28th March, 2021.
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My dear friends,

Palm Sunday marks the start of Holy Week, the most important week in the Christian year. In our services this week we accompany Jesus on his last week of life. We see him wash his disciples’ feet and institute the Eucharist at the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday. We remember Jesus’ betrayal by Judas Iscariot, his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, his arrest, trial before Pontius Pilate, and his crucifixion and death. Three days later, just as he promised, Jesus rose from the dead in the Resurrection.
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            I find myself thinking of the medieval hospitallers of the Order of St John in Jerusalem almost a thousand years ago. The holy city would have been thronged with Christian pilgrims who had journeyed hundreds of miles across Europe to be in Jerusalem at Easter. I imagine the hospital of St John was kept particularly busy at Easter with pilgrims who had become ill or suffered accidents on the way. The hospital was next to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which contains the spot where Jesus was crucified and the tomb from which he rose three days later in the Resurrection. The church was at the centre of Holy Week and Easter services in Jerusalem. I daresay the patients and hospitallers heard the distant voices of pilgrims in the streets and the sound of singing from the great church next door. I picture the hospitallers helping some of the patients who were on the mend to watch the processions passing by in the streets, or perhaps, if they were well enough, to attend some of the services. The hospitallers would have realised that the Holy Week and Easter services – and the message behind them – were just as important to their patients as their medicine, and would have given the sick pilgrims renewed hope and strength.

            The medieval hospital has long gone, though I daresay some of the staff and patients from our modern St John Eye Hospital will be present at Easter services at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The message of Easter is the same for us today as it was for our medieval predecessors in St John: Jesus the Suffering Servant has become Christ the Lord of Life. The worst thing that could happen – the crucifixion of the Son of God – did happen, and the love of God was greater still.

​​With my prayers and all good and warm wishes,

The Rev. Dr ROBERT BEAKEN, County Chaplain
PALM SUNDAY – 28th MARCH 2021
 
Gospel of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem: St Mark, chapter 11, verses 1-11
 
Also read today
 
Gospel of the Passion: St Mark, chapter 15, verses 1-3
What was the weather like on the original Palm Sunday? We tend to imagine it as a pleasant sunny day; but elsewhere in the Gospels we read that it was chilly in the evenings in Jerusalem at this time of the year, so perhaps it was pretty mixed early Spring weather. Still, whatever the day was like, the crowds turned out to see Jesus enter Jerusalem on a donkey, and they cheered him to the skies. ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’
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Perhaps we might remind ourselves at this point in the story that the same crowds who cheered Jesus on Sunday were, by Friday, calling for his execution: ‘Crucify him, crucify him! His blood be upon us and our children.’ This juxtaposition says something very deep about the flawed nature of all men and women as a result of the Fall and Original Sin, and reminds us why Jesus had to come to earth and offer his life in sacrifice on the cross.

            Let us return to the story of Palm Sunday. We tend to get all romantic about the donkey and think ‘Ah, wasn’t Jesus humble – entering Jerusalem on an ordinary donkey, instead of on a horse.’ This is, I’m afraid, to misunderstand the importance of the donkey completely. The donkey, you see, was the royal beast in ancient Israel and the Jewish king rode on a donkey to the Temple in Jerusalem to be crowned and anointed at the start of his reign. The crowds used to shout out ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, blow trumpets and put their clothes on the road for the royal donkey to walk upon. Sound familiar? Jesus was proclaiming very clearly for those who wanted to see that he was the Son of David, the Messiah. Perhaps he had in mind the prophecy of Zechariah that the Messiah would enter Jerusalem in precisely this way:
 
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he;
Humble and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass.  [Zechariah, 9: 9]
 
Jesus, as we know, went to the Temple, not to be crowned and anointed, but instead to overturn the tables of the money-changers and to set free the sacrificial pigeons. This was the moment when the Jewish religious leaders, who had felt increasing threatened by him, decided that enough was enough: he had to be silenced permanently, and the way to do that was by killing him. It took them the rest of the week to bring it about, but by Friday they had their way.

            And so we Christians today begin Holy Week, the most sacred week in the whole year. Because of Coronavirus we have had to simplify our services, but their meaning remains exactly the same.

On Maundy Thursday, 1st April, we begin by recalling the Last Supper and Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane.
On Good Friday, 2nd April, we commemorate the crucifixion. We must commemorate the crucifixion before we can celebrate the Resurrection.
On Easter Eve, 3rd April, there is a complete change of gear and we begin our celebrations of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This continues on Easter Day, 4th April, when we celebrate Christ’s victory over sin and death.

            As I have said, our services must be simpler this year, but we may find that less is more and the message of Easter shines through more clearly. I would encourage you to come to as many of our services as you can manage. Every year one sees some new aspect of the Easter story, which one had not appreciated or understood before.

May God richly bless us over the next few days as we accompany his Son to his death on the Cross and then to his glorious Resurrection. May I wish you a moving and spiritually rewarding Holy Week and Easter 2021.