Undercover Pastor

We just had our Ash Wednesday worship service at Trinity this week.

It turns out that the traditional way to produce the ashes for the worship service is to save some of the palm fronds from the previous year’s Palm Sunday and burn them to create the ashes.

There’s something deep and true about it…  Palm Sunday is when we remember Jesus’ trimphant entry into Jerusalem.  Everyone was singing praises, throwing down their coats before him, and waving palm branches as they would to welcome royalty.  But within days, they were shouting to ”crucify him.”  It is the symbol of these feigned praises that we burn and mark ourselves with as we enter into a time of reflection and self-examination.

Are we doomed to repeat this cycle endlessly, or can the power of the Risen Christ burn away our pretension and lead us into an authentic faith that can endure?  That is the promise of Easter.  But we can’t get there until we walk the road to the cross.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Church, Theology, Undercover Pastor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.