Palm Sunday is the beginning of our journey of Holy Week that will lead to the cross on Good Friday and the joy of the resurrection on Easter morning. It commemorates Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem that is described in Matthew’s Gospel. We hear about the crowd that was gathered and how they “cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road” (Matt. 21:8).

Every year we gather to reenact this moment, entering the sanctuary with palms, blessing them, and passing them out. It’s our way of physically connecting to that first Palm Sunday. So how do we make that connection when we can’t be together in the church?

That first crowd cut palms and put them before Jesus because that’s what they had available. For centuries, people who live in places where palms are not native have connected to the story with whatever they had available. In Norway, people decorate their homes with branch branches and twigs. In Latvia and Finland, pussy willows are more common Palm Sunday decor. Elsewhere, people gather olive, yew, box elder, spruce and fir branches – using what they have to make an offering to God and to remember the story of the day.

So, this year, we encourage you to harvest what you can – pine boughs, birch branches, beech twigs, forsythia – and to decorate your doors and homes for Palm Sunday! We will bless our “palms” as part of both services this Sunday.