Some points covered in this post:
A joint Jewish-Anglican statement opposes “Christian Seders” (and mentions – I am delighted – my writing about that on this site). For the majority of Christians, Passion Sunday is NOT this coming Sunday, the 5th Sunday in Lent (6 April 2025); Passion Sunday is the 6th Sunday in Lent (13 April 2025). And then there are those who want to omit the reading of the Passion on that Sunday and reserve it for Good Friday.
Some of the content for this post is drawn from previous posts.
6 April is NOT Passion Sunday
I put this heading starkly because, for example, in the 2020 & 2024 editions of what is called A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare Aotearoa, it calls this coming Sunday “Passion Sunday”. This is an excellent example of the increased struggle we have in our province to ascertain what we have agreed to as a Church. All editions of the book by that name, up to and including the 2005 edition, were approved, line by line, word by word, by our twice-round formulary practice, by the whole Church. We went through the twice-round formulary process for changing “of” and “in”, and the spelling of “breech” in a psalm! The 2020 & 2024 books are not approved in this way.
The Revised Common Lectionary, an agreed formulary of our Church and the set of readings that most of us are using, is quite clear – “Passion Sunday” is the 6th Sunday in Lent, this year on 13 April. The (non-binding) NZ Lectionary booklet 2025 is also incorrect (as it is in some other naming of Sundays).
Read the Passion on Palm Sunday 13 April
I am regularly asked: why do we read the Passion account on Palm Sunday? The expectation from those inquiring is often that Palm Sunday should focus on the joyfulness of the Triumphal Entry by Jesus into Jerusalem (a sort of second Laetare/Refreshment Sunday in Lent). And that reading the Passion story should happen on Good Friday.
Let’s highlight at the start of this post: the majority of Christians gathering on 13 April 2025 will hear both the story of the Triumphal Entry AND the proclamation of The Passion (both from Luke).
We can find services in the early church where people read the story of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry (Egeria in Jerusalem, passing from there, as so often happened, to Spain and Gaul) on the Sunday before Easter Day. Also we have accounts of reading the Passion (in Rome, and churches that Rome influenced on that Sunday.
Let’s also keep in mind the early church practice of a catechumen period (up to three years – Apostolic Tradition 2:17) of formation prior to baptism at the Easter Vigil. Lent was the final, intense run-up to Easter baptism companioned by the already-baptised faithful. The catechumenate decreased and the penitential, rather than baptismal, focus of Lent grew. The last two weeks of Lent became a period focusing on Christ’s suffering (“Passiontide”) complete with the veiling of cross and statues. This began on “Passion Sunday”; Palm Sunday was the “Second Sunday in Passiontide”! This latter began with a Solemn Procession of Palms (with Matthew’s Gospel version); the Mass itself proclaimed Matthew’s Passion.
In Anglicanism, there was no palm rite or mention from 1549 to 1662 Books of Common Prayer, and the title was simply the “Sunday next before Easter”. Nor was there a mention of “Passion Sunday” in those years.
Vatican II called for a renewal of the Church Year, revival of the catechumenate (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults – RCIA), and refreshing the lectionary (Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the sacred liturgy 1963, approved 2,147 to 4). The revised Roman Catholic, three-year cycle of readings includes proclaiming FAR more of the First Testament and nearly three times as much of the New Testament. [The Revised Common Lectionary is an ecumenical revision of this system with even more attention to the First Testament as well as to stories about women.]
We now have the Sunday before Easter Day, beginning Holy Week, being Passion Sunday with the Liturgy of Palms.
The history is clear: BOTH the Palms Procession (with its reading) AND the Passion are associated with the Sunday prior to Easter Day. When you try and find out why both are read in today’s church on this day, you find a lot of explanations that people can’t (or don’t) get to the Good Friday service (including noting that for RCs it’s not a “Holy Day of Obligation), and so reading the Passion on Sunday is a pastoral decision to avert the tendency to leap from the joy of the Triumphal Entry to the joy of the Resurrection (and skipping over Jesus’ suffering). That pastoral concern may have been in the back of people’s minds, but not in the forefront of liturgical renewal.
In fact the Passion read on the last Sunday in Lent can be seen more akin to the overture at the beginning of Holy Week. Christ enters Jerusalem triumphantly as king, but his kingship is elucidated in the Passion; the Cross is his throne.
I have written on this topic previously. This post attempts to expand on that, but let me include, here, some points that I haven’t yet made here.
Formal rites for Palm Sunday typically begin with a Liturgy of the Palms including reading a Gospel account of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. Such rites then proceed, a bit later, to reading the Passion from one of the Synoptic Gospels (this year, Year B, that is from Mark). The Passion in the Gospel of John is read on Good Friday.
Older forms in Church History tended to have a procession with palms with the Palms Gospel read and a Eucharist with Matthew’s Passion. The other Passion accounts were read through Holy Week. The Sarum rite and different editions of the Book of Common Prayer reflect this way of doing things.
The “Sunday next before Easter” was originally Passion Sunday. Shifting Passion Sunday to the previous Sunday was part of the development of calling this, simply, Palm Sunday – lengthening periods of commemoration is part of liturgical history. The earlier approaches have been restored in seeing the Sixth Sunday in Lent as being Passion Sunday with the Liturgy of Palms. This is the approach followed here in my (free online) book Celebrating Eucharist.
People will do all sorts of other things, of course, not mentioned in agreed and formal rites: donkeys are a common addition, for example.
Omitting the Passion Reading on the Sixth Sunday in Lent, and reading only the entry into Jerusalem with palms, is part of a tendency to turn liturgy into historicised re-enactment. This post is not a deprecation of using our imagination to be present in the biblical accounts, but liturgy, and the liturgical year, is much, much more than pretending. It is worth reflecting on why riding an actual donkey is not even presented as an option in formal and agreed Palm Sunday rites.
Those who reduce liturgy to imaginary re-enactment often go on to celebrate a Passover Seder on Maundy Thursday. If your community does this, please rethink this practice by reading this.
Liturgy is much more and much deeper than pretended re-enactment. If the re-enactment approach is followed, your community should omit the Last Supper story from the Eucharistic Prayer on Palm Sunday, because that hasn’t happened yet. And, in the Eucharistic Prayer, commemorating Christ’s death and resurrection should be omitted. Next we need to move the celebration of the Annunciation to before Advent, and certainly not have the Annunciation after Christmas and the baptism of Christ – and where it falls this year, horror of horrors, at the start of Holy Week.
No, liturgy is, on Good Friday for example, commemorating Christ’s death in the presence of the Risen Christ. Christmas is celebrating the Incarnation – not simply imagining a cute baby and being moved by our human instincts around babies – and the incarnation is celebrated with bread and wine to make present the Incarnate One’s death and resurrection.
Yes, we celebrate Christ’s death and resurrection in liturgy – but we do so not simply to re-enact past events – the purpose of liturgy is that we might be incorporated more and more into these events; the purpose of liturgy is not to have Christ die over and over again in our imagination; the purpose of liturgy is that we die and rise again a bit more each time – individually and together.
“Christian Seders” and Jews in Holy Week
I have repeatedly advocated against the Christian misappropriation of the Jewish seder, especially in Holy Week. And I have also continued when reading John’s Gospel aloud to call for – especially in the Passion on Good Friday – if your translation uses the word “Jews”, you change this word to “Judeans”.
If you want to read more about my thoughts on “Christian Seders” you can start here and here. And here is the joint Jewish-Anglican statement opposing “Christian Seders”.
If you want to read more about better translating Ἰουδαῖος (ioudaios), you can start here and here.
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Gosh, Bosco. Don’t you think we make Christianity/liturgy SO complicated at times.
I have over forty years of experience in this tradition and I’m struggling to follow you here.
I know of people on the edge of the church/edge of Anglicanism who find many things attractive and yet get so lost in the welter of words a typical service uses.
In the Roman Catholic parishes of my childhood, and the Anglican Catholic ones of adult years, Palm Sunday focusses on the triumphal entry, whereas the Passion of Christ was remembered and dramatized from Holy Thursday on. Which makes complete sense to me. Putting the two together on one Sunday makes it so cluttered. Plus our hyper-modern world is saturated enough. Our ancestors had much more space to take it all in that us. One thing at a time so we can take it in deeply.
Thanks, Mark.
There is something odd about your recollection. Both traditions you mention, across the time-period you mention, read the Passion from Matthew on Palm Sunday (in that time that Sunday had various titles). Anglicans then began Mark’s Passion on Monday in Holy Week. Roman Catholics caught up on Tuesday. Wednesday was Luke’s Passion. And Friday, John’s Passion.
So, whatever you experienced, it was not the agreed liturgy of those churches, it was some sort of local practice.
Blessings.
It may we’ll have been. But more than local – parishes quite different to each other practiced this, or at least made a pastoral decision to emphasize and interpret the tradition this way. The present Pope has of course highlighted the need for pastoral considerations to be foregrounded, presumably for liturgy too.
The bigger point, however, is whether it makes more sense to do it this way: so as not to clutter the lead up to Easter, so as to give sufficient space for the tradition to be enacted and taken in. What’s your view in that?
Thanks, Mark.
Every Roman Catholic parish – including under Pope Francis’ time – will be reading the Passion on “Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord”, this year from Luke. Under your suggestion, people would only ever read John’s Passion in church, and then only on Good Friday, so that those who missed Good Friday would go from the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem one Sunday to the Triumphal Resurrection the next Sunday. My rendition of the services are found in my (free) book Celebrating Eucharist.
Blessings.
You keep missing the point here, Bosco. It’s not about what the system is providing and whether we should conform to that or not, it’s about how liturgy allows space for people to have their experiences and responses and not be overstuffed with official content, as well as allowing enough space for the power of tradition to be enacted and heard, to have it’s true resonance. And the example of that is: trying to do Christ’s triumphal entry and trial and crucifixion all in one go! How can you do justice to those events, and allow space for people’s spontaneous responses, by cramming them altogether! The reason you provide is: because many people only come to Sundays and what if they miss out on coming on Friday. So then a system is created based on people’s lack of commitment to these important holy days? That’s a rather weak reason IMHO.
Thanks, Mark, for your elucidation.
I am not convinced that I am purposely missing your point as much as the expression of your point has moved and clarified.
You began by saying that in your four decades of Roman Catholic and Anglican Catholic Palm Sunday Masses there was no reading of the Passion on Palm Sunday. Then you pointed to Pope Francis as justification for the RC examples abandoning the RC agreement to read the Passion on Palm Sunday.
I am suggesting that you are misremembering the RC Palm Sundays. Anglicanism – especially within the Catholic tradition – can be relatively congregational, with each parish developing its own “use”. So, it is surprising to me but possible, that parishes terming themselves “Anglo-Catholic” might alter their (usual attempts at) semblance to Roman Catholicism and remove the tradition of reading the Passion on Palm Sunday.
I would highlight again, that the reading of the Passion on the Sunday before Easter Day is so deeply part of the Christian tradition that it is the norm both in Western Churches and in Eastern Orthodoxy.
Now to what you are, in this comment, highlighting as your “point”. It seems to me your point has two aspects: (1) you have not clarified how you seek to alter the tradition – in abandoning proclaiming the Passion on Palm Sunday and reserving the Passion solely for Good Friday, which Passion narrative are you suggesting, or (in other words) how might you cycle through the four Passion accounts (as is currently done)? I might add that, although individual parishes might depart from our international, ecumenical agreements on this for – as you indicate – pastoral reasons, I posit that altering these international, ecumenical agreements to abandon reading the Passion on Palm Sunday has zero chance of traction. (2) is your question of how people, nowadays, can hold together both the Triumphal Entry and the Passion narrative in one service. A significant key, I suggest, is to proclaim these passages well and allow them to mostly speak for themselves – we do not need a lengthy sermon (or the second sermon of lengthy prayers). You notice in my book, Celebrating Eucharist, the convention of omitting the confession and the Creed. There is much uncluttering that can be done to give the space and pacing that is needed.
Blessings.
Bosco,
Thanks for staying with this one with me. I’m a bit clearer though still confused.
1. When the RC (and Anglican) Church celebrates Passion Sunday
Very happy to go with the facts you provide. My memory of twenty years ago is either incorrect, or, more likely, a Catholic parish that may have had a Passion Sunday reading somewhere on Palm Sunday but placed the emphasis (wisely perhaps) on Jesus’ triumphant entry, knowing later in the week a more suitable, spacious time for celebrating the passion would occur, knowing their parishioners would attend that service too.
Which still leaves us with:
2. When should we ideally celebrate, or emphasize, the Passion?
And here you and I differ. You would have the Passion narrative in full on Palm Sunday, then again on Good Friday presumably. You believe the two cam be accommodated within one standard service, though I’m still not just why you’d want to do that….
whereas I think that makes for overstuffed liturgy and poor narrative sense. It’s much simpler to give the Passion its own day and space, and celebrate it in the correct narrative sequence (after Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday etc).
I’m still not clear as to why you would not just celebrate the Passion on Good Friday? “Because the Church says so/has always done it that way”, or “because you can’t trust people to attend a Friday service” aren’t great reasons, so are there others you hold? You have also suggested a reason is so churches can internationally “cycle through the four Passion accounts”. Presumably there’s no need to do this all in one year, or this projrct shouldn’t trump liturgical clarity and good narrative sense.
I don’t know that I can add much more to our discussion, Mark.
I don’t know how much liturgical scholarship you’ve followed, but liturgy isn’t simply a chronological replication year by year – your “narrative sense”. For example, Christ is already clearly died and risen on this coming Palm Sunday celebration – and whatever celebration you go to, that will be expressed in the Eucharist there. So there’s no just pretending that this is the historical Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, & pretending that Jesus’ Passion hasn’t actually happened.
I have given pastoral indications for what churches regularly agree help to reduce “overstuffed liturgy” on this occasion (no confession; no creed…).
The international ecumenical agreement for the Sunday-by-Sunday readings is a modern miracle that whatever country you go, in whatever language, in whatever denomination, Sunday by Sunday the vast majority of Christians are reading the same scriptures. And clergy (and communities) vow and sign to support this. That international ecumenical agreement has indicated that “we should ideally celebrate, or emphasize, the Passion” from the synoptics in our three year cycle on Palm Sunday, and from John on Good Friday. This year, with Eastern and Western Easter coinciding, the Orthodox, that other lung of the Church, are also in sync with this.
Blessings.
Yes, we are not dealing with just chronological time. I tend to think of at least three senses of time: a sort of timeless time where a significant religious event or narrative slice or sequence is always happening – e.g. Christ is always being born (‘in the soul’, as Meister Eckhart was fond of saying), or Jesus is always risen now, and the cosmos has forever shifted because of it. Then there *is* chronological time in which we, as historically situated beings, live and work out our salvation – e.g. Christchurch shifts into autumn; leaves yellow and fall, fires are lit, a relative becomes ill and prayers are said – and which timeless time (eternal life) breaks in on and interacts with. And in between, there is a sort of mythic time in which timeless religious events and narratives are meaningfully paired with chronological time so as to enhance a sense of pathos, drama, and integration. Isn’t that part of the power of sacred ritual/liturgy/’religion’ – that holding together of, and integrating, these two very different senses of time/self/reality? Secular moderns are only aware of chronological time, they only believe that this sense of time exists. Or we might have our secular material self over here and a timeless spirituality over here (e.g. The Power of Now). It *is* important for liturgy to have a strong relationship with chronological time and not just in an obvious way – i.e. services start on time, prayers follow each other in an orderly way that builds drama, the congregation say these words at the same time etc. And that’s why I’m saying celebrating the Passion on Palm Sunday is poor narrative sense – we’re flipping ahead to the end of the story, when there’s a whole week of events, thoughts, and feelings to develop. Maybe we can’t hold tension very well anymore? Maybe it’s too much to not only ask people to attend a service on Friday, but to wait, watch, as Jesus ironically asked his followers to do.
So *I think* our difference is this…
The heart of this issue, which I’m very grateful for you raising, is one of *timing*: When to celebrate the Passion?
I think a very significant value for you is timing local liturgy so as to co-ordinate with other local churches, other non-Anglican churches, and indeed other international churches (Anglican or otherwise). I think this value is threaded through your others posts and thoughts, e.g. regarding the importance of the common prayer tradition, and movements towards greater actual church unity in polity and theology.
You want the Passion to be read on Palm Sunday (or the triumphant entry to be read on Passion Sunday!) so that all churches are more in time with each other (as well as honouring agreements they have signed up for). That coordination of (chronological) time, trumps other liturgical concerns for you, or leads you to allow and then try to actively manage those other concerns (cluttered liturgy, compromised narrative sense).
Whereas for me, perhaps I assume more unity between churches in the sense of *timeless time* – we are spiritually one, we are one Body in primarily a mystical sense – and it is much better for local churches to prioritize or emphasize other values in timing the Passion narrative, such as the ones I’ve been arguing for in these posts.
Yes – you have highlighted what is an important point for me: in community worship, as much as possible, I try and have a sense of common prayer across the majority of Christians (pastorally adapted locally for particular contexts, eg – most of my ordained ministry was as a Secondary School Chaplain). If I were working ex nihilo, there might be a lot of things I would like different; I might have constructed the lectionary differently (and so forth). [I might have included some early church books in our Bible and excluded some others 😉 !]
I’ve appreciated the conversation.
Blessings.
An interesting discussion – for which thanks once again to the participants. We have few churches in our largest diocese, of Sydney where our Australian version of the three year lectionary would be used at all – and the two Uniting Churches with which I am familiar use only part of it. Most Protestant churches, the Baptists probably the best attended, on this day would read only an account of the Palm Sunday Entry (though we can’t be sure it took place on the first day of the week before the Crucifixion) whatever helpful wisdom liturgists offer us regarding the character of Holy Week. There are only three or four Anglican churches I can get to with any truly Anglican liturgy, all about 30 miles by train &c away from my home, three in central Sydney, all high church. Today I chose Christ Church S.Laurence (though I am not Anglo-Catholic. The service went on for well over 2 hours but of course all was splendid, the singing superb, the sermon by a visiting English woman priest outstanding, and the church packed, an increase of about 15% on last year’s attendance. Oddly enough, it was the St Matthew Passion that was sung including some verses that have does such great harm to Jewish people for 2000 years. I retired back in 2001 but in my last parish, for over 22 years I did have both a “Palm Sunday” reading and a Passion reading in which the congregation joined, but the two passages were always from St Mark, closer many would think to the actual events. (On Good Friday we had – more or less BCP – Morning Prayer to Old Testament and Benedictus, Litany and Ante Communion, and from 2 pm to 3 pm, Evensong (with a simple Scriptural way of the Cross around the church as the 2nd Lesson, both services well-attended – the last a service I hope to lead for a few friends in a nursing home this Good Friday afternoon. However, as a child I went to our Sunday School’s kindergarten on Palm Sunday, and next to it on Easter Day, never to church on Good Friday : as a young child I fortunately never heard any story of the Cross nor saw a cross until in the 1940s the Senior Sunday School, after a half-hour lesson, began to attend Morning Prayer – going home before the sermon. I am still grateful for this experience since for me, even if not for our Lord himself, it is the simple ministry of Jesus that remains important, especially for little children, what is represented by the comma in the Creed. At 89, though still visiting my hospital weekly, now only for an afternoon, we do not have any Sunday hospital service but we did until last year have an unusual Holy Week service – celebrating the Entry with reading, prayer, and palm crosses, the Crucifixion, with reading, prayer and cross buns, and the Resurrection with reading, prayer and Easter eggs ! Our other service, for Christmas, was a simple BCP based Holy Communion con-celebrated with a pentecostal maternal chaplain – she also a Mothers’ Union member, and a pentecostal minister, but there was no unusual speaking in tongues. At both services, the majority who attended were Roman Catholic ! Blessings.
Thanks so much, John, for your significant insights. The dropping of the Passion seems to have a particularly Lutheran connection. Matthew’s Passion was always on this Sunday which might explain more musical settings for this & your Sydney experience (rather than Luke). BCP 1549-1662 dropped any mention of Palms and Triumphal Entry – I wonder why? – and only had Matthew’s Passion.
Blessings