Catch us on Facebook for our livestreaming at 11:15am.
Worship
Service for April 2, 2023
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
P: Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
L: Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and
victorious is He,
P: humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt,
the foal of a donkey.
L: Blessed is the One who comes in the name
of the Lord.
P: Hosanna in the highest!
Opening Hymn – Hosanna, Loud Hosanna Hymn #89/297
Prayer of Confession
Gracious God, on this most
holy day, when anticipation of what could be and foreboding of what will be, we
pause to remember. We recall times of
plenty, when we have been faithful to dreams and loyal to people and
commitments, and times of difficulty when we have abandoned them. We remember fear that grows within our hearts
and minds, and keeps us from standing by our ideals, our friends, our God. We remember despair that leads us to lose our
hope in ourselves, in You, in life itself.
Gracious God, make us strong enough to walk the path Jesus did. Give us courage and strength to face our
trials, our abandonment, even our death.
Renew in us hope that in suffering there is wholeness, in pain there is
healing, and in death there is life. For
it is the way of Jesus Christ, whom we seek to love and serve always. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: Jesus said, “Father, forgive them for they
know not what they do.” Friends, believe
the Good News of the Gospel!
P: In Jesus Christ, we are forgiven.
Gloria Patri
Affirmation of Faith/Apostles’
Creed
I believe in God the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord;
who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the
third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on
the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge
the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost,
the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins; the
resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN
Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s
Prayer
Mostly Holy God,
On this Holy day of
Palm Sunday, we have so many mixed feelings inside us. We remember your son’s triumphant entrance
into Jerusalem with the people shouting praises and waving Palm Branches. And we join them with our own praises and
yet….we also remember that this wonderful parade for Christ, your son, becomes another
kind of parade before officials and the booing crowds. And instead of the crowds singing his praises
they are shouting to crucify him within a week.
How quickly our minds and emotions turn, O God. How quickly we can go from being joyful and
triumphant to being angry and resentful.
Today
our hearts are broken by those very shouts, and the pain and suffering he bore
that day.
And
yet we know that it is because of his choosing to enter Jerusalem and taking
the path he knew he was taking, there is hope, grace, love, and salvation for
all of us.
Holy God, there are
still many in need of hope in the world.
There are still
many in need of your healing in the world.
There are still
many in need of your grace and love in the world.
And there are still
many in need of the knowledge of your salvation in our world.
Lord, enter our
lives, our churches, our cities, our countries once again today.
Heal us, Lord.
Transform us.
Renew us.
We especially pray
for……
And also hear our
silent prayers this morning…
Draw us closer to
you in this journey of Holy Week, empower us with strength and courage and with
the assurance that you are with us, as we pray together saying….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 –
Ride On, Ride On In Majesty Hymn #91 Blue Hymnal
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Isaiah
50:4-9a
Second Scripture Reading – Matthew
21:1-11
Sermon
– Victory
Palm Sunday
Today we celebrate Palm Sunday, the triumphal entry and procession of
Christ through the streets of Jerusalem, when the men and women of the city
shouted out “Hosannah!” to the Son of David, and laid at his feet… cloaks and
branches? What? Wait? Why
do we call it Palm Sunday when Matthew tells us that they laid out their winter
coats and yard trimmings from the last wind storm? Maybe we should really call today Down Coat
Sunday? Or Brush Cutting Sunday? Or Throw Down Your Stick Sunday?
If we turn to the Gospels of Luke and Mark, they also mention nothing
but outerwear and tree limbs. It’s not
until we get to John’s Gospel that we are told that the people were waving
branches of palm. Why does John make
such a specific point of saying branches of palms? And why did he skip the cloaks and oak limbs
to wave palms, instead? And why did we
decide to pick up on this tradition for waving palm fronds and calling this
Palm Sunday, rather than something else?
Well, perhaps we need to know what the palm branch meant to the people
of Jerusalem.
We sometimes retain a symbol but forget its meaning. We all know what a trophy represents: it’s the
symbol of victory, right? But if 1,000
years from now, archeologists began digging them up, they might just see them
as meaningless, decorative objects. “Gosh, 21st century Americans
just loved these gold-painted figurines — little people swinging metal rods, girls
and boys dressed in robes striking a fighting pose, balls of various shapes and
sizes, or an adult holding a club behind his head – what funny taste they had.”
To them, a trophy might be no different
from a Picasso or a Taylor Swift poster. And so it is with our branches of palm that we’ve
chosen to use as a symbol for this Sunday from John’s gospel rather than a winter
coat or a willow switch. We imagine them
to have been nothing more than the branches most readily available for waving,
but to ancient people, this would sound ridiculous, because, for Greco-Romans,
the palm had a very definite symbolic meaning: the palm shouted —
VICTORY!
A victorious athlete in the ancient world would be given not a trophy
but a palm branch. An ancient lawyer
would affix palm branches to his door after winning a case, and most of all, a
general, returning to the city in a triumph, in the Roman version of a post-war
ticker tape parade, would hold a palm branch in his hand, and might even wear
the toga palmata,
a special toga, covered with palm branch designs. These are not simply objects to wave or leaves
to soften the road; instead, the palm is the symbol of the victory of Christ,
for this is the Lord’s triumphal entry or his victorious entry into Jerusalem. So today, with John’s gospel story in mind and
not the other three gospel writers, he is pictured as a conquering general, as
having utterly routed and defeated his enemies because the people waved branches
of palms as he entered. But what exactly
is this victory? Who has been defeated
and when?
To answer this, we must look not to the past three years of his
preaching and teaching, but to his final three days of his death and
resurrection, for it is in his passion and death that he meets the forces of
evil face to face; the radiance of Christ, the love of Christ, the goodness of
Christ utterly vanquish and forever break the emptiness, coldness, and darkness
of death itself.
The palms of the people of Jerusalem are an expression, both of faith in
this unconquerable King of Glory — they are so sure of his victory that they
give him the triumphal parade before he
goes off to war rather than when he returns — and a recognition of the eternal
nature of his defeat of the enemy, for from his entry into Jerusalem, from his
incarnation, even from the creation of the world, it was already a foregone
conclusion that evil didn’t
have a chance.
John’s gospel began with symbology and poetry – in the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The writer of John’s gospel had opportunity
to look back on Christ’s life and project his victory over the future onto the
past actions of the people.
So, we join the people of Jerusalem in this celebratory parade and then
bring these blessed branches of palm into our homes to serve as reminders
throughout the year that Christ is utterly victorious, and that no suffering,
no horror has a chance at lasting, because Jesus Christ has defeated evil for
all time.
But we say this… in a world where missiles rain down on civilians in war
zones. We say this at a time when Russia
continues to ravage Ukraine, in which Turkish and Syrian families continue to
mourn and rebuild after the deaths of thousands in a catastrophic earthquake,
as people are lost to other natural disasters like fire, and wind, snow, and
rain. We say that Christ has defeated
evil in the midst of mass shootings and rampant racism, we say that Christ has
defeated death in the face of cancer and every other disease or illness,
accident, or catastrophe.
What exactly does the victory of Christ look like in this kind of world? It looks like the faith of the people of
Jerusalem: in this inspired moment, they know that the raging of the enemy, the
horrors of death, the sufferings of this life are not true reality, but a
momentary blip on the screen, soon to be wiped out forever. They, too, witnessed the very same kinds of
disasters, the same kinds of death, and perhaps some that were even worse.
We as Christians are called to live in the light of this victory. Not by sugar-coating life and pretending it’s
all hunky-dory, but by looking death in the eye and not flinching. We as Christians are called to see the
sufferings of the world, and not run from them, but towards them — not to
escape suffering, but to see how we can comfort, serve, and help.
Where in your family, in your neighborhood, or in the world is someone
battling sickness? How can you as a
Christian be a comfort to them? Be an
agent of their healing? Where is someone
isolated and alone? How can you as a
disciple of Jesus bring them joy? Where
is someone hungry, homeless, anxious? How can you proclaim the victory of Christ by
feeding them, sheltering them, and bringing them peace? We are called to live here and now, in a world
of death and corruption, but also to wave our palms. To show sin, evil, and death that they no
longer have power, but have been defeated by our Lord Jesus Christ, and that,
at any moment now, the eternal victory celebration will begin.
But this, as anyone who has tried it can tell you, is easier said than
done. This is why the people of
Jerusalem also cry out, “Hosannah!” to Jesus. We often imagine that Hosannah means something
like “Hooray!” or “Fantastic!” as though it were a shout of rejoicing, but this
is not the case at all: “Hosannah” is a request, a petition, a prayer, and
means it “Oh God, make speed to save us!” For we on our own don’t have the courage, the
grace, or the power to joyfully wave a palm in the face of evil, but Jesus, God
the Son incarnate, working in us and through us does.
So we say our prayers in our Hosannah’s; to comfort the hurting, to
petition God for the helpless, to ward off the evil, while we also stand with
Christ, waving our palm fronds in victory knowing that He has already defeated
the enemy.
This Easter, how is God calling you to a more secure faith? To be less anxious and more joyful, to be free
to serve others in the light of Christ’s victory? Continue to shout out your Hosannahs to Christ,
but also stand with him in order to be transformed by his grace, and then take
your part in his triumphal victory over evil and death.
Thanks be to God. AMEN.
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Your
gifts to us are abundant, O God. You
give light and life to your people, strengthening us for your mission in this
world. Receive from us, we humbly pray,
these offerings, that they may be used to both serve you and establish your
will within the body of Christ. We pray
in the name of your Son, Jesus. AMEN.
Closing
Hymn – All Glory, Laud, and Honor Hymn #300 Brown
Benediction –
And now may the Grace of God, the Love of Jesus Christ, and
the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each and every one of you, those that
you love and those that no one loves now and forever. AMEN.
Postlude
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