2025 Sun April 13
Recent Articles, Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025
Parish Post, April, 2025
Palm Sunday, Sunday of the Passion
Lectionary-Palm Sunday, Year C
Luke’s Passion Narrative
Visual Lectionary Palm Sunday
Bishop Curry sets the scene for Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday, the Setting: “We are Going Up to Jerusalem”
Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday Scenes
Voices Palm Sunday
“The Chosen” depicts Palm Sunday
Meanings, Path, and Art of Palm Sunday
Why was Jesus killed ?
Feelings and Emotions on Palm Sunday
STATIONS OF THE CROSS
The Stations of the Cross began as the practice of pious pilgrims to Jerusalem who would retrace the final journey of Jesus Christ to Calvary.
Later, for the many who wanted to pass along the same route, but could not make the trip to Jerusalem, a practice developed that eventually took the form of the fourteen stations currently found in almost every church. Many explore the stations on Good Friday.
3 versions of the stations
1. VTS version – video and reflection guide
2. Mary Peterman – paintings
3. Creighton – Catholic version
St. Peter’s Parish Post, April, 2025
Holy Week at St. Peter’s – Join us
Happy Faces at. St. Peter’s, taking their prayer to the Cross
The Rev. Tom Hughes will be with us on Sunday the 13th and also Maundy Thursday and Good Friday at 7pm each night as we make our way through holy week to the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection.
The Rev. Pete Gustin will lead our worship on Easter Sunday! Join us for the journey!
Luke’s Passion Narrative
Overall Themes
1. The passion narrative is part of the Journey
These are aspects of Luke’s Passion Narrative that are special or exclusive to him. Together with Jesus’ predictions of his own death, the death of a prophet – 9:31, 51; 12:50; 13:32-33; 17:25, it forms the climax of a journey to the cross upon which Luke has taken us. It must end in Jerusalem, for as Jesus says, where else could a prophet be killed than in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is, for Luke the centre of God’s purposes still. Jesus was proclaimed Messiah and Saviour in Jerusalem first when he was a baby. At his Bar Mitzvah held in Jerusalem, he took upon himself the adult task of ‘being in His Father’s House, he has been greeted at a king by the crowds in Jerusalem a week earlier. He will die, rise and appear in Jerusalem. His disciples will say goodbye to Him in Jerusalem, before settling down to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit, which they will receive in Jerusalem. The church will start in Jerusalem. The gospel will then go out from Jerusalem to all the ends of the earth.
2 Jesus dies an innocent man, a victim of injustice. Pilate states three times that Jesus is innocent, or has done nothing wrong. The thief on the cross declares that Jesus has done nothing wrong. Finally, in one of Luke’s most interesting redactions, the centurion at the foot of the cross declares that Jesus is innocent (as opposed to being the Son of God, as in Mark and Matthew).
The Jesus who is accused before Pilate by the chief priests and scribes of ‘perverting our nation’ (Luke 23:2) is one whose infancy and upbringing was totally in fidelity to the Law of Moses (2:22, 27, 39, 42). Similarly, the Jesus who is accused of ‘forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar’ is a Jesus who has only recently (20:25) declared concerning the tribute: ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’. All of this casts light on the affirmation made by various dramatis personae in the passion that Jesus is innocent (23:4, 14, 22, 41, & 47).
3. Jesus is in control of his fate , accepting it and triumphing in it as opportunities for forgiveness and renewal of those He came to save arise. However healso says his death fulfils scripture
The Jesus who calmly faces death is one who had already set his face deliberately to go to Jerusalem (9:51), affirming that no prophet should perish away from Jerusalem (13:33). In the Lucan account of the ministry, Jesus showed tenderness to the stranger (the widow of Nain) and praised the mercy shown to the Prodigal Son and to the man beset by thieves on the road to Jericho; it is not surprising then that in his passion Jesus shows forgiveness to those who crucified him.
And, of course, Jesus’ death and the manner of it fulfils Scripture. In his account of the last supper, Luke (alone) has Jesus quote Isa 53, identifying himself with the suffering servant, who is counted as a criminal (numbered among transgressors) although he is innocent, for his sheep. The risen Jesus explains that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer all of these things in order to ‘enter into his glory’. And old Simeon’s prophecy to Mary is fulfilled as she suffers the pain of seeing her child on his cross, pain like a sword entering her heart.
4. Jesus also dies for the thieves on the cross and for those who crucify Him, although only two of them understands this. In one of the most famous sayings of Jesus reported only in Luke, he asks His Father to forgive those who are crucifying Him, on the grounds that they do not understand what they are doing. To the thief who takes pity on Him as He hangs, an innocent man, on the cross, the promise is greater. ‘Today you will be with me in Paradise.’ Jesus’ authority to forgive penitents has been a theme throughout the gospel -see the story of Zaccheus – and reaches it’s climax here.
As Jesus is dying he prays for his executioners (above), promises paradise to the penitent thief calls God ‘Father’. This is exclusive to Luke, and reflects the intimate and trusting relationship that Luke protrays between Jesus and the Father, seen most strongly in the words of Ps 31:5 quoted at 23:46 ‘Father into your hands I commit my spirit’ – a prayer said by Jews (and many Christians) as they settle down to sleep
“The Chosen” depicts Palm Sunday in Season 4, 5
Palm Sunday straddles Season 4 and 5 in “The Chosen”. In 2025, Season 5 has only been released to the theaters
1. “He is just and having salvation, Lowly and riding on a donkey” – The Chosen Season 4 Ep 8
2. Jesus Prepares to Triumphantly Enter Jerusalem & the Crowds Prepare to Welcome Jesus- Season 4, Episode 8
3. The Chosen Season 5, Episode 1. Preview
Lectionary-Palm Sunday, Year C
Lectionary, April 13, Palm Sunday
I.Theme – “Strength is concealed in humility, pain is hidden in triumph, victory, in defeat, life, in death, God, in human form” -Diedrik Nelson
“Palm Sunday” – Giotto (1305-06) “Betrayal & Arrest of Christ” – Fra Angelico (1450)
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – Isaiah 50:4-9a Psalm – Psalm 31:9-16 Page 623, BCP Epistle –Philippians 2:5-11 Gospel – Luke 22:14-23:56
“Borg and Crossan (The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem) imagine not one but two political processions entering Jerusalem that Friday morning in the spring of AD 30. In a bold parody of imperial politics, king Jesus descended the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem from the east in fulfillment of Zechariah’s ancient prophecy: “Look, your king is coming to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Matthew 21:5 = Zechariah 9:9). From the west, the Roman governor Pilate entered Jerusalem with all the pomp of state power. Pilate’s brigades showcased Rome’s military might, power and glory. Jesus’ triumphal entry, by stark contrast, was an anti-imperial and anti-triumphal “counter-procession” of peasants that proclaimed an alternate and subversive community that for three years he had called “the kingdom of God.”
This week has two liturgies – Liturgy of the Palms and Liturgy of the Passon.
“The church is called to reckon with paradox on this week: triumph and rejection, death and rebirth.” So writes Melinda Quivik in Working Preacher. The week begins with Jesus triumphant arrival and by the end of the week he is killed. Next week we trace the path day by day. God is sacrificed by those he brings life.
“Strength is concealed in humility, pain is hidden in triumph, victory, in defeat, life, in death, God, in human form” -Diedrik Nelson
The theme is established by the first lesson. The servant is disciplined by suffering so he may bring strength and refreshment to the oppressed, but there are those who oppose him. Willingly he submits to those who torture and humiliate him. But God is his helper, so he is not disgraced or shamed. God vindicates him, no one can convict him.
The servant willingly suffers humiliation at the hands of his adversaries. He is not disgraced or put to shame because Yahweh vindicates him and helps him; no one can declare him guilty.
The servant of the Lord is opposed (Isaiah), is obedient to death (Philippians). He is betrayed, tortured and crucified by those who should have listened to him, and is seen as an innocent man by a centurion (Luke). He will be vindicated (Isaiah), exalted by God (Philippians), and honored by the unexpected one of the criminals- (Luke).
Visual Lectionary Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025
Click here to view in a new window.
Palm Sunday 2025
We are nearing the end of Lent. Lent proper began on Ash Wednesday and ends on Palm/Passion Sunday, a day that in turn inaugurates Holy Week.
While Palm Sunday marks Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the events of that day set in motion Jesus’ death 5 days later before the Passover begins. Zechariah had forecast “Zion’s king” coming “righteous and victorious” on a donkey. It looked like Jesus was proclaiming himself King of Israel to the anger of some of the Jewish authorities.
Palm Sunday has two liturgies – the Liturgy of the Palms where we consider Jesus arrival in Jerusalem from Galilee and the Liturgy of the Passion, a foreshadowing of Holy Week.
Palm Sunday is the hinge between Lent and Holy Week. Lent has been the 40 day season of fasting and spiritual preparation intended to understand in practices, ritual and disciplines critical to living in the way of Jesus and Holy Week. Holy Week is a time of more intense fasting, reading and prayers in which we pay particular attention to the final days, suffering, and execution of Jesus.