An Unexpected Turn—Art & Liturgy to Tell the Palms to Passion Story
I’ve always loved the Passion narrative. Growing up, our church would forgo a sermon on Palm Sunday and just tell the story. Four people would perform a dramatic reading of the gospel narrative, one Jesus and two all-purpose cast members, with the pastor as narrator. I remember the first year I was asked to read when I was in high school. Even more distinctly, I remember the year my father played Jesus. I think I cried the most that year. Dramatic readings have a way of bringing the story to life.
The people we encounter during Holy Week are familiar to me. I’ve spoken their lines and embodied their shame, I’ve shouted their “Crucify him!” and heard it echo through the balcony. But Sarah Are brought new life and new perspectives into this story I know and love so well in her liturgy and midrash. When I read through the Wilderness Journey Palms to Passion worship service for the first time, it felt as though I was reading another book in the same series as an old favorite. Some of the characters I knew well. Some I had never heard until Sarah gave them voice.
When Lisle Gwynn Garrity suggested I work on a Holy Week art piece, I began with the people. I had the idea of sketching all the figures that appear in the Palms to Passion midrash readings along a road with footsteps dwindling from a crowd to a lone pair. I was drawn to this idea of the Palm Sunday crowd slowly but surely falling off until Jesus is completely alone, walking to the cross. As I sketched, I added little details. Palms scattered about, coins and fish from the woman at the temple, flowers smelling like the perfume Jesus is anointed with, more silver exchanged between the Pharisee and Judas, the olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane. After I had a composition I liked, I did a rough color study with a large brush, just to begin imagining the flow and feel.
To my surprise, a new composition emerged in the details. I was drawn to the organic shapes of the olive trees and flowers, and I began wondering what the composition might look like without the people. No characters, just setting. In the painting that emerged, the road is littered with the remains of Holy Week: discarded palm branches, broken pieces of alabaster pottery, coins tossed by merchants and Judas. And the way passes through the garden, shaded by a large olive tree.
“An Unexpected Turn” by Anna Strickland.
I had looked forward to using the Palms to Passion midrash and liturgy with my college students (I co-lead a campus ministry), finding actors in our supporting congregations to come and embody these roles at the student worship service. But just as in art, things don’t always take the direction you imagine they will. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we as the Church are having to think creatively about how we gather during the holiest time of our Christian year. We are like the disciples, dumbfounded and afraid, unsure of what will come next following this unexpected turn of events. But even in the face of uncertainty, we will tell the story.
Anna Strickland
A Sanctified Art Intern
Anna Strickland (she/her/hers) is currently pursuing her Master's of Divinity at Iliff School of Theology. She is a native Austinite and graduated from the University of Texas where she now works in college ministry, especially serving LGBTQ students. Anna loves painting, spending time outside, and her family.