April 5, 2020 Palm
Sunday Psalm 118.1-2, 19-29 *Matthew
21.1-11 “God is Good…All the Time”
Pastor Jacqueline Hines
==
Blessed Palm Sunday,
Bethel. Even this day of challenges is the day the Lord has made and we are finding
ways to rejoice in it! The Old Testament reading is from the 118th
Psalm. Verses 1 and 2 remind us to be grateful to our God who is so good to us.
Psalm 118
1 O give
thanks to the Lord, for God is good;
God’s mercy
endures forever.
2 Let Israel
now proclaim,
‘God’s
mercy endures forever.’
Our New Testament
lesson from the gospel of Matthew chapter 21 tells the day Jesus was on the way
to Jerusalem. They were remembering his legacy with the great King David, and they
were blessing God because God had blessed them. Listen to what the crowd was
saying in verses 8 through 11.
8A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others
cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9The 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!” 10When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil,
asking, “Who is this?” 11The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth
in Galilee.”
The title of this
message is “God is Good all the Time and all the Time, God is Good.”
One Sunday morning around
7 a.m. it was raining and I was praying that God would bless the people on
their way, bless the service, bless the attendance, bless the offering… and
suddenly, I sensed the still small voice of God gently interrupting my prayers saying,
“Bless me….bless me!”
I quickly realized that
all my worrying from one Sunday to the next about whether the Church would be
ok wasn’t as important as I thought. For, no matter what happens or does not
happen in life, God is good all the time and all the time, God is good.
Job had the correct
attitude when he said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the
name of the Lord. I have a mantra that I say to myself: Christians do well to
praise God every hour and repent every day. If our heart can find even one of
the hundreds of reasons we have to give God thanks every hour of every day,
then we are on the right track. Jesus
gave thanks before the loaves and fish were multiplied by the thousands; we can
ask ourselves “If we only had the blessings that we thanked God for, where
would we be? If the blessings we didn’t appreciate disappeared, would we feel
the sting of that wise saying, “We don’t miss the water until the well runs dry.”
To bless God is to
speak well of God rather than fill the heavens with our sour thoughts, angry
looks, bitter words, ungrateful attitudes, and indifferent prayers. To bless
God is to salute God honorably like a good soldier of the Lord. To bless God is
to kneel humbly and respectfully in our hearts until our lives follow. Blessing
God is what children of God do when the lessons of love finally begin to sink
in.
When our feet touch the
floor in the morning, it is a good time to give thanks to the Lord, for God is
good no matter how long the night has been. When we bring a bag of groceries
into the house, it is a good time to give thanks to the Lord, for God is good
all the time, even if the shelves were bare or your budget was limited.
If you find it silly or
nearly impossible to bless God, this holy week is a good time to talk to God
about what you are feeling. God may answer in a still small voice, or through a
conversation with a family member or friend, or a dream, or a light bulb moment
or insight that comes to your mind. God may have already answered you in the
scriptures or in a life’s lesson from your past. Don’t expect God to keep
repeating it! If we have made up our minds to ignore God’s will, we need not be
surprised when God is silent.
Psalm 92 tells us “It
is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, to sing praises to God’s name.” Why?
For God is good all the time…and all the time, God is good.
The Palm Sunday crowd
was blessed to know Jesus personally. They watched his holy life, they listened
to his powerful words, they reflected on his unforgettable teachings, they
received his healing miracles, they accepted his wise judgements. They took his
stinging rebukes seriously without rejecting him and becoming defensive which
is easy to do.
They began to adore
him, to salute him, to humbly bow down to him. Now they were in the street,
happy as clams, celebrating, waving palm branches, placing garments on the
ground, for they honored him so much they made sure he did not have to deal
with the dirt.
Palm Sunday is also our day to remember that Jesus
comes into our lives again and again. Regardless of our situation. Palm Sunday is
another day to bless God.
There are three reasons
we need to bless God now and forever. We need to bless God because blessing God
calms us. We need to bless God because blessing God is contagious. We need to
bless God because blessing God is Christ like.
We know how to pray and
ask God for what we need and what we know others need. But, when we turn away
from our own needs and wants long enough to bless the Lord, we go to a deeper
spiritual place. When we turn our face toward God instead of just our hands, we
are transformed. We grow to know how deeply loved we are, how precious we are,
how unique and special we are and how God’s loving-kindness is better than
anything life has to offer and that nothing can separate us from that love. It
will always be there for us.
When we say “thank you”
to God, we are letting go of our fears and interrupting our worries. We are
pausing and letting God still us until we know that God is God and we are not.
A peace and calm come over us when we express gratitude. Blessing God calms us.
We need to bless God
because blessing God is contagious. There are good things that we want everyone
to catch! Have you ever caught a yawn from someone sitting across the room
from you? Scientists tell us that yawns are contagious. Babies yawn in utero.
Even animals yawn for various reasons. Some yawn to show their sharp teeth and
keep the enemy away. Some are realigning their jaws after chomping on a large
prey. Some animals yawn in packs and herds in order to alert the others, to
signal their togetherness and focus on a way forward. It is speculated that
some humans have a yawning reflex for the same reason as some animals. We
demonstrate an alert that there is connection, unity, and empathy with family,
friends, or strangers – in that order.
We have become very conscious
of catching diseases and spreading germs. When we sneeze we may release up to a
100,000 contagious germs that can move up to 100 miles an hour. I like to think
that when we bless God, we spread sounds and seeds with over 100,000 good vibes
and potential into our lives and the lives of those around us. With the tiniest
words of adoration and gratitude, we can change our world fast. I don’t know
about you but I have never counted to 100,000 but I believe blessing God can
impact our lives in 100,000 ways. I have never driven in a car going 100 miles
per hour. (Perhaps some of you have…we can talk about that another day.) But, I
believe blessing God is powerful enough and fast enough to cause our relationship
with God and with one another to grow and deepen in phenomenal ways. That’s a
good reason to keep a gratitude journal – even if it stays in your head rather
than paper. Blessing God is contagious.
Finally, blessing God
is Christ like. Jesus often blessed God the father as almighty and maker of
heaven and earth. Jesus was king of kings but he acknowledged that even he had
a higher power. We see this when he taught the disciples to pray, and when he
prayed in John 17 that God would help those sharing the gospel to be united as
one, and as he prayed before he was arrested in the garden of Gethsemane, not
his will but the will of God to be done.
Blessing God is
calming, it is contagious, and it is Christ like. Let the church say, “Amen.”
Let us pray: Thank you Lord that you are still our deliverer, our healer and
our hope. Amen.
May God’s love become deep enough in our lives to
make us contagious
Christians today and always.
No comments:
Post a Comment