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Prelude

Call To Worship
Leader: The conquering hero rides triumphantly into the defeated city.
People: He has come to plunder and dominate.
Leader: Justice and mercy have no place in his plans.
People: Righteousness and peace are not in his vocabulary.
Leader: Jesus, our conquering Hero, is different.
People: He enters the city on a humble animal, bringing Good News to those estranged from God.
Leader: Jesus embodies God's love, justice, mercy, righteousness, and peace.
People: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

Hymn

"Hosanna, Loud Hosanna"

Opening Prayer

O God, recalling at this moment Jesus' ride into Jerusalem, we would join the adoring crowd and be among those who proclaim his Lordship. In this service, let our praise of Jesus be sincere and heartfelt, not simply part of a crowd dynamic, but an offering from our individual open and receptive spirits. In his name we pray. Amen.

Praise

"Surely The Presence Of The Lord Is In This Place"

Heading Toward The Cross

Matthew 21:1-11

Choir Anthem

Hymn

"Come, Let Us Use The Grace Divine"

Presenting Our Offerings

Offertory

Doxology

Scripture

Philippians 2:5-11

Choir Anthem

Morning Prayer

Holy Source of all that is good and just and righteous, we sense the mood changing. The scripture we just heard speaks not of victory parades and cheering crowds, but of slavery, emptying, obedience even to the point of carrying a cross, even to the point of being carried on a cross. The excitement of Palm Sunday gives way to the darkness of Gethsemane and Golgotha.

We know such dramatic shifts in our own lives, too, O God. We have seen how a single piece of personal news can trump the joy of life and push us into the depths of despair.

O God, who through Jesus has gone from Palm Sunday to Good Friday, but who has defeated death and despair in the process, be with us in all of the ups and downs of our lives.

Receive our praise, in the name of the One who suffered and died and rose again. Amen.

Sermon

Why I Am An Optimist

Hymn

"When I Survey The Wondrous Cross"

Benediction

Postlude



Why I Am An Optimist

Philippians 2:5-11


I want to say something this morning about my own relationship with Christianity, and that is that being a Christian has made me a long-range optimist. What I mean by that is that whatever agonies and hard times our world may go through, how ever much life may be viewed as a struggle between good and evil, in the end, God wins. In addition -- and this is important -- those who are faithful to God in this life stand with the Victor at the end. Whatever pains and losses we may experience in our lives, they never have the final word. God does.

We can call this view "long-range optimism," and we affirm today that it is a primary theme underlying all Christian theology and preaching.

But let me go a step further. For much of life, some short-range optimism is warranted as well. That which we call Christian joy means that faith in Christ adds a dimension of hope and uplift to our lives that is not obliterated even when we experience major problems or catastrophes. It is something larger than the circumstances of life.

I actually try to reflect this optimism in the way I conduct our worship services. I believe that most of the time, when we gather for worship, confidence in our God should result in a spirit of enthusiasm, of hope, and of uplift. That's why friendliness, humor, up-tempo hymns, and personal testimonies of faith are always welcome in our services. When we pray for the sick and the suffering and the grieving, we do so not in a mood of "Oh, ain't it awful," but of "Thank you, because whatever happens to us, O Lord, our lives are in your hands."

Having said all of that, however, as Christians, we still have to deal with Holy Week, the seven-day period that begins today. Holy Week starts with Palm Sunday, the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and was greeted with wild enthusiasm by the crowd. Although the mood of the people was upbeat and the atmosphere was like that of a parade, you and I know that there was a dark undertone to the day. Though the people didn't realize it, Jesus did, and he understood that the celebration was actually the prelude to an execution.

We also know that before the week was over, one of Jesus' closest companions would betray him, another would deny even knowing him, and the rest would run away in terror. Jesus would undergo an arrest, an illegal trial on trumped-up charges, a flogging, and a crucifixion. By the time the week ended, Jesus was lying stone-cold dead in a burial cave.

That's Holy Week, my friends, and by itself, it leaves little room for optimism of any sort.

We are holding a Good Friday service later this week, which I believe will be full of meaning and will be good for us spiritually, but don't expect to leave it with toes a-tappin' and a bounce in your step. Good Friday is really Black Friday, and the observance of it is meant to remind us that Jesus really did go to the awful depths of terror, pain, loneliness, and death in being faithful to his Father's will -- so low, that at one point on the cross, he cried out, "My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?"

We also know that the new week starts with an altogether different situation. On Easter Sunday, optimism is abundantly justified. The resurrection of Jesus is the great reversal where we regain that confidence that death loses and God wins.

But before we get there, we have to deal with Holy Week. And we should, because sooner or later, in our own lives, we have to go through dark valleys that are more like Holy Week than Easter. We could even say that the eight days starting on Palm Sunday and ending on Easter are a microcosm of life itself. We start out on the upbeat note of a new, unsoiled life, a precious baby, but as we grow, eventually we have to pass through some experiences that wound us, that pull us down, that leave us depleted. Sometimes the only thing that keeps us going is the long-range optimism that no matter how bad things get here, they do not have the last word, and that the Easter world awaits for the faithful at the end of this existence.

So in the church, while we are looking forward to Easter next Sunday, we cannot skip over Holy Week. While we usually come to church to get spiritually filled up, Holy Week has the reverse effect. Instead of filling us, the scriptures about the suffering and death of Jesus tend to deflate us. We may come to church wanting assurance of the power of God, but what we find in the Holy Week stories is that Jesus is one from whom all power is taken. He cries from the cross that God has abandoned him, and then, instead of his spirit being strengthened, it is surrendered.

In the scripture reading from Philippians today, Paul tells us to let the same mind be in us that was in Jesus when, though he was in the form of God, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, and became obedient to the point of death. In using these words, Paul is quoting a hymn then in use in the first-century Christian community. It shows us that this understanding of Christ emptying himself did not arise as theology lacquered onto the story of Jesus at some later date. Rather, right from early after the birth of the church, Christians sang a hymn that acknowledged that Jesus poured out his life for others.

In this passage from Philippians, Paul goes on to talk about the subsequent exaltation of Christ, that which we celebrate on Easter, but before he will let us get there, he first tells us that, like Jesus, we must allow ourselves to be emptied.

This makes little sense to us. For years, our mothers hounded us not to skip meals and not to burn the candle at both ends, to get enough sleep. It wasn't good for us to get down, to try to putt along on empty, they told us. And in the normal course of things, they were right.

But there are some times when we need to stop filling ourselves, and to allow our reserves and all that keeps us going to be drawn out and used up. We need to empty ourselves, not of what is worthless, but of what is the most valuable within us. That, our scripture tells us, is what Jesus did, not exploiting the best within him -- his equality with God -- but giving it up and allowing himself to be vulnerable to the forces arrayed against him.

Maybe that is why fasting has been part of the observance of Lent for some people. The physical emptiness of the stomach is a way to remind ourselves that to be filled by God, we need to make room for him.

Have you ever thought about why it is that the only time we hear much about missionaries is either when the church is soliciting funds to support them or when they have been kidnapped or murdered by rebel forces in the countries where they have been serving? In other words, it is only when we are reminded either how dependent they are upon the support of others or when their vulnerability makes them pawns in the hands of wicked men that our attention is drawn to them. That's because they have chosen a path that takes them out of the limelight, out of places of prestige, into places of risk and obscurity. They have emptied themselves, choosing to be obedient rather than recognized. They have followed a call downward, away from the comforts of American life, and toward humble service. They have accepted that they have to run with very little in their tanks.

Holy Week also reminds us that there are times when to love our family members or friends, we have to run on empty; we have to give the best of ourselves, even when we feel that we have nothing left to give, so that we can help them or meet their needs.

There is no doubt that running on empty is risky business. A few years ago, while I was employed in a business office, there was a woman who worked in the mailroom for a while. Like the rest of us, she participated in the 401k-pension plan our employer had arranged. Like the rest of us, too, she benefited from the contributions that our employer made to the plan to match a percentage of our personal contributions. She really liked her job there and the company was pleased with her work, but one day she resigned. Her son, a young man in his early twenties who lived in another part of the country, had gotten into some serious legal trouble, and his mother felt that she was going to need to relocate to be near him to help him out. Because she would need some money to do this, she decided to cash in her 401k plan. I recall our general manager talking to her seriously to make sure she understood the financial implications of doing that. First, because she had not been at the company enough years to be fully vested in the plan, she would lose most of the matching contributions that the company had placed in her account. Second, she would have to pay tax in the current year on the money that she withdrew, and third, she would have to pay a substantial penalty for withdrawing the money before she was at the retirement age.

She understood all of that, she said. But she needed whatever money she could get to help her son, and she saw no alternative. So she withdraw the funds, leaving herself with nothing. She emptied herself -- made herself impoverished -- to save her son.

And that is what Jesus did. In not running away from the agony of Holy Week, in not turning away even from the cross, he emptied himself to save the rest of us.

If we look at the crucifixion from the perspective of Easter, of course, we can see that God did not abandon Jesus at all. At the moment Jesus yielded up his life, he felt totally separated from God. He cried, "Why have you forsaken me?" But the feeling was just that, a feeling. It did not reflect reality. God was powerfully present, opening himself to the whole world through the death of his Son. In those hellish hours of desolation, God in Jesus let the impact of the world's sin, hatred, pain, loss, and grief fall upon him. Jesus' emptying himself opened the way for us to be filled with the presence of God.

So we'd best not skip Holy Week. In our moments of fear, darkness, abandonment, pain, even when, like Jesus on the cross, we feel God is far away, he is not. We can risk emptiness because we know that somehow that emptiness becomes a channel through which God can work. We can risk emptiness because Jesus did, and we know that God's fullness is the reward.

That's why I'm an optimist.