One of the popular traditional hymns for Palm Sunday was written by Henry Milman, a Victorian dean of St Paul\u2019s. He wrote dramatic poems and romantic verse dramas, as well as some of the first studies of biblical history to root Scripture in the culture of its day (he gave offence by describing Abraham as \u201ca nomad sheikh\u201d\u009d). In his Palm Sunday hymn, Ride on, Ride on in Majesty, he sees the Palm Sunday procession as a poignant, funeral procession \u201d\u201d \u201cin lowly pomp ride on to die\u201d\u009d. Indeed, that is how this Holy Week, which begins on Palm Sunday, unfolds.<\/p>\n
If there was an expectation among the Palm Sunday crowds that this was the beginning of a revolution in which Jesus would drive out the oppressive Roman occupiers, it was not to be. The week that begins with Palm Sunday moves inexorably through ever darker moments: the Last Supper, the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (the garden of the pressing out of the olives), betrayal, arrest, torture, mocking, scourging and a trial that shows both religious and political leaders as utterly unconcerned with truth (as Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, asks dismissively, \u201cwhat is truth?\u201d\u009d).<\/p>\n