Traditional Christian worship often begins with a processional in which the officiants and other representative worshipers, such as the choir, enter the sanctuary. Processions may also occur outside the church on festive occasions. The procession is based on biblical models and is a way of proclaiming the victory and dominion of the Lord and of his Christ.
The history of religions contains abundant evidence of the use of processions in popular worship. The Old Testament alludes to processions of pagan worshipers with idols of their gods. When Isaiah says, “Bel bows down, Nebo stoops low; their idols are borne by beasts of burden” (Isa. 46:1), he is portraying a procession featuring the idols of lifeless, burdensome divinities. The same image underlies the scorn heaped on false gods in Psalm 115:7: “They have … feet, but they cannot walk.” In contrast, Yahweh, the God of Israel, is “enthroned between the cherubim” (2 Sam. 6:2; Pss. 80:1; 99:1), over the guardian figures on the ark of the covenant. He “rides on the heavens to help you and on the clouds in his majesty” (Deut. 33:26); he “rides the ancient skies above” (Ps. 68:33).
Nevertheless, Yahweh could go in procession symbolically in those processions of worshipers into the sanctuary that was a feature of festival worship of Israel. Several of the psalms refer to these processions into the house of the Lord. In Psalm 100 the worshipers are invited to “enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise” (Ps. 100:4). Psalm 24 appears to be a “liturgy of entrance” into the courts of the Lord in the form of a dialogue between the sanctuary gatekeepers and a group of worshipers in procession, possibly with the ark of the covenant. To the question “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord?” (Ps. 24:3) the leaders of the procession respond with an affirmation of their fitness to stand in the sanctuary (Ps. 24:6); they then ask that the gates be opened so that the procession may continue and “the King of glory may come in” (Ps. 24:7, 9). This dialogue underscores the double symbolism of the festal procession: it is not the worshipers only who enter the holy place, but the Lord’s presence also symbolically enters the sanctuary that he might meet with his covenant people and receive their tribute of praise and worship. Psalm 68, which pictures a festal procession, underscores the point that the Lord and his people ascend the sacred hill together:
Your procession has come into view, O God,
The procession of my God and my King into the sanctuary.
In front are the singers, after them the musicians;
With them the are maidens playing tambourines.…
There is the little tribe of Benjamin, leading them,
There the great throng of Judah’s princes,
And there the princes of Zebulun and of Naphtali. (Ps. 68:24–25, 27)
Perhaps such processions were reenactments of the time David first had the ark brought up to the former Jebusite sanctuary in Jerusalem with great rejoicing and abandon as the king himself danced before the Lord (2 Sam. 6:12–19). In such celebrative acts Yahweh laid claim to his throne in Zion and his dominion over all the nations:
God has ascended amid shouts of joy,
The Lord amid the sounding of trumpets.
Sing praises to God, sing praises;
Sing praises to our King, sing praises.
For God is the King of all the earth;
Sing to him a psalm of praise.
God reigns over the nations;
God is seated on his holy throne. (Ps. 47:5–8)
Festivals, and the processions that accompanied them, were occasions of joy and abandon in the Lord; with great longing the speaker in Psalm 43, apparently describing a circumstance in which he was unable to attend the festivals, remembers how he “used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng” (Ps. 42:4). After the Babylonian Exile, the reestablishment of Jerusalem as a fortified city where the worship of the Lord could be protected from enemies was the occasion of a procession of thanksgiving organized by the governor Nehemiah (Neh. 12).
As a small group surrounded by a hostile culture, the early church could not conduct worship on the scale of the festive gatherings familiar to the Jewish tradition. Nevertheless, the procession continued to have symbolic meaning for the New Testament writers. Jesus and his disciples had orchestrated a procession into the sanctuary at the beginning of the week, which was to climax in his death and resurrection; we must understand the purpose of this first Palm Sunday event in light of the symbolism of the Israelite processions in which the King and his servants come to establish his dominion in the place of worship. Note, for example, the cry “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38) and Jesus’ subsequent action in token of cleansing the temple of corrupt practices.
The concept of the procession led by a victorious king appears elsewhere in the New Testament. When Paul describes the ministry gifts of the ascended Christ (Eph. 4:7–13), he evokes the image of the procession pictured in Psalm 68 (Eph. 4:8; Ps. 68:18). Paul elsewhere alludes to the processions led by victorious commanders in which enemy prisoners were often paraded in humiliation; such processions were symbolic of the believers’ being taken captive by the triumphant Christ (1 Cor. 4:9; 2 Cor. 2:14). At the climax of the Revelation to John, the victorious Christ appears at the head of a procession of the armies of heaven; they follow the banner proclaims him “king of kings and lord of lords” (Rev. 19:11–16).
Processions have been part of traditional Christian worship from ancient times. Many churches of the Protestant Reformation discontinued or restricted their use in an effort to refocus Christian worship around the proclamation of the Word. In recent years, however, evangelical and charismatic churches have begun to recover the biblical values in the pageantry of the processional, not only in congregational worship but also in street marches held in many communities as a public proclamation of the lordship of Christ.