Worship
Service for April 13, 2025 (Palm Sunday)
Prelude
Announcements:
Call to Worship
L: Cry out, people of faith! Rejoice and praise God!
P: If we did not sing praise, the very stones
would cry out!
L: Cry out, people of faith, for your Savior draws
near to Jerusalem.
P: Hosanna!
God saves! Blessed is the One who
comes in God’s name!
L: Blessed is Jesus Christ, who did not turn
back for fear of the cross. Let us
praise the God who loves us, sharing Christ’s sufferings, and facing with
courage our path of faith.
P: Hosanna!
God saves! Blessed is the One who
comes in God’s name. AMEN
Opening Hymn – Hosanna, Loud Hosanna #89/297
Prayer of Confession
O God, we sing and praise You,
happy of heart and strong of spirit, when we are among others who praise you
too. But in times of stress, we seek
scapegoats to be targets for our anger.
We betray those we love and who have loved us and we turn against You,
too busy to seek you, too selfish to obey you.
Your compassion is without bounds, O God, for you forgave us again and
again. You restore us to a right spirit
and bring us together to worship You again.
God of steadfast love, teach us how to be steadfast, through Jesus
Christ we pray. (Silent prayers are offered) AMEN.
Assurance of Pardon
L: God has offered us pardon, a sanctification,
and a redemption to return to God and seek God always.
P: We are in humble service to the Lord,
welcoming his invitation and thankful for it.
AMEN
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
Gracious God, the
author of salvation, we give you thanks for Jesus Christ, our Lord, who came in
your name and turned the lonely way of rejection and death into triumph. Grant us the steadfast faith to enter the
gates of righteousness, that we may receive grace to become citizens of your
heavenly kingdom.
Holy Lord, who gave his
only son so that we might find life and live it abundantly, awaken in us the
humility to serve wherever creation is broken and in need. By your Spirit, call us into the world as a
holy people, dying to the things which separate us from your love, and being
raised with the abundance and joy of hope and peace. Through humility let us crucify our
pride. Through simple living let us
crucify poverty. Through solidarity let
us crucify suffering. Through faith let
us crucify despair.
Sovereign Lord,
everlasting and almighty, in your tender love for your children, you sent your
Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death
upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way
of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection.
We pray this day for
our loved ones;
And in silence we offer
up our unspoken prayers to you…
We pray this in the
name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one
God, now and forever, as we continue to pray 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 and 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 #91 Blue
Scripture Reading(s):
First Scripture Reading – Psalm
118:1-2, 19-29
Second Scripture Reading – Luke 19:28-40
Sermon -
These Very Stones Would Cry Out
This morning’s scripture reading from Luke 19 is full of sights
and sounds and movement. There’s a lot
going on. It’s one of those handful of
scriptures that in years past we’ve actually enacted in worship. Jesus enters into Jerusalem with the people
waving palms – and we’ve waved palms too. “Hosanna, in the highest!” we’ve shouted. We read this scripture not only with the words
on the page and the story spoken aloud – but with our bodies – we proclaim
Hosanna – just like they did – with the whole of us. It is an embodied and visceral moment.
The excitement builds as the procession moves forward. It starts with two disciple who were sent
quietly ahead into Jerusalem to untie and retrieve a colt – a donkey. They find the colt just as Jesus had promised.
They untie it. The owners stop them, but as instructed the
disciples say, “The Lord needs it,” and the owners let the colt go.
The disciples put their cloaks on the colt, and then they put
Jesus on the colt. And they start to
move toward Jerusalem. Maybe it starts
with a just a murmur, some people along the way see this procession and wonder,
“What’s going on?” They see Jesus, and
they remember all the healings and the miracles they have seen. Word spreads and the crowd begins to gather
and get bigger. The volume builds. Scripture says that they begin to “joyfully
praise God in loud voices” for all the miracles they had seen.
As we know from the other gospels, they then begin to shout:
Hosanna! Hosanna! Which means Save! or Deliver! Hosanna! They shout praising Jesus as king: “Blessed
is the king who comes in the name of our God!” They shout for peace in a world of empire and
violence. “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” It is a full-on parade by this point. There’s praising. There’s shouting. “Hosanna! Hosanna!” The noise of the crowd builds as they head
toward the city; so loud that it can be heard on into Jerusalem. However, that doesn’t sit so well with
another group of people. The
Pharisees. Yup, those religious guys who
want to put a damper on all things new, on upstarts and want-a-be’s, and they
definitely want to put a squash to this interloper. They aren’t least bit afraid of God and what
God has to say about any of this. They
are afraid of Rome.
Shhhh! They employ. This is
dangerous. Don’t forget where you are
and who we are. Rome will hear
you. Shhh! “Jesus,” they say, “make your disciples stop!”
And through the noise of the crowd,
Jesus says, “If these keep quiet, even the stones will shout.” This moment is so full to overflowing all the
joy, all the anticipation, all the pent-up longing for freedom. We often forget that Rome, at this time, has
all but enslaved the Jewish people. They
were watched and guarded day and night.
They were taxed beyond belief.
And they were forced to spy on neighbor and loved ones. If you could somehow silence and bottle up this
crowd, Jesus says, even the stones will shout.
Even the stones will shout. Now, the first thing you
might think when you hear Jesus say this, is – “but stones can’t shout.” Exactly.
We’ve witnessed the miracles, though.
So, I want to know: What will the stones shout? Will they shout in praise?
Will they shout Hosanna? Will they shout something else?
This is a celebrating, liberating moment. Will the stones shout out, joining in the
praise? What’s happening here isn’t
random. Everything we see and hear in
this moment reaches deep into the history of Israel, deep into the history of a
people longing to be free. In Zechariah,
the prophet writes: “Rejoice greatly, Daughters of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and
having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a
donkey.”
And the Hosannas and the
blessing! They echo our Psalm reading
from this morning:
O give thanks to God, for God
is good;
God’s steadfast love endures
forever!
Open to me the gates of
righteousness,
that I may enter through them
and give thanks to God.
I thank you that you have
answered me
and have become my salvation.
The stone that the builders
rejected
has become the chief
cornerstone.
This is God’s doing;
it is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day that God has
made;
let us rejoice and be glad in
it.
Save us, we beseech you, O God!
Blessed is the one who comes in
the name of our God.
This is a salvific moment, a redeeming moment for the
history of Israel. It is for their
ultimate deliverance.
If you silence these voices,
even the stones will shout.
Even the stones will shout.
What will they shout?
Will they shout in protest?
Because let’s be clear, shouting for the raising up of a new king,
can mean only one thing; the bringing down of the current one. To the ears of those in power, this is beyond
a little demonstration, this is beyond a simple protest – it is sedition – it
is treason.
Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crosson imagine two processions,
which I’ve talked about in the past. On
one end of town, they imagine the procession of Pilate into Jerusalem. Pilate is the representative of Rome sent to
this backwater of Empire as the crowds are flowing in for Passover to make sure
those crowds don’t get out of hand and to stop any uprising or any hint of
revolution. Imagine all the horses and
the troops and the armor and the weaponry as Pilate processes in, in what
someone has called, “the gaudy glory of empire.” In our modern era it would be tanks and troops,
with an air show of the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds.
And then here, across town, there’s this Jesus, who comes riding
in, not on a grand steed, not with soldiers dressed in armor, but on a colt with
the poor and disposed making a peoples procession, as this crowd spreads their
cloaks in the road, shouting: “Blessed is the king who comes in
the name of our God.”
The Pharisees get this. They
know why the imperial presence in Jerusalem has been reinforced. They know what happens when crowds gather,
shouting, proclaiming a new king. They
know what the powers do. And they’re
afraid.
Stephanie Buckanon Crowder, professor at Chicago Theological
Seminary, points out that as the visibility of a protest increases, so does the
threat to the powers, and so does the danger that the powers will react with
violence. She points to how that was
true for Martin Luther King, Jr., and for Medgar (rhymes with ledger) Evers,
and for the Freedom Riders and even here in Pittsburgh one of our own, Rev
Leroy Patrick, a Presbyterian pastor.
The Pharisees are like those liberal white pastors and rabbis in
Birmingham, who wrote to Dr. King and said – don’t come to Birmingham, not now.
You will provoke the powers with your
protest. Don’t come here, with folks
shouting so loudly. The time isn’t
right. To which, we know, Dr. King
responded from the cell where the powers jailed him: “I have come to Birmingham
because injustice is here... Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice
everywhere... The time is always ripe to do right.”
If you silence these voices,
even the stones will shout.
Even the stones will shout. What will they shout?
Will they shout lament?
Because that’s what Jesus does. Just after this morning’s Scripture reading, just
after Jesus says, “even the stones will shout,” Jesus turns the corner
and sees Jerusalem before him and he cries out in lament – “Oh Jerusalem; if
you, even you, had known on this day what would bring you peace...”
He sees the destruction that this world of power over others and
violence to squelch the oppressed will bring and he cries out and weeps for
Jerusalem and for all the people.
Here on this threshold of Holy Week, we know what lies ahead. Jesus will enter into Jerusalem. He will go to the Temple and find it turned
into a marketplace, and he will turn the tables over. Jesus will continue to teach and proclaim God
turning the world right-side up. He will
proclaim the truth of God’s new creation, in the presence of the powers that
oppress, and they will ALL close in on him. Jesus will gather his friends at a table among
them those who will betray, deny, and desert him. He will go to the garden and pray in agony. And the powers will come for him and arrest
him. They will try him, beat him, and
crucify him... as the crowds, caught up in the violence of power over others,
will switch sides and cheer the powers on.
In this moment, as Jerusalem comes into full view, Jesus knows
what powers do. He can see the
inevitability of the days to come and even beyond that he can see the
destruction that will come to Jerusalem from continued imperial occupation and
war years later with the Temple burned to the ground. “O Jerusalem; if you had only known this
day what will bring you peace. They will
hem you in on every side. They will not
leave one stone on another.”
This day was destined to be.
None of it was by accident. When
Jesus says,
If you silence these voices,
even the stones will shout.
These stones have been shouting for centuries. We don’t have to strain hard these days to
imagine the destruction of violence and war and power over others and what
devastation it causes. We watch it on
the nightly news. We see the destruction
of it in Sudan, in Syria, in Ukraine and in countless other cities and
countries. We are witnesses to the
atrocities, to the slaughter of innocents, to the war crimes of empire gone
mad. This is nothing new, except perhaps
this:
Can you now hear the stones
shouting? Because I sure can.
As we stand here, in the midst of Palm Sunday, as the Pharisees
try to hush the crowd, as we see with Jesus the expanse of Holy Week that lies
ahead, as we hear Jesus: “If you silence these voices, even these stones
will shout,” as praise gets all tangled up with protest and lament; it is
in the fullness of this moment, that what we see and hear and experience is Christ
filled to the fullness of our humanity, as we are filled to the fullness of
Christ’s. Let our voices not be silenced,
but rather shout out justice and compassion, love and mercy, to the cities like
Jerusalem for whom Jesus wept, because the Stones Have Been Shouting for us for
far too long.
Thanks be to God!
AMEN
Offertory –
Doxology –
Prayer of Dedication –
Glory
be to you, O God, for the gift of creation and for your everlasting mercy. Praise be to you, O Christ, for your
redeeming love and the promise of new life.
Thanks be to you, O Holy Spirit, for guidance, counsel, and abiding
revelation. We honor and worship you in
presenting our offerings this day. Take
not only these monetary offerings but also our very lives and let them be
consecrated to you, O God. AMEN
Closing
Hymn – All Glory, Laud, and Honor #300
Brown Hymnal
Benediction –
Today I won’t
leave you with a Benediction because the week has just begun and so many events
happen this week. Instead I bid you to
rest in the open arms of God, to embrace the offer of redemption in the love of
Jesus Christ, and to listen carefully to the groaning of the Holy Spirit. AMEN
Postlude
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