish, this week. We come here because He loved us first and most, and we desire to love Him back.
Let’s go with Egeria - who’s love and writings shape our path - into these days of the Lord’s death and passion. This screw thread that takes us down into this moment at the heart of history. With all its strangeness, and discomfort, with its beauty of power, with the bits that warm our souls and the bits that turn our stomachs. Whatever it is, we don’t look away. We go with Him.
What does it mean to be a Christian?
Live Holy Week, this week of weeks, all of it: Sunday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and you will find out.