Palm Sunday 2022

Approach

Welcome, Candle, Call to Worship

Song

Reading 1: Luke 19:28-34

Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King

28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”

32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”

Reflection 1 & Prayer Rory

· Jesus comes into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. It’s such a familiar passage, such a familiar image, but why?

· Seems an oddly specific thing, but also seems important

· Zechariah 9:9 The Coming of Zion’s King

o 9 Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

· Humility

· Peace

· Subversiveness. The weak overcoming the mighty. David & Goliath. God’s strength.

· Sets the tone for Jesus entering David’s city

· Also a sense of mystery. Would you give up your car, or even your donkey if someone told you “The Lord needs it?” Was this pre-arranged? Doesn’t seem like it. The owner is surprised someon is taking the donkey. Is the owner a follower of Jesus? We don’t know. One thing is clear. There is more going on here than meets the eye.

Let’s pray:

Prayer of Adoration and Confession

Palm Sunday began

with the crowds adoring your Son, Jesus,

raising their voices to welcome him

and praise him as the new king of kings,

a son of King David.

Loving God, we gather here today

as a crowd of people

drawn to this story of a man

whose life still challenges the way we live

and the way we think about the world.

Our eyes see a world that

has real beauty within it,

our ears hear the melodic music

filling our every waking moment.

We taste the flavours and

feel the textures

that seek to meet our every desire.

We wonder at the beauty and diversity

of all that you have made,

all that is seen and all that is hidden.

In the silence we sense a presence

that we cannot define, cannot fully understand,

and yet we feel drawn to it from our earliest years.

God, you are the source of our being,

you make your dwelling within us.

We wonder at the life you have given us,

the body, mind and spirit to dwell in this world

that you have made;

a chance to explore

the different places we live in and

the different peoples we live with.

The mind to know things and

the heart to feel love for ourselves and others.

Forgive us for the times

when we have ignored your presence

or failed to listen to your still small voice within us.

Forgive us for the times

when we have followed the crowd,

pulled and swayed by people

who would persuade us to seek to fulfil

our own will and desires before the needs of others.

Forgive us for the times

when we have failed to be true disciples,

when we have run away from our commitments

and allowed fear to turn us from the right path.

God in your mercy, forgive us once more,

renew us and refresh us with your Holy Spirit.

Give us a desire and commitment

to follow in the way of the cross as Jesus did.

Amen.

Song

Notices

Reading 2: Luke 19:35-38

35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.

37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”[a]

“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

Reflection 2: Rory

· Call it Palm Sunday, but where are the palms?

· One of very few stories that appear in all four gospels

· Mixture of cloaks and palms

· From mount of Olives, cross the Kidron valley to climb up towards Jerusalem as the walls of the temple tower above you.

· Barren valley

· Scattering of palms

· Crowds singing psalms – the songs of ascent

· In waving the branches of the palms, the people are celebrating, but there is something riotous, feverish about it. They give themselves over totally to the moment

· In laying down their cloaks, the people are giving themselves over totally to Jesus.

· There is something symbolic here. They are defenceless against the elements. They are revealed.

· In a similar way we shelter ourselves under many cloaks in our lives. Cloaks of dignity. Cloaks of discretion and privacy, but also cloaks of selfishness and deceit.

· Palm Sunday calls us to lay down our cloaks before Jesus, the coming King, the holy One of God.

· So let’s lay down our cloaks before him this morning.

Community time & Offering

God Space

Reading 3: Luke 19:39-44

39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”

41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

Reflection 3: Rory

· Things are getting out of hand.

· People are abandoning themselves to Jesus, the crowds are noisy and restless, this Passover pilgrimage to the Holy city is beginning to boil over.

· The Pharisees, always concerned with getting things right, always afraid that somebody’s sacrilege will be the last straw on the camel’s back. Always afraid of God’s abandonment.

Are we sometimes like that? Afraid that God will abandon us?

The Pharisees see everything going wrong. A riot at the holiest time of the year.

· Stop them, Jesus. They’re tearing the place apart. They’ve destroyed those palm trees in their fever. They uncover themselves shamelessly. They desecrate the walls of the temple.

· If they were silent the very walls would cry out.

· So concerned with getting things right. So concerned with doing things the right way that they did not recognize the time of God coming to them.

· We have been the same.

· Each one of us.

· There have been time in our lives when God has been stirring our souls and we have been too afraid of getting something wrong to join in.

· We have been the same.

· In our church.

· We have been so concerned with doing things decently and in order, that we have failed to respond when God calls.

· We have been the same.

· In our world, the rocks cry out, for God’s children, all of humanity, have abandoned his ways. We are deaf to his call. We are mute in our praise.

· Even the rocks cry out.

Prayers for others

Reading 4: Luke 19:45-48

45 When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. 46 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’[a]; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’[b]”

47 Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. 48 Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words.

Reflection 4: Rory

· A new wind of change blew through God’s temple.

· The Spirit was stirred.

· And those who held positions of power did not like it one bit.

· But there was something about Jesus.

· He captured the imagination of the people like no-one before him, and no-one since.

· The acrid tang of violence hung in the air.

· Things were getting out of control.

· Things were coming to a head.

· In the midst of the drama of Holy Week, Two worlds collide, and only one can survive.

· The world of the establishment. The world of the way things have always been done. But under the cloak, also the world of selfishness, avarice and deceit.

· This is not a Hebrew thing. This is not a Jewish thing. This is a human thing.

· We cling on to power, so that we can have control. We cling onto power so that things will go our way. And if sometimes we need to compromise our principles so we can cling to the power that makes our way of life possible, then so be it.

· Jesus strips the cloaks away. Overturns the tables. Screams as he points out the elephant in the room.

· Comes riding on the colt of a donkey, but there is nothing peaceful about the conflict that he creates.

· He clings not to power, but to powerlessness and truth.

· How do you take away someone’s powerlessness?

· How do you put your cloak back on when someone has revealed the truth?

· But Jesus comes not to destroy the temple, we did that, Jesus came to set us free. To save us from ourselves. To close the door on death, and open the pathway to life.

· And so two worlds collide.

· And so we are confronted with life and death. With self-deception and truth.

· Two worlds collide, and only one can survive.

Song Behold the Lamb (C)

Communion

Reading: Luke 22:14-18 (Jean)

14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table.15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”

17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”

Prayer of thanksgiving

Luke 22:19-20 (Rory)

19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

Sending

Final song

Benediction