Order of the Bath

I must admit to being completely confused by the (Anglican) church calendar. Passion Sunday used to be the fifth Sunday in Lent; Palm Sunday was the sixth Sunday i.e. yesterday. At our own church, I am not aware that we have ever really celebrated Passion Sunday according to the lectionary because it just seemed out of place. It is the story of the arrest, trial and execution of Christ i.e. the period immediately leading up to and including Good Friday. We have always left that to Holy Week. It was also before Palm Sunday, the entry into Jerusalem, which was chronologically inconsistent.

As it happens, last weekend we were away from home so I went to the local church where we were staying. This was a little more traditional than I am used to and they clearly follow the lectionary. I see now that the Passion story has been tacked onto the end of the Palm Sunday service. There is what is called the “Liturgy of the Palms”, the bit we are used to, and we sang “Ride on, ride on in majesty” and a couple more of those good old Palm Sunday hymns—then we did a phase shift and leapt into the “Liturgy of the Word” which was the Passion story for the sermon and communion.

I agree that it is now chronologically correct but are they expecting no one to attend on Good Friday let alone on the other days of Holy Week that they have to make sure they get the whole story in before Easter Sunday.

This entry was posted on 29 Mar 2010 at 12:08 by Rick and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.