The same thing again, but not really

Observing regular traditions are familiar practices, but never exactly the same

It is Palm (Passion) Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, the culmination of the Lenten season of preparation for Christians who observe the ancient traditions. For the thirty-something-th time I will join my congregation in waving a palm as we sing together the hymns that remind of us Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem, the city that will in five short days be the place of his death.

It will seem very familiar to me, but not exactly. One of the joys of the pastoral life is that each congregation to which I have been appointed has its own unique ways. One church had a choral procession nearly every Sunday, complete with crucifer and acolytes, and every Sunday we would enter the historic sanctuary to the thundering sounds of a huge pipe organ. Other congregations are little less auspicious; when the Pastor stood up to greet the congregation, the service was about to begin. I have such vivid memories of each of the congregations I have served, and it is a blessing on a “traditional” day like Palm Sunday to find both the familiar and the unique present at the same time.

A year ago at this time, I was finishing my bereavement leave (Easter fell later last year, so I had more time for bereavement following Claudia’s death), steeling myself for a return to the pulpit on Easter morning. My District Superintendent offered me the kindness of choosing when I would return to public worship leadership, and as difficult as I knew it would be, I felt Resurrection Sunday was precisely the time to return. Claudia was pleased with my choice, I am sure, being the ardent and stalwart Christ follower that she had been nearly all of her life.

Last year’s Holy Week and Easter, as they say, “hit differently.” I chose to participate in a neighboring congregation’s Maundy Thursday service (the location where Claudia’s Virginia memorial service would be hosted a couple of weeks later). I opted out of Good Friday (the pangs of death still too close to my heart to endure publicly Jesus’ death so closely following my wife’s).

I just started reading a book from one of my good friends in a congregation I served two decades ago. She heard the author interviewed on Minnesota Public Radio recently and thought the themes of the book would resonate with me. It is the memoir of a British woman who loves the natural world (as do I), and in particular, the various large stone structures scattered throughout her country. She and her husband and their two children spent many hours exploring and reading and enjoying their time together in the midst of the mysterious stone locations. The book is also, I am surmising, about catastrophic loss, as in the first chapter she reveals the overwhelming news of her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

The shock of his diagnosis is what compels her to reflect on how uncertain life is. Against the backdrop of massive, seemingly immovable, stone locations (she spends time describing how, in fact, what she currently sees in the stones is not what has always been there), she writes this:

The first insight I had, brought on by the extreme shock of Stephen’s diagnosis, was that everything changes -- though our tendency is to believe that it will not. My sense of security and stability dissolved, my future vanished, my faith in statistics and “it won’t happen to us” and basic causality (how could this climber-surfer-cyclist-wild swimmer who actively enjoyed bean salad and lentil stew have cancer?) was blown out of the water. It was a sort of enlightenment. I understand that my apparently solid everyday reality had simply been a construct of my incredibly powerful mind. There is no security. Everything changes all the time. Our lives are nothing but an illusion -- a beautiful illusion, but an illusion nonetheless. Death is real. We are all skating on thin ice, all the time.¹

Even in the seemingly most stable of situations, change is always afoot, recognized or obscured. I think this is what I want in my life, because anything ultra-stable and permanent is a sign not of life, but of death. As I read Robertson, I will be alert to this reality: that in the midst of regular, traditional, stable experiences (I’m thinking of Holy Week observances right now), there is humming beneath the surface the throb of life, the promise of renewal from the bleakness of death.

This morning will be largely the same thing all over again. The familiar actions (waving a palm), the recognizable hymns (“Hosanna, Loud Hosanna”), the time-honored Gospel text (“Jesus’ Triumphal Entry”), the rote recitation (not unique to Palm Sunday, of course) of Our Lord’s Prayer.

But … and … this morning will be unique in its own way, for on this Sunday we will have a unique combination of people that we may never have again on a subsequent Sunday, due to travel, worship patterns and varying levels of commitment. Today’s prayer concerns and expressed joys will be unique to this moment in time. In the midst of the familiar, we will forge together our unique experience of Love’s gift for this day.

It is this lived experience (continuing, dynamic change in the midst of predictable familiarity) that keeps me doing what I do, Sunday after Sunday, month after month, year after year, decade after decade.

It’s the same thing again, but not really.

1. Fiona Robertson, Stone Lands: A Journey of Darkness and Light Through Britain’s Ancient Places (New York: Pegasus), 2025, 14-15.