Palm Sunday, 2026

 One of my favorite texts from the Early Church is the diary of the pilgrim Egeria, who traveled to the Holy Land in the late fourth century A.D. to worship at places associated with the life and ministry of Jesus. Egeria is one of the few extant female voices from the Early Church, and her account of her pilgrimage in the 380s gives us a vivid picture of how Holy Week and Easter were observed in Jerusalem only a few decades after the persecution of Christians had ceased in the Roman Empire.

She tells us that on Palm Sunday, 1,600 years ago, Christian pilgrims gathered on the Mount of Olives and commemorated Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. They held palm branches and, she writes, “responded continually, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,’ to the hymns and antiphons.” It should sound familiar—because it is exactly what we have just done this morning.

Likewise, the faithful gathered at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Good Friday and venerated a portion of what was believed to be the cross on which Christ was crucified. Egeria writes, “It is the practice here for all the people to come forth one by one … to bow down … and kiss the holy wood.” And on Easter, just as we will do alongside our friends at Saint Andrew’s, Yardley, they gathered on the night of Holy Saturday, baptized new Christians, and celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus.

What Egeria shows us is this: in Jerusalem, only a few hundred years after the events of Holy Week, Christians had already developed rich and careful liturgies that not only told the story of Jesus, but made that story come alive for those who took part. And what she experienced there is not so very different from what we do here in our own parish in twenty-first-century Pennsylvania.

Because the heart of pilgrimage—and the heart of the liturgy—is transformation. We do not simply remember; we are changed. We at St. Luke’s, like Egeria, are transformed through our worship.

The Church has long expressed this truth in a simple phrase: lex orandi, lex credendi—the rule of prayer is the rule of faith. In other words, how we worship shapes what we believe. What we do here matters, because it forms us. It teaches us who God is and who we are in relation to him.

That is especially true in Holy Week. The Triduum—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter—is a kind of sacred drama into which we are drawn. We do not stand at a distance; we enter the story. We cheer Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem with loud hosannas on Palm Sunday—and, in the very same liturgy, we join the crowd in crying out for his crucifixion. We sit with him in the Upper Room and keep watch with him in the Garden of Gethsemane. We stand at the foot of the cross on Good Friday and witness his suffering, his death, and what seems to be his defeat.

And then, on Easter, we discover that defeat is not the end of the story—that in fact, it is the very place where God’s victory is revealed.

So I invite you this week not simply to observe these days, but to enter them. Feel the joy as Jesus comes into Jerusalem. Feel the sorrow as he suffers and dies. Sit with the silence and uncertainty of the tomb. And then, on Easter, allow yourself to be surprised again by the miracle of the Resurrection.

Because this is not just his story—it is ours.

During Holy Week, we, like Egeria, live into the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection. And that story is real. Jesus truly died and rose again some two thousand years ago. The tomb was empty—and because it was empty, we are not without hope. We need not fear death.

We do not gather to remember a distant event from a darker, more superstitious age. We gather because what Jesus did then saves us now. His cross reaches across time. His resurrection changes everything.

On the cross, Jesus opens wide his arms and embraces the world with the love of God. Through his death, a way is opened for us into eternal life. Holy Week teaches us that, whoever we are and wherever we find ourselves, Christ has redeemed us.

And to know that—to truly know that—is to be transformed.

I conclude with a poem from the poet and priest, George Herbert. He wrote and indeed prayed: 

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.

“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste my meat.”
So I did sit and eat.