Today I have made the services move from the opening song of “Hosanna” to the Passion of Christ. Why? In my experience I have noticed that “the crowd” of Sunday church goers skips Good Friday. If people come on both Palm Sunday and Easter and do not attend any other Holy Week services they short circuit the CROSS. And Easter is meaningless without the pain and suffering of the Cross.
So I focus my sermon on the passion and death of Christ. The Gospels focus more on this event than his other ministries. So we must “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” We must dig down, see the dirt on our hands, before we can eat the fruit. There is a strange beauty in the theater of Calvary.
I am preaching from Psalm 22 – watch the video…
Wow, that’s an amazing approach (skipping Palm Sunday in favor of Passion “Sunday”), very meaningful and new as I’ve not seen it done anywhere else…while waving palm leaves just moves our focus onto the character defects of humanity that would soon change their minds and crucify Jesus, the crucifixion is focused on the character of Jesus in forgiveness & true justice – that’s true Jesus-gazing…cool stuff.