Together, let’s celebrate the beginning of Holy Week and Commemorate the day Jesus Christ rode on a donkey into Jerusalem with a LUAU! Please pull out your tropical-themed party décor to celebrate the triumphant entry of Jesus Christ.
More information about why we’re hosting a luau for Palm Sunday (from Pastor Becky):
We are entering what the church often refers to as Holy Week! The week we walk through all sorts of emotions, beginning with Palm Sunday and Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. There is joy this day when followers of Christ celebrate the very long-awaited Messiah. This is the tone of how the week begins. In order to help you feel the celebration of his day the Worship Committee is celebrating with a Luau theme to help create this joy similar to how the early followers felt. This is the way the week begins.
The crowd’s actions along the road give rise to the name “Palm Sunday”: “A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road” (Matthew 21:8). In strewing their cloaks on the road, the people were giving Jesus the royal treatment – John records the detail that the branches they cut were from palm trees (John 12:13) as they shouted ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ / ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ / ‘Hosanna in the highest heaven!’”
But we know the week takes many different turns. If you walk a little further, even to the end of this day; the crowds and leaders begin to slowly turn against Jesus. Then on Maundy Thursday, in the Garden of Gethsemane, just after the Last Supper Jesus tells His closest friends on earth what would soon happen to Him – the painful betrayal he would endure from one of them, and His coming arrest, torture, and crucifixion. Filled with anguish and deep dread over what He would soon experience, Jesus withdraws with His inner circle, the three disciples closest to Him, and takes refuge in a special place. There, alone on His knees in the dark night beneath the shelter of olive trees, in a place called the Garden of Gethsemane, He cries out to His Father God. And then, resolutely, He does what He needs to do to save all humankind. The next day we move to the crucifixion on Good Friday. But as we know with God the story does not end there but with an empty tomb, life and resurrection on Easter Sunday.
I hope you will take the opportunity to walk the whole week.
A little more information: The story of the triumphal entry (Palm Sunday) is one of the few incidents in the life of Jesus which appears in all four Gospel accounts (Matthew 21:1-17; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:29-40; John 12:12-19). Putting the four accounts together, it becomes clear that the triumphal entry was a significant event, not only to the people of Jesus’ day, but to Christians throughout history. We celebrate Palm Sunday to remember that momentous occasion.