The church’s calendar builds to its climax over this coming week; as I write I am putting the last touches to the service for tomorrow, Palm Sunday. It is a bit rushed; I am just back from 5 days in Venice, largely spent in glorious churches. Most have representations of Palm Sunday; all have numerous images of Christ on the cross, some veiled in purple as is common at this time of year, to mark his death. Tomorrow we will have a procession into church as we re-enact the events of the first Palm Sunday. Sometimes this story is presented as though it were the whole city that turned out to welcome Jesus. However, our Bible reading for tomorrow suggests it was only Jesus’s followers who actually waved the palms; for the rest there was instead puzzlement, with the “whole” city asking “who is this?”. The churches of Venice witness how that question has been disturbing people for the last 2000 years; our service tomorrow challenges us to answer it today.Â
Rev David Poyner