Introduction
Palm
Sunday reminds us of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, an occasion that is marked by
the singing and praises of the crowds.
This service suggests a number of hymns, you may choose to sing all or
some of them according to your choice.
Entering
into Worship:
Psalm 118 vv 1 and 2
Give thanks to the Lord
for he is good
His love endures
forever
Let the house of Aaron
say,
His love endures for
ever.
Hymn
(you may choose one or
sing both of the following hymns - you could sing them either side of the
prayers of thanksgiving)
Prayers of Thanksgiving -
Spend a few moments
giving thanks to God for the blessings you have received this week. You may find it useful to use a form of list
prayer structured as follows
I give thanks Lord for
you are good
From you goodness I
have received
(then
list the blessings you have received after each one saying
e.g
From your goodness i have received the air I breathe)
Your love endures
forever.
The Lord’s Prayer
Reflecting
on God’s Word in Scripture
Reading - Matthew 21:1-17
As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage
on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, ‘Go to the
village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her
colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you,
say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.’
This took place to fulfil what was spoken through
the prophet:
‘Say to Daughter Zion,
“See, your
king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
and on a
colt, the foal of a donkey.”’
The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed
them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for
Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while
others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that
went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,
‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’
‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’
‘Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was
stirred and asked, ‘Who is this?’
The crowds answered, ‘This is Jesus, the prophet
from Nazareth in Galilee.’
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all
who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the
money-changers and the benches of those selling doves. ‘It is written,’ he said
to them, ‘“My house will be called a house of prayer,” but you are making it “a
den of robbers.”’
The blind and the lame came to him at the temple,
and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw
the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts,
‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ they were indignant.
‘Do you hear what these children are saying?’ they
asked him.
‘Yes,’ replied Jesus, ‘have you never read,
‘“From the lips of children and infants
you, Lord,
have called forth your praise”?’
And he left them and went out of the city to
Bethany, where he spent the night.
Entering
Holy Week
As
we travel through Holy week, today using the story of Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem
and then through the week using the readings in the Prayer Handbook, our theme
will be “Walking with Jesus to the Cross.”
For the first part of the week, we will consider the character and
nature of this man, Jesus, as we find him in our readings. On Thursday, we will sit with Jesus and His
disciples in the upper-room and wait with him in Gethsemane before joining that
final journey on Good Friday to the Cross.
Jesus Enters Jerusalem.
Many
of us will be very familiar with the story of Jesus and we have probably heard
this story explained from just about every angle you can imagine. For preachers, Palm Sunday, presents both
opportunity and challenge. The
opportunity to do something a little more dramatic and interactive (for congregations
who like that kind of thing) – the most adventurous may even enrol a donkey to
help illustrate the story! The challenge
is how do we come afresh to such a familiar story? And this year, perhaps, the challenge is how
do we capture the mood of the moment as we sit quietly at home, rather than in
the company of our friends in Church?
I
want to focus on the character and nature of Jesus, as we find him, here in
this passage.
We
need to begin by reminding ourselves that Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem is neither
the beginning of his journey, or the end.
From the moment Jesus first predicted his death, his heart had been set and
his feet had pointed to Jerusalem. (Matthew
16:21f) This was not the first time
Jesus had been to Jerusalem (on Mothering Sunday we considered one of his childhood
visits!) but this was his ultimate journey to the nation’s capital.
As
the story opens, we join Jesus as he approaches Jerusalem. As they draw near the city, Jesus instructs
his disciples to go into an outlying village to fetch a donkey and her
colt. There is more than a hint that he
has prearranged the use of the donkey since he tells his disciples what they
should say if they are challenged. From
this pre-planned action we might gather that Jesus has thought long and hard about
his arrival in the capital. Matthew, as
he often does, inserts an Old Testament prophecy, to illustrate that Jesus’
actions are part of a bigger plan fulfilling God’s promises of old. It is never clear whether he is implying that
Jesus is deliberately shaping things according to these promises, however, we
are clearly meant to understand that the events unfolding around Jesus are part
of the divine plan.
We
may choose not to view Jesus as a politician, but, for Matthew, there is
something explicitly political about the way he has chosen to enter the
city. Choosing to come to Jerusalem in
this way at this time was guaranteed to get Jesus noticed. The city was already filling up for the Passover
feast, and rather than arriving in a quiet and unnoticed way, as he had done
previously (John 7:1-10), Jesus builds a scenario that invites people to
respond to his coming. And they respond
in the only logical way.
They
greet him as a coming king. Only a king
has authority to commandeer an animal for his use and the people’s response to
him is fit for a king. The carpet of
cloaks and palm branches prepare the road for the victory parade of a
conquering hero. Yet these actions are
all aspirational, they express he crowd’s longing for a rescuer to come and
liberate their city, rather than being a celebration of a battle already won. There is enough ambiguity in the passage to
leave open the question of whether Jesus deliberately set up the scene to
present himself as a king, or whether this was the crowd’s reaction presented
to illustrate the stark difference between their expectations and Jesus’ actual
mission.
The
crowd cry, “Hosanna” which means, “save us now!” From the very beginning of the Gospel, when
the angel comes to announce Jesus’ birth to Joseph, Jesus has been presented as
the one who “will save his people from their sins!” (Matthew 1:21) Here now, the people greet him as a
saviour. Of course, what they have in
mind is not salvation from sins, but salvation from the Roman oppressor. Their request is more political than
theological. This, Matthew may intend us
to understand, was their error.
The
crowd’s hope is that Jesus will rise up to overthrow the Roman occupiers. Not far beneath surface is a thirst for the
blood of Romans being driven out of the city and Israel being re-established as
a sovereign nation with its own king. But
Jesus hasn’t come to establish himself as a populist. He has come to carry out his heavenly Father’s
purpose, and he knows that will take him to a cruel, painful and bloody
death.
The
authorities’ fear is that Jesus will lead a rebellion and thus disrupt their
power and vested interests. They are close
to seeing it right! Yet he does not see
Pilate as the problem, rather he has his eyes set on the corrupt religious
system that keeps those most in need at a distance and sets up elaborate and costly
schemes as a means of entering into God’s presence. He has come to reclaim for God what is God’s
own and that starts at the temple.
In
this we see the danger of crowds, not least because of their unpredictability. A crowd can take on a personality of its own,
and in amongst the crowd reason can quickly be abandoned in favour of the ‘group-think’
of the mob. No matter how wrong the
crowd is, only a brave person will raise a voice of objection and so the crowd
gets its way. In this fervoured
atmosphere, the good natured songs of adulation can all too quickly turn into
something more threatening. The
authorities feared that this Palm Sunday crowd might become a threat to the
status-quo and the man at the centre of it, Jesus, is either naively unaware of
the danger or is consenting to their actions by his silence. This Jesus need only have said the word, and
the crowd would have quickly turned from a celebratory crowd into a
blood-thirsty mob. Maybe the crowd were
thirsty for just such a word, but it was never going to come from Jesus’ lips. The crowd’s mistake, and possibly at times
ours, was to think that Jesus would wield the sword and at a stroke eliminate
all oppression, suffering and bondage. The
mistake was not the crowd’s only, but also the error of the authorities who
looked on in horror. The authorities mistake was in thinking that
Jesus’ priorities were political revolution rather than spiritual
transformation.
Their
failure to understand the true nature of Jesus’ kingship would ultimately end
in his crucifixion. In the end the crowd
would turn on Jesus and demand his death, because a King of love could not win
their hearts in the way that a king of violence would have and if he was
unwilling to reign in violence, they would violently rid themselves of
him. The authorities would turn on him
because they saw him challenging their political power and were not willing to
lose their privilege and place.
How
do we respond to this Jesus?
This
Jesus who calmly prepares his own entry into Jerusalem, but who resolutely
resists the pressure to do the ‘popular’ thing, instead holding fast to doing God’s
will.
This
Jesus who gives us a new vision of kingship and authority. Not that which is established at the end of a
sword, but that which is expressed in the loving and healing attention to the
blind and the lame?
This
Jesus who challenges the status-quo and ruthlessly reclaims for God that which
is God’s own by giving preference to prayer over profit demanding that access
to God’s presence is made easy and is not through the money-making schemes of
religious law-makers.
(Note this video
has only vv.1-3,5&7)
Responding
to God’s Word in Prayer
Prayers for Others
We beseech you, Lord and master, to be our help and succor.
Save those who are in tribulation;
have mercy on the lonely;
lift up the fallen;
show yourself to the needy;
heal the ungodly;
convert the wanderers of Your people;
feed the hungry, raise up the weak and comfort the faint-hearted.
Let all peoples know that You alone are God and Jesus Christ is your Son,
and we are your people and the sheep of your pasture;
for the sake of Christ Jesus.
Amen.
(A prayer by Clement, a 1st Century
Bishop of Rome – altd.)
Concluding your Time of Worship
Hymn StF 262 All Glory Laud
and Honour https://youtu.be/h3a8fTTrAdE (The arrangement here is slightly different)
No comments:
Post a Comment