Palm Sunday in Jerusalem

Holy Week
Week of April 5, 2009

"Many people spread their cloaks on the road and other spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, 'Hosanna!'" (Mark 11.8-9)

Yesterday as we lifted our palms and shouted "Hosanna!" pilgrims from all over the world gathered in Jerusalem to walk the route that Jesus walked, to remember the events of Holy Week in the place sacred to three religions, in the place where Jesus brought hope of a new way of life, a way of life intended by God. Here is the story of the day for Lutherans of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, led by Bishop Mounib Younan:

Palm Sunday begins for Lutherans at Palm Sunday services at the Arabic, English-speaking and German-speaking congregations in the morning. Today, there was procession that began at Lazarus' Tomb in Bethany, where Jesus' Holy Week journey began with the death and resurrection of Lazarus.

Now, the Separation Wall cuts off the traditional Jericho to Jerusalem road that Jesus would have used. So Christians in Bethany and just on the other side of the Mt. of Olives can't celebrate the traditional Palm Sunday procession with the rest of the Christian community in Jerusalem. The journey begins at the Bethphage Church, with a portrait of Jesus on the donkey and the stepping stone, and continues up and over the Mt. of Olives, past Dominus Flevit church, where Jesus wept over Jerusalem, past Gethsemane, where he prayed on that Thursday evening, and up into the Old City.Thousands come from all over the world to celebrate, sing and process in this historic tradition.

This photo shows the Israeli separation barrier in Abu Dis, where it blocks the Jerusalem-Jericho road where Jesus rode the donkey from Bethany to the temple in Jerusalem. Many Lutherans in Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank are denied permits to make the traditional Palm Sunday pilgrimage.

"I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness." (Isaiah 42.6-7)

Watch the Palm Sunday procession in Jerusalem in 2008: http://www.elcjhl.org/galleries/Videos/08marpalmsunday/myvideoplayer.html