Palm Sunday 2020

Let us pray.

Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation upon those mighty acts whereby you have given us life and immortality through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

When Jesus and his disciples had come near Jerusalem and had re had reached Bethage at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied and a colt with her.

Untie them and bring them to me.

If anyone says anything to you, just say, The Lord needs them, and he will send them immediately.

This took place to fulfill what had been spoken to the prophets, saying, Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them.

They brought the donkey and the colt and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them.

A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, Hosanna to the Son of David, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Hosanna in the highest heaven.

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, Who is this?

The crowds were saying, This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is right to praise you, Almighty God, for the acts of love for which you have redeemed us through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

On this day he entered the holy city of Jerusalem in triumph, and was proclaimed as King of Kings by those who spread their garments and branches of palm along his way.

Let these palm branches which we hold be signs for us of his victory, and grant that we who bear them in his name may ever hail him as our king and follow him in the way that leads to eternal life, who lives and reigns in glory with you and the Holy Spirit, now and forever.

Amen.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.

Let us go forth in peace in the name of Christ.

Amen.

Let us pray.

Almighty and ever living God, and your tender love for the human race, you sent your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, to take upon 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 through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

A reading from the book of Isaiah.

Morning by morning awaken.

Awaken by ear.

Let's put that together.

Let them confront me.

It is the Lord God who helps me.

Who will declare me guilty?

The Lord is the Lord.

A reading from Philippians says, let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

To the glory of God the Father.

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

This is the one day in the church year where we get to hear consistently what is arguably the oldest part of our New Testament.

And it comes not from the book of Matthew, but rather from the book of Philippians.

Nick's reading today is thought to be a hymn that Paul included, a hymn that goes back to the earliest days of the Christian movement.

And as with years prior, I would like to invite us to consider emptying ourselves as we approach Holy Week so that we might make this week truly extraordinary.

This word self-emptying is one of those sort of magical biblical words like agape love.

The word is kenosis, and it means to voluntarily to choose to pour your life out for someone else to make room within yourself for them.

And so the story goes like this.

I used to be a summer missionary in Alaska, and I've been back two or three times to live with my family.

I was placed there over 10 weeks with a guy who is sort of like Grizzly Adams.

When everybody went out and was skunked in the river, he had two or three fish behind him, so he taught me how to fish.

And I will tell you still, one of my thin places in life is catching a 75-pound King Alaskan salmon at three in the morning and watching my lure hit it in the mouth and then holding it there with that very light, dusky, uh, dusky light there for about 35 minutes watching it.

It was a thin moment, and reflecting upon the lifestyle of the salmon is something that I invite you to do with me as we consider Holy Week.

So, salmon are born in really small ponds.

The water quality is pretty crystal clear there, and an adult salmon lays something like 300,000 eggs.

The eggs, in about three months, they're all on the bottom of these gravelly ponds and lakes.

They're very small.

They grow into something that are called aloeven within about three months.

And it's sort of like a swimming eyeball.

The alovin spend some time getting a little bit larger, getting bigger.

They turn into fry.

Ten weeks later, they turn into par, and after several months, they are about the size of your hand.

One day an urge comes over them and they become a smalt when that urge that possesses them causes them to hop into the glacial-fed waters that go ultimately all the way to the ocean.

And so these fish swim with mighty currents behind them into the bay, and this is where they have to make an extremely big transition, going from freshwater to salt water.

Many of them go, in fact, belly up, gasping for air.

And as they do, they're easy prey for birds and other fish.

Of the 300,000 eggs, about 26 will make it, um, will survive that transition into the bay.

From there, they enter these enormous currents in the ocean that take all of the fish in Alaska and swim them by all of the fish that run to Japan.

Um, so in the next two or three years, each one of these 26 salmon that survives will swim something like 25,000 miles.

One day, maybe they're four years old now, five years old.

The same urge that came over them to leave their freshwater homes and travel to the brackish water of the ocean comes back in reverse.

But now the salmon have to swim, of course, upstream.

They will not make the transition from salt water to freshwater.

They cover themselves with slime and they stop eating.

Now they're swimming up waterfalls, literally hopping up waterfalls.

Bears are trying to eat them.

Fishermen are trying to catch them.

The slime is their only protection, and as the freshwater removes the slime, as they bump against logs and one another, and the slime comes off, the freshwater starts to become like poison for them.

And so all of the fat in their body starts to travel outward, and the beautiful stream-like fish turns, starts to undergo a physical, biological change.

Their skin goes from beautiful silvery white and blue to fire engine red.

Their head turns a rotting color of green.

Their jaws grow extended and grow teeth that are needle sharp and sometimes more than two inches long.

They grow a giant hump on their back.

They're alive but just barely.

They're sort of like the living dead, rotting from the inside out.

They swim against the currents and once carried them.

When they arrive into the exact same lake in which they were born, and this is still a scientific mystery because some of these rivers only differ in mineral content by one or two parts per billion.

Scientists are not sure how they can sniff them out.

When they arrive to the exact same pool in which they were spawned, three of them of 300,000 on average make it back.

They lay their eggs and they die.

Now, what on earth do fish have to do with Jesus?

And for our experience of Holy Week, I want to remind you that Jesus was born in an incredibly small pond.

He grew up in the village of Nazareth, and maybe there were a hundred people living there at the time.

He was, like a small eye, nourished and nurtured by the currents of Judaism.

They taught him how he should swim, how he should celebrate the Sabbath, how he should pray.

He entered into the world, perhaps like his father Joseph, and learned to become a carpenter or a day laborer.

One day, in his adulthood, something overcame him in the middle.

He heard John the Baptist say something about repentance and God's kingdom being close by, and Jesus started to swim against the same currents that raised him.

He started to say things like, Hey, you've heard it said that humans were made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath was made for human beings.

You've heard it said that you cannot work on the Sabbath, but if your animal is hurt, you'll help it.

So why would you not help or heal a human being on the Sabbath?

Jesus began to do things like touch women and lepers and dead people, all of which was forbidden by the currents that had carried him down to his adulthood.

He went against them and gave those people new life and dignity and respect.

And this week especially, this is the week in which people were trying to catch Jesus.

The bears of the Roman Empire, if you will.

He was swimming against a huge flood of cultural expectations.

The scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees were trying to angle him and catch him in his words so that they could be done with him, so that he could not spread his message and hope and God's understanding any further.

Of course, when we get to Friday, very few of Jesus' followers make it with him.

When we get to Sunday, even it's a small group, not of 300,000, but maybe 20 people that hear what Jesus has to say, hear and experience the resurrection, and start to embark on their own swim against the currents of their lives, the currents that drag people down quickly.

One thing that Jesus does that is truly supernatural is that he does not change his colors.

So I want to tell you that the salmon, I think, reveal to me what is in our biology and our DNA and our natural tendencies.

When we resist things that are not right, that take dignity from others, when we dare to brave against the currents, usually we find ourselves extremely exhausted.

I know in my own life I tend to grow a self-righteous hump on my back.

I start to grow really sharp teeth.

I change my colors.

I start to think things like, how dare you use a word like that?

What's wrong with you?

Are you racist or sexist or have you no understanding of who I am or what those mean?

I have I start to think, how can you get in my way when I'm trying to do the right thing?

Just get out of the way.

I start to snap and I change.

And what's interesting is Jesus does not.

The fish have become so used to breathing and swimming in brackish water that when they come into life-giving water, they're choked by it.

Jesus, on the other hand, is renewed by it, and so we hear Jesus say on Friday, Father, forgive them.

They do not know what they're doing.

Jesus resists what is so natural for many of us.

He does not change his colors, he does not strike out.

His care is for even those who are oppressing him at the end of his life.

He has emptied himself.

He has not lost his identity.

He hasn't lost his hope or his love.

But what he's done is stayed true to the fresh water that God intended for him throughout his life and not been choked by it.

He's found ways to embrace forgiveness, especially when it's difficult.

The uphill swim did not take life away from him.

During that swim, he shared his life with us in ways that are so meaningful we return year after year to this holy week.

So I invite you to join Jesus this week.

And to consider ways in which you might empty yourself, not losing your identity.

No.

But ways in which the values that are so near and dear to your heart might lead their way out.

That the humps of exhaustion and fear and anxiety that all of us are experiencing right now might just get a little bit smaller in God's freshwater plan.

Ways in which we might empty ourselves enough to make room for somebody else this holy week.

Maybe there's a new practice for you to do this week that will help you self-empty as Jesus did.

Maybe you've got too many practices and you just need to make room for silence.

I don't know.

But as we're unable to gather, I pray that this setback for each and every one of us will not take our life, but rather we'll make ways in the middle of these circumstances to share our life with somebody else, to make room for someone else, to find Sabbath moments, especially when it's difficult.

Prayers for a holy week.

Please join me as we pray our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only child of God, eternally begotten of the Father.

God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made human.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures, he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and God's kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son, she has worshiped and glorified.

She has spoken to the prophets.

We believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Amen.

Generous God.

We thank you for your power to create discomfort and wrestling within us.

We ask that you disturb us so that we may be stretched to serve you and our neighbors better.

When we are too pleased with ourselves.

We ask that you push back the horizons of our hopes and to push us forward with the strength and courage, hope, and love.

So that while we are in healthy being being steadfast in prayer for the healing of others.

I invite your petitions and celebrations silently or allowed.

May we not only pray for the sick among us but also give them the gift of personal contact and visits.

Disturb us, Lord, until we see others as you see them.

Until peace becomes as precious to us as air.

Until we love as you love.

Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

Compassionate God, forgive us.

Though you would guide us, we inform ourselves.

Though you would shepherd us, we control ourselves.

Though you would fulfill us, we console ourselves.

For we think your truth too high, your will too hard, your power too remote, your love too free.

But they are not.

And without them we are of all people most miserable.

Heal our confused mind with your word.

Heal our divided will with your law.

Heal our troubled conscience with your love.

Heal our anxious hearts with your presence.

All for the sake of your Son who loved us and gave himself for us.

Amen.

Almighty God have mercy on you.

Forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Strengthen you in all goodness.

And by the power of the Holy Spirit, keep you in eternal life.

Amen.

The peace of the Lord be always with you and with thy spirit.

Well, we certainly are all trying to figure out how to make this week holy.

And so there are three opportunities to walk the stations of the cross through the ark we have in our sanctuary and through some of the coloring posters that our children and adults worked on.

They're not completely finished because we didn't have the time.

But there are three different stations of the cross.

You're also invited on our YouTube channel to visit Daily Reflections for our children's chapel on what happened that day and how we might live into it in Jesus' last week.

This is going to be a real enigma how we handle Maundy, Thursday, and Good Friday.

So we're working on it.

And we're trying to stay connected via Zoom meetings.

So if you need any help, please reach out to me and we'll get on to Zoom.

Expect that instead of foot washing this year, we might do hand washing for somebody that we love in the confines of our home and then have a reflection upon the Eucharist and the stripping of the Lord's table here at St.

Thomas on Thursday night.

Some people are used to keeping a vigil over the reserved sacrament, and I just ask that if that feeds your spirituality, you consider keeping a prayer vigil at home over the real presence of Christ in your heart.

A few people have asked about how they can continue their giving, and thank you for your generosity and kindness here.

Our office is still open because there's only three of us, and we observe social distancing very carefully.

So drop offs in our mailbox, mail-ins, or through our website are all extremely helpful as we continue to navigate this time of not being near us.

There is an opportunity, I think, as many of us have asked, how are we going to do the Easter vigil or Easter and not be a church?

And I think the answer is that we might be looking for a very new and real way to experience the resurrected Lord this year.

And I am confident that God is able to provide that for us.

Right after this, you're going to hear the Passion Reading.

Since 1976, we've included the full Passion Reading on Palm Sunday to send us into Holy Week, not to skip the week, but to set the tone for the context that is to follow.

And Kathy Hollowell has been so kind as to read that for us.

So I hope you will find this service helpful.

I hope that you're being nourished in your heart and in your spirit.

And it's wonderful to know that groups like the Mercy Tree are still using our facilities on Sunday to feed homeless men and women in the Clear Lake area.

They have dispensation from the governor to do this.

But we uh just on April the 4th, just yesterday, uh, also had a mobile food distribution, and there'll be more updates about that available.

But um, these are wonderful ministries that the church is still involving and investing in with your care and support.

So this week, walk in love as Christ first loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.

Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, Are you the King of the Jews?

Jesus said, You say so.

But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he did not answer.

Then Pilate said to him, Do you not hear how many accusations they make against you?

But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed.

Now at the festival, the governor was accustomed to release a prisoner for the crowd, anyone whom they wanted.

At that time they had a notorious prisoner called Jesus Barabbas.

So after they had gathered, Pilate said to them, Whom do you want me to release for you?

Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?

For he realized that it was out of jealousy that they had handed him over.

While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him.

Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed.

The governor again said to them, Which of the two do you want me to release for you?

And they said, Barabbas.

Pilate said to them, Then what should I do with Jesus, who is called the Messiah?

All of them said, Let him be crucified.

Then he asked, Why?

What evil has he done?

But they shouted all the more, Let him be crucified.

So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this man's blood.

See to it yourselves.

Then the people as a whole answered, His blood be on us and on our children.

So he released Barabbas for them, and after clogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters, and they gathered the whole cohort around him.

They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head.

They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! They spat upon him and took the reed and struck him on the head.

After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him.

Then they led him away to crucify him.

As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon.

They compelled this man to carry his cross.

And when they came to a place called Gargotha, which means place of a skull, they offered him wine to drink mixed with gar.

But when he tasted it, he would not drink it.

And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots.

Then they sat down there and kept watch over him.

Over his head they put the charge against him, which read, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.

Then two bandits were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left.

Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself.

If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.

In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking him and saying, He saved others, he cannot save himself.

He is the king of Israel.

Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.

He trusts in God, let God deliver him now.

If he wants to, for he said, I am God's son.

The bandits who were crucified with him also taunted him in the same way.

From noon on dust came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.

And about three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eli, Eli, Lima Sabachan Pani, that is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, This man is calling for Elijah.

At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink.

But others said, Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come and save him.

Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, the earth shook, and the rocks were split.

The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.

After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.

Now, when the centurion and those with him who were keeping watch over Jesus saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified.

And they said, Truly, this man was God's son.