Readings: Psalm 118 Luke 19:28-40
We pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations
of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our
sustainer. Amen.
The steadfast love
of the Lord never ceases…
This is the day,
this is the day that the Lord has made…
Blessed is the one
who comes in the name of the Lord..
The stone that the
builders rejected has become the cornerstone….
This is the Lord’s
doing, it is marvellous in our eyes…..
Both in song and
in word, Psalm 118 is awash with phrases that resonate in our lives and our
faith and that are drawn upon in the New Testament. I suspect the only phrase that diverts us
rather is ‘bind the festal procession with branches up to the horns of the
altar’ which was possibly a liturgical instruction or rule for worship that
accompanies the psalm.
Psalm 118 was said
to be Martin Luther’s favourite psalm, one that sustained him in difficult
times. For the Jews this was and still
is read during Passover celebrations. For Christians it is the lectionary psalm
for Palm Sunday every year. In all four
Gospels the whole multitude of disciples welcome Jesus into Jerusalem with the
acclamation from the psalm: ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the
Lord’.
This psalm is a
prayer of thanksgiving focussed wholly on the power and goodness of God. Not on our goodness, our efforts to get
through the gate but the righteousness of the one that has come to save and set
free all people. It is all about God:
the one who brought the people out of Egypt, who sustained them through the
exodus, and to whom they come to the temple to praise and give thanks to.
The psalm begins
and ends with a core affirmation of faith: ‘O give thanks to our God, who is
good; whose steadfast love endures forever.’
Under threat, in distress, outnumbered, pushed to the limit, in every
circumstance we are buttressed on all sides by God, who is good and whose love
endures. So says the psalmist.
And as we connect
this psalm to the gospel reading for today, the hosannas welcoming Jesus to the
gates of Jerusalem, the procession into the city and the drama, tragedy to come within the gates,
there are a couple of themes that stand out quite strongly for me.
Why do we find it
so difficult to live in thanksgiving for the steadfast love which surrounds us
and (connected) where does God wish to lead today’s procession?
Like the people of
the Exodus, we too can ride a bit of a rollercoaster in our relationship with
God – heartfelt praise and thanks, anger and impatience, fear and courage and
demand and gifting. It’s all there and I
suspect will also be so. The thing that
is troublesome though is not a lively and challenging relationship with our God
– that is good - but when we allow fear to overcome faith and remove God from
the equation. When we decide God is not
present, not caring or simply not interested in little old us and try to do it
all by ourselves, rely purely on our own resources. Where we forget that steadfast love and hunker
down into our resources to keep us safe – that is when we get into trouble.
That is when
community becomes self and shared experience isolation, busyness takes the
place of being still in the presence, thanksgiving becomes material
accumulation and joy becomes anxiety nurtured by ‘what ifs’. Life becomes a chore, a box, a place of small
vision and little hope.
The thing I get
from the psalm today is the absolute expansiveness of God’s love and promise
that can only be responded to by expansive joy and exuberant living on our
part. It doesn’t take out the difficult
parts of the journey but it holds them all in the confidence of God’s
righteousness and enduring love and grace.
All words you say
– isn’t it human nature to hold back a little bit on the celebrations just in
case there is a beastie waiting round the corner about to pounce. Isn’t it a little in the face to dance and
leap for joy when there are others who find little joy in life and it goes
without saying that it is a bit undignified.
But don’t we hear
enough stories where the shining confidence of God with us in our daily lives
speaks to those who look on – the Christians in modern day Palestine who have
nothing, celebrating the birth of Christ and shining their light into the
darkness surrounding them, the approach to the unappetising stranger made
possible in the enduring love of God beside us, the people in this congregation
whose faith illuminates them and us, the peace that surrounds us when we stop
and give thanks for God in our lives, the moments of inexpressible joy that
come to us in the laughter of a child, the beauty of creation, the neighbourly
act, the gifting of grace to each other.
God is good and God’s love surrounds us.
Yet it is a bumpy
ride – we walk with the procession, shouting our hosannas but, within,
trepidation walks with us, unertainty is present, the wee beastie probably is
around the corner. Jesus entered the
city knowing what was to come, that even within the glorious certainty of God
with him there were moments of despair,
of reluctance – he never could have done what he did on his own, without his
Father alongside. And our procession
today – even when we are certain of the presence of God, even when we feel
cherished and sing out God’s grace in our lives, what intrudes on our
procession? And do we even know where
our walk is taking us.
Some of you will
remember the White Paper that the Moderator Andrew Norton released last year –
and now we have the responses published and some further thinking laid out
about our choices of direction and being the effective missional church of
Jesus Christ in Aotearoa. And there are
some hard messages in there, some directions that will strip us of complacency
and encourage radical ways (also known as the ways of Jesus) of being
church. Yet it is in that direction that
we must be shouting our hosannas, for if we continue as a muted, voiceless,
divided, spiritless, inward looking community of faith we are denying the power
and goodness of God to work through us and in us no matter where we
process.
Remember those
words from the psalm:
The steadfast love
of the Lord never ceases…
This is the day,
this is the day that the Lord has made…
Blessed is the one
who comes in the name of the Lord..
The stone that the
builders rejected has become the cornerstone….
This is the Lord’s
doing, it is marvellous in our eyes…..
I would like to
finish with a poem by RevMarty Stewart, a Presbyterian Minister in Christchurch.
A Palm Sunday Prayer
[Using the John O’Donohue poem Fluent]
[Using the John O’Donohue poem Fluent]
'I would love to live like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise of its own unfolding '
Carried by the surprise of its own unfolding '
This Palm Sunday remembrance suggests such a flow
– an ease – feeling good, all going well,
heads lifted to the shining sun and arms waving in the gentle breeze,
with you O God, at the centre,
and a vibrant path of possibilities unfolding before us.
– an ease – feeling good, all going well,
heads lifted to the shining sun and arms waving in the gentle breeze,
with you O God, at the centre,
and a vibrant path of possibilities unfolding before us.
But the thud of the real world comes upon us.
Not, so far (thank God), a cross, or a tomb,
But our feet do trip on stones, we bump up against hidden obstacles.
The skies fill with threatening clouds.
And the reality of what limits us revives our fears.
Not, so far (thank God), a cross, or a tomb,
But our feet do trip on stones, we bump up against hidden obstacles.
The skies fill with threatening clouds.
And the reality of what limits us revives our fears.
We long for a Hosanna but
often we are left with a lament.
We look to Jesus.
Free. Resilient against the grumpy looks
of those who cannot see for looking, cannot see that even the stones cry out in praise.
Free. Resilient against the grumpy looks
of those who cannot see for looking, cannot see that even the stones cry out in praise.
We look to Jesus.
Alive. Breathing the air, celebrating living.
Able to rejoice in the gift of the day upon him despite the clouds on the horizon.
We long for a Hosanna and are invited into one.
The hosanna of all creation shouting: “This is the day that the Lord has made!”
Alive. Breathing the air, celebrating living.
Able to rejoice in the gift of the day upon him despite the clouds on the horizon.
We long for a Hosanna and are invited into one.
The hosanna of all creation shouting: “This is the day that the Lord has made!”
The Hosanna that invites us to live ‘…like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.’
Therefore, this day, and every day, despite the clouds
because your light has come, O God, and invited us into its freedom,
we join in the song of all creation – Hosanna, Hosanna in the Highest! Amen.
because your light has come, O God, and invited us into its freedom,
we join in the song of all creation – Hosanna, Hosanna in the Highest! Amen.
Margaret Garland.
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