Worship
for the Lord’s Day
March 28,
2021
A Note before we begin
this day’s worship:
I’m so excited that are back in public, in-person worship
today. There will NOT be any special
services during Holy Week this year, such as our normal Maundy Thursday or Good
Friday services. But, I will continue to
provide on-line worship in this format for the foreseeable future. If you are in the local area, please plan to
join us again on Sunday mornings at our regular worship times (Olivet
Presbyterian Church, West Elizabeth – 9:45am and Bethesda United Presbyterian
Church, Elizabeth – 11:15am) with our previous safety precautions in place –
wearing masks, using hand sanitizer when you arrive at the church as well as if
you’ve touched various surfaces in the church, and being physically distant
from one another.
Let’s begin:
Call to Worship
Hosanna! Hosanna in the
highest! Blessed is He who comes in the
name of the Lord! Hosanna in the
highest! Who is the King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord who comes to us this day on a donkey. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord Jesus is His name. Hosanna!
Hosanna in the highest!
Hymn All
Glory, Laud and Honor
Prayer of Confession
Most merciful God, You
sent Your one and only Son Jesus to us to atone for our sins. Instead of glorifying Him, we glorify
ourselves through selfishness and the
idols we create and worship. Instead of
walking with Christ, we walk away from Him.
We are sinful and rebellious in thought, word, and deed. By our action and inaction we lock the door
to the future. But by His life, death
and resurrection, Jesus the Messiah opens it again for us. Forgive us, Lord. Renew us and restore us that we would live in
Your glory, love You and serve our neighbor.
In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN
Words of Assurance
The very purpose of
Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem was to make His way to the sorrow, pain,
and suffering of the cross. By His
perfect life our sins have been forgiven and we have been redeemed. Jesus flings the door to eternal life wide
open. God forgive us, encourages us
and frees us to love others. Thanks be
to God. AMEN
Affirmation of Faith – from A Brief Statement
of Faith.
We trust in Jesus
Christ, fully human, fully God.
Jesus proclaimed the
reign of God:
preaching good news to
the poor and release to the captives,
teaching by word and
deed and blessing children,
healing the sick and
binding up the brokenhearted,
eating with outcasts,
forgiving sinners,
and calling all to
repent and believe the gospel.
Unjustly condemned for
blasphemy and sedition,
Jesus was crucified,
suffering the depths of
human pain
and giving his life for
the sins of the world.
God raised this Jesus
from the dead,
vindicating his sinless
life,
breaking the power of
sin and evil,
delivering us from
death to life eternal.
With believers in every
time and place,
we rejoice that nothing
in life or in death
can separate us from
the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Alleluia. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer
This day, we offer up in prayer…
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth
as it is in heaven. Give us this day our
daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we
forgive our debtors. And lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. AMEN.
Hymn
Scripture Readings
Old Testament: Isaiah
50:4-9a
4The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I
may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens—
wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. 5The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious,
I did not turn backward. 6I gave my back to those who struck me, and my
cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult
and spitting. 7The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been
disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not
be put to shame; 8he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend
with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront
me. 9It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?
New Testament: Mark
11:1-11
When
they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of
Olives, he sent two of his disciples 2and
said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter
it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and
bring it. 3If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this,
‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” 4They
went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they
were untying it, 5some of the bystanders
said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” 6They
told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. 7Then
they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on
it. 8Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread
leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. 9Then
those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
“Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
10Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
11Then he
entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at
everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
Sermon –
(based on Mark 11:1-11)
It all began on when Jesus came to
town riding on the back of a donkey.
Excitement was running high in the city as it always did at the time of
such festivals as the Passover. But the
natural excitement was heightened by this procession, this strange entourage
that wound its way toward the city gates.
There at the head rode a quiet figure of a man on a donkey. All about him the crowds gathered, curious at
first, but soon they were shouting and singing and turning the place upside
down for him.
Because we, as Christians, spend so
much time remembering this procession into Jerusalem, we have failed to know
and understand that there was actually another procession going on at the same
time Jesus was riding in on his donkey.
The one that we celebrate with Jesus as the head, was a peasant
procession, the other procession was an imperial one. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the
Mount of Olives cheered by his followers.
Jesus was from the peasant village of Nazareth, his message was about
the kingdom of God, and his followers came from the peasant classes.
On the opposite side of the city,
from the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, and Samaria,
entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial cavalry and
soldiers. Jesus’s procession proclaimed
the kingdom of God; Pilate’s procession proclaimed the power of empire. These two processions embody the central
conflict of the week ahead that led to Jesus’ crucifixion.
It was standard practice of the
Roman governors to be in Jerusalem for the major Jewish festivals, not because
they had any reverence for the religious devotion of their Jewish subjects, but
instead were there in case there was trouble.
And there often was, especially at Passover, a festival that celebrated
the Jewish people’s liberation from an earlier empire.
Imagine this procession, compared to
that of Christ’s; a visual panoply of power: cavalry on horses, foot soldiers,
leather armor, helmets, weapons, banners, golden eagles mounted on poles, sun
glinting on metal and gold. Sounds; the
marching of feet, the creaking of leather, the clinking of bridles, the beating
of drums. The swirling of dust. The eyes of the onlookers, some curious, some
awed, and many resentful.
And then at the eastern gate, there
was Jesus’ entry into the ancient city where the crowds went wild with
cheering. There were shouts of, “Hosanna
to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”. People grabbed anything they could get their
hands on. They tore palm branches from
trees. They tore the clothes off their
back. They threw them in his path as a
king of regal carpet. The shouts of
hosanna, which meant “save now,” grew louder. The green palms waved more and more
frantically. Something tremendous was about to happen.
Singing, shouting confidently, the
crowd, swept through the city gates and finally stopped on the plaza in front
of the Temple, the most sacred of shrines. There, Jesus dismounted. What a
fitting and appropriate place for Jesus to make his big move. The crowd, tense
with anticipation, the sounds of Hosannas “save now” ringing in their ears,
watched his every move. Some of them would glance toward heaven, looking for
the sign that was sure to come. After all, was this not the Messiah, the Chosen
One, for whom legions of angels would descend from heaven and reestablish the
Kingdom of Israel.
Can we possibly even imagine the
sensation that these people were feeling?
Jesus was a one-man liberation army that had marched right into the
heart of Jerusalem in the midst of these poor troubled peoples groveling under
the yoke of pagan Rome. This was the
moment that had kept their faith alive throughout the centuries. This had been their hope. This moment had been the inspiration of their
worship. They saw Jesus as the right man
for the right time.
Then the moment that everyone had
been waiting for came; Jesus entered the temple. The crowd grew faint, only a low murmuring
now as all eyes focused upon the Nazarene.
Time passed. More time
passed. An uneasy restlessness came over
the crowd. What was Jesus going to do? Mark writes, “He went into the temple, and
when he looked around at everything, since the hour was already late, he went
out again,” Jesus, the right man for the right time. Jesus the savior that the Jewish people had
been waiting for…did absolutely nothing.
The crowd was stunned. Perhaps no event in history has built up to a
greater anti-climax than Palm Sunday.
Then, slowly, one by one, the crowd began to melt away. All that was left was this kind of eerie
silence and this empty feeling in the heart.
That was the end of their singing and shouting, the hosannas, the waving
of palms. Something quite obviously had
failed to come off here. It was a
tremendous buildup to an equally tremendous let down.
In the centuries of retelling the
story of Palm Sunday, it seems to me that we so often miss the point that to
the people of first century Palestine the events of that day fell like one big
thud. In their eyes Jesus had failed to
exploit this one great moment in history.
And yes, many of them must have felt betrayed. One by one they began to leave the scene,
terribly disillusioned with the one whom they thought would be their exalted
leader.
The crowds wanted a winner, they
wanted a person who would deliver them from Rome; but Jesus has other
plans. And this, my friends, is the
tragedy of Palm Sunday and it sets the tone for what we now call his
Passion. There are two expectations
being played out. Two storylines are
occurring: the hopes of the people is one and the real Passion of the Christ is
the other. Jesus could not match his
hopes and dreams with theirs. The two
goals were mutually exclusive.
They have just celebrated a kind of
King’s reception with the donkey, the palm branches, throwing their robes to
the ground in humble subjection to this king.
And he knows, while they are doing this, that he must disappoint
them. He knows he must walk away. So begins the sufferings, or the Passion, of
the Christ. The crowds will begin to
turn against him because of their disappointment over this incident. And for that reason Palm Sunday was, in many
ways, a Tragedy.
But Palm Sunday was a triumph,
too. And whether we have fully grasped
the meaning of it or not, we celebrate it, because: it marked the triumph of
love over hate; because what was expected was war, but what we received was
sacrifice. It marked the victory of God
in human affairs. Perhaps not the way we
expected it. Perhaps not the way that we
had planned for it. Perhaps not the way
that we wanted it. But when does God do
what we want or expect or plan? God has
bigger and better plans for us; all the time.
God’s affairs triumphed over human affairs. God is not just above it all, reigning in
some distant heavens, but is in the midst of it all. And because of God’s presence among us, there
is forever a triumph of love over hate, of life over death.
The turning point for us is Palm
Sunday. It is our moment of triumph. It was a triumph because God decided to ignore
our miserable state and act on our behalf.
God chose to ignore the crowd’s version of Palm Sunday and go with a new
one. No matter what we have done:
compromised our principles, sold out to the expediency of the moment, given in
to sin, chosen to follow the imperial procession, instead. God comes into our world and welcomes us
home. We may not deserve to be there but
he welcomes us just the same. If there
ever was a turning point of our long ordeal in the wilderness; This is it!
Marcus Borg wrote, “The personal and
political meanings of Holy Week are captured in two nearly identical questions.
The first is one that many Christians
have heard and responded to: Do you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and
Savior? It is a crucially important
question, for the Lordship of Christ is the path of personal liberation, return
from exile, and conscious reconnection to God. The virtually identical but seldom asked
question is: Do you accept Jesus as your political Lord and Savior? The gospel of Jesus, the good news of Jesus,
which is the gospel of the kingdom of God, involves both questions. The gospel about Jesus, the good news about
Jesus, which is the gospel of the Lordship of Christ, involves both questions.
Holy Week and the journey of Lent
are about an alternative procession and an alternative journey. The alternative procession is what we see on
Palm Sunday, an anti-imperial and nonviolent procession. Now, as then, that procession leads to a
capital city, an imperial center, and a place of collaboration between religion
and violence. Now as then, the
alternative journey is the path of personal transformation that leads to
journeying with the risen Jesus, just as it did for his followers on the road
to Emmaus. Holy Week as the annual
remembrance of Jesus's last week presents us with the always relevant
questions: Which journey are we on? Which
procession are we in?"
So, in knowing and understanding the
parades that marched into town, which parade will you follow?
AMEN
Hymn – Hosanna, Loud Hosanna
Benediction
The road has been long (in more ways than one this year). You have seen much on this journey, but it is
not time to quit. There is much to be
done. Go in peace, dear people of God. Go ready to proclaim with your lives that
Jesus is Lord and Savior. Go to offer
God’s love and peace to all. AMEN.
