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Psalms and Palms…Social Distancing…Trying to Cope…Holy Week 2020

As I sit down to write this, I can’t remember any time in my life when I was not in a church building celebrating Palm Sunday.  In addition, I also came to realize that I never fully connected with what the palms represented.

Every year we were handed or picked up a semi-dried-up brownish palm frond.  Some would sit in the pews making crosses out of that palm, some would put it in their prayer book like a bookmark.  Most would take palm fronds home and place them on a shelf or fireplace mantel and save them until the Priest would announce that last year’s palms should be brought in to be burned to make ashes for the Ash Wednesday services.

Fast forward to the year 2020.  We did not gather in church buildings this Palm Sunday.  Those of us who are on the internet were able to “view” or in some cases participate in virtual worship.  Instead of palms, some of us followed this request made by Fr. Terry O’Connor; “Everyone is invited to join together tomorrow, April 5, by putting a green branch on either the door or a window of our homes to celebrate Palm Sunday!”

Wow, a light went off when I read that.  As Jesus was entering Jerusalem, on the colt or donkey, some people were waving green branches from the trees along the roadway, others were placing the branches on the roadway and those branches happened to be from palm trees.

So while I was sad that we were not able to meet in person this Palm Sunday, I am filled with joy that many of us were able to share the worship service online and I was personally very happy to hang the green pine tree branch that I found on my recent walk.

Sarah and I have been very blessed to be able to participate in an online daily worship with many of our fellow parishioners and some of our longtime friends and family members.  The daily office provides an opportunity to read psalms and other scripture passages that are not part of the Sunday lectionary.  This has given us an opportunity to “see” things from a different perspective.  

I hope and pray that when we are finally able to gather together as “The Church” we can explore ways to reach out to individuals who for many reasons won’t be able to join us.  Let us move forward to become even better stewards of God’s greatest gift…. LOVE.

For now, “Go in Peace to Love and Serve the Lord!”

Deacon Rich  

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