A two thousand year old Christian calendar tradition with a new twist on its celebration.

[lees1975]

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2025/04/a-two-thousand-year-old-christian.html

Palm Sunday, in the small Baptist church in which I grew up, was just the Sunday before Easter. The Baptist tradition followed by most of the members wasn't big on the events of the Christian calendar, except Easter and Christmas, we didn't cover the pulpit with the various colors representing the different seasons of Christian tradition, our pastor wore a black suit, with a black tie and a white shirt, and the only thing different about Palm Sunday was that we sang the typical crucifixion hymns and left church in a somber mood.

So, did anyone go to church on Palm Sunday? Maybe to a non-denominational church, where it seemed to be a cute thing to gather all of the younger children in a room off the side of the sanctuary, give each one of them a palm branch and have them come in, adding a little kick to the emphasis of the day. Or maybe worship was more formal at a mainline Protestant or Catholic church, where there was a processional, during which the clergy marched in with the palm branches, waving them around while other clergy carried incense burners and others sprinkled holy water on the worshippers in the pews.

Most of us in the United States went to church after the news of the Russian bombing attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy had already been circulated. In fact, I heard about it on my way to church, on MSNBC's satellite broadcast. I thought to myself that there would not be a single worshipper anywhere in the United States who would be sitting in their church that morning, worried that a foreign enemy's drone would sent a bomb through the roof, while some of our fellow Christians in Ukraine were dead, because that had happened to them while worshipping in their church on Palm Sunday.

It made me angry. I'm enraged that this happened, that historically, people who are even more closely aligned in ethnic culture and especially in the same Christian tradition could attack their brethren without even giving it a second thought, that such an incredibly evil act could reach right inside a Christian church, and have American Evangelical supporters of Trump try to brush it off, excuse it, justify it or simply ignore it as insignificant. That makes them as evil as those who did it.

[LymphocyteLover]

1. Russia is a terrorist state and Putin is a war crminal. I don't see how bombs are a new twist on celebrating Palm Sunday