Glory, Laud and Honor

All glory laud and honor, to thee Redeemer King! to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.

Palm Sunday comes every year. Every year, millions of Christians buy millions of palms and make them into tiny crosses, or let the children (even the grown children) have full sized ones to cross 'palm swords' with and 'celebrate' what we call the Passion of Christ. Every year it comes. In the Episcopal Church, some of you are probably humming it now, after we bless the Palms, there's the long processional into the church singing All Glory, Laud and Honor. By the time everyone gets into the nave, we're all on different verses, singing too high, and ready for the choir to let everyone know where we're supposed to be. But we do know it. We knew it, some of us, before we were even born.

All glory, laud and honor,
To Thee, Redeemer, King,
To Whom the lips of children
Made sweet hosannas ring.

Thou art the King of Israel,
Thou David’s royal Son,
Who in the Lord’s Name comest,
The King and Blessèd One.

We sing it. We're happy. Playing silly games before we go into church. The priest comes along with a handful of scripts. The one who draws the short straw gets the lead. We read the gospel in parts, like a play. When Jesus comes before Pilot we all stand up. Even though we don't want, we know we must, we read the words on the page and say "crucify him!" The governor protests weakly, as he always does, and washes the blood off his hands, and onto ours.

We all say. I think most of us mean it. His blood be on us and on our children. So it is. We sit in stunned silence for a few minutes when it's all over and listen to the priest try and tell us what it means.

Try and tell us what it means.

We try and shake it off. We say the Creeds and exchange the Peace. Then the choir will get after it with a dirge if all goes well.

"Cross of God, I would to turn away, yet Love it bids me stay, O my soul. Can it be the very death I fear is that which draws me near, Lord, to thee?"

I want to say I take communion a little more mindfully on those Sundays. I think I do, but next year I'm back to having a 'sword fight' with a teenager before church. I think that's okay. We know how the story ends now, but they didn't. They didn't.

Thomas wasn't kidding last week when he said "Let us go also, that we may die with Him."

The company of angels
Are praising Thee on high;
And mortal men, and all things
Created, make reply.

To Thee before Thy passion
They sang their hymns of praise:
To Thee, now high exalted,
Our melody we raise.