Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

The Worship of God · March 28, 2010

Palm Sunday

Litany and Confession

From Psalm 116

O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good.

            Steadfast love endures forever!

Out of my distress, I called on the Lord, and the Lord answered me and set me on solid ground.

            Steadfast love endures forever!

With the Lord on my side, I do not fear.

            Steadfast love endures forever!

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.

            Steadfast love endures forever!

This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it.

            Steadfast love endures forever!

Let us pray:  

            Open to us the gates of righteousness that we may enter through them.

            Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

            We thank you that you have answered us and become our salvation.

            Hosanna and Halleluiah!

God is merciful, abounding in steadfast love!

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

World without end. Amen. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Jacob Thorne

Gracious God and loving God, as we worship you this morning, we raise our hearts and our palms to honor you. We great you with shouts of praise in our voices and in our hearts, for you are the one whose love endures forever. You will not let us go. You turn us from fear and frustration toward the life and the light for which we were created. You assure us, O God, that our prayers are heard. 

Now we watch as your Son enters the holy city. We, too, may find ourselves among the crowd asking, “Who is this?” “Who is this whose name brings salvation and life?” “Who is this who, even as a king who walks among us?”

Then we remember. Your Son, our savior, is the one who seeks out the lost, who honors the least, who reaches out to those who are forgotten, who heals the sick, challenges the proud, continues to love no matter what the cost, and feeds our souls.

As we journey into Holy Week, we follow our Savior from the table to the cross into the very depths of our hearts. Give us the courage to remain faithful as you have remained faithful to us, to love as you have loved, and to lift our hearts in praise saying, “Hosanna. Blessed is the one who come in the name of the Lord.”

Now here us as we say together the prayer that your Son taught us…

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by 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, the power, and glory, forever. Amen.

New Testament Lesson

Luke 19:28-40

After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it.’” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus; and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,

            “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!

            Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

Message

At the Crossroads

Tim Carson

Have you ever found yourself at a crossroads, some turning point where you have to make an important choice? Several options are available. You could choose any one, but every one of them has an up-side and a down-side. You do have to choose.

Of course, you have. I have, too. Do you make the job change or not? Should we buy it or not? I’ve dealt with this issue so many years, and it seems like the time has come to do something about it. A course of events has transpired, something beyond our control, and we have to choose from several options – every one of them means that something will be gained and other things lost. Do we think that it is time to remove life support?

Yes, I know you’ve been at the crossroads. So I know you will understand what it was like for Jesus to approach Jerusalem. His disciples had been warning him, in fact, trying to persuade him to turn back. Walking through those gates did not portend good things. “Turn back. It’s not too late.” What does he do? What does he decide?

If you have been at a crossroads, and have been faced with several options, but feel strangely, compellingly drawn to one of those choices, you will also know what Jesus faced. You know what you have to do even though it’s going to be hard, very hard, and even place you in the path of oncoming traffic. Have you ever felt compelled to reach out, offer yourself to a person, situation, a cause, a group or cause that promises an extremely tenuous outcome?

Jesus knows where he has to go. It is a crossroads moment. He makes a choice.

If you have been at a crossroads, this story is for you. This is the story of how the heart may be broken by those you love. It’s the story of how love takes you to places you’d rather not go in the first place.

It was his wild, passionate love of God that sent Jesus careening toward a place that kills people like him. That’s always the way of it; the ones a city needs most are the same ones who are killed by it. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you!”

Is there anything in the world worse than loving those who won’t love you back?

Like a parent longing to help a wayward child who has gotten off track and they just won’t respond, no matter what you do. Like a scorned lover pining for unrequited love, the divine love is the same, and it sounds a lament that is long, and deep, and mournful. Listen to the broken heart of God as we hear it in the prophet Hosea (11:1-4, 8):

I fell in love with Israel when he was still a child;

And I have called him my son ever since Egypt…

But they went their own way… they have ignored my healing care.

I drew them in… with cords of love,

But it seemed to them as though I was putting a yoke on their necks,

But I was just offering them food…

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?

Jesus tops the hill, gazes down into the city of peace (Jeru-salem) that stones the prophets and says:

How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! How readily would I have swooped you up into my arms, under the wings of protection, but you fled me in your days and in your nights.

It is so hard to love those who won’t love you back.

And yet, he rides on and is never deterred. His broken heart rides down into the city, my city, your city, every city, from Jerusalem to Columbia, New Orleans to Port-a-Prince, Bagdad to Kandahar, Darfur to Beijing, and Sydney to Moscow. He keeps coming into the Jerusalem of my heart, and your heart, and every place where holy things are snuffed out by the darkness that can’t stand the light. Such is the fatal nature of the divine love, always leading to where it may be rejected.

There was once a holy woman who persisted in trying to rescue a scorpion that had fallen into a pond and was drowning. Every time she lifted it out of the water, it stung her. A friend told her to stop, to cease trying to save the very thing that was stinging her. But she said, “It is the nature of the scorpion to sting. It is my nature to save. If the scorpion will not give up its nature, why should I give up mine?”

Palm Sunday is such a strange day, such a paradox, such an irony. The rejoicing and accolades will be short lived. We know that. And what seems to be a triumphal entrance is really the beginning of something else, a collision, a train wreck, with the darkness of human nature and the oppression of power. In the span of a few days, he will encounter deception, abandonment, false accusation, torture, and finally capital punishment. He will be put to death like so many other common criminals and revolutionaries of the time by the Roman machine.

As he rides in on a beast of burden, he goes not on the steed or chariot of a returning warrior, victorious in battle. No. No. The people are throwing their cloaks on the ground and branches off trees before him. The disciples are chanting portions of the Passover liturgy from the Psalm: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” “But what sort of king do we have here? Have we ever seen such?”

And that is the question – it seems to me – that has to preoccupy us on a day when our young people are ready to make their good confessions that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. Just what kind of Jesus are they confessing as Lord? There may be only one Jesus, but our countless presentations of him always have been around.

When Albert Schweitzer was asking this question, a century ago, with his quest for the historic Jesus, his answer is one that is unavoidable today. He said that as we search for this historical Jesus, it is like looking down into a deep well and seeing our own reflection in the water below. And then we say that the reflection we see is He.

And there is the problem and the challenge. Throughout history, different figures of Jesus have predominated, most usually ones that are some projection of ourselves or what we need him to be.

Do you know those bumper stickers that you see ever so often that are a spin off on the milk commercial: “Got Jesus?” Really now, that’s almost meaningless unless you ask another question. And that other question is this, “If you got Jesus, which one do you got?”

I’ve been tempted to create my own bumper sticker, one that could be displayed immediately adjacent to a fish emblem, and it would say, “I’ve got Jesus but not the One you think.”

Which Jesus do we confess?

·         The Jihadist Jesus that shows up with blood on his shoes at the end of  history to mop up the mess?

·         The revolutionary Jesus who is leading the next liberation insurgency?

·         The gentle, philosopher Jesus, walking about wearing an academic gown and saying smart things?

·         The mystic, hippie Jesus, reminding people to chill out and recycle?

·         The therapist Jesus, using a deft combination of counseling techniques to mobilize our power of positive thinking?

·         The salesman Jesus, vetting out a spiritual product you can’t get in a store near you?

Which Jesus? What I want to tell you today is that the Jesus most people in our culture are thinking about, if they are thinking about one at all, is not this one, not the one we see this morning riding into Jerusalem on a lowly donkey, weeping for the city, following the siren of love wherever it will take him. And it really matters which Jesus you have.

Let me tell you about the Jesus I don’t have and the one I do.

I don’t have a sentimentalized Jesus, a domesticated one who looks, feels, and acts like us, one who could have a good time of it in any of the pulpits of the churches in this city. I don’t think he would survive in any of the pulpits in any of the churches in our city.

I don’t have a judgmental Jesus, but rather the one who ate with tax collectors, sinners, and all the folks nobody else had time for.

I don’t have the Jesus of religion but the Jesus who transforms religion.

I don’t have the Jesus who reinforces my way of life but rather challenges me to transform it.

I don’t have a nationalistic Jesus wrapped in the flag, but rather the one who is Lord over every flag.

I don’t have a Jesus who is owned by any political party but a Jesus who holds every one of them accountable to the will and purpose of God.

Which Jesus?

The Jesus I have is so crazy in love with God that he’ll go the distance because he has no choice.

The Jesus I have knows that God is God and we are not, and that we desperately need love, grace, and forgiveness we can’t earn for ourselves.

The Jesus I have is in the middle of all suffering, because he is the suffering servant.

The Jesus I have speaks truth to power like a prophet and hope to the hopeless like a good shepherd.

The Jesus I have barely has a place to lay his head in this world and was never freer than when he emptied himself totally, until there wasn’t anything left but God.

I’ll tell you now that the Jesus of Palm Sunday is not usually the Jesus we have but surely is the one we need to find, the one who is victorious precisely because he is humble and riding on a donkey. And what I know, as much as I know I am standing before you today, is that whatever Jesus we think we have, he has us every time.

Ingenious are the many ways that we push God away and keep ourselves safely insulated. But listen to the song of lament you hear in the distance. Listen to the aching love song of the universe that keeps riding in our direction, the loving presence that would gather us in as a hen would her chicks, one that is so wild and untamable that he keeps coming even when we push back, shield ourselves, and sting the hand that reaches to save us. That is why he comes – at the crossroads – for you and me and this whole aching world that has no idea just how much it is loved.

Hosanna! Hosanna to the son of David.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Benediction

Now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you always. Amen.