This sermon was orginally preached March 2018 at St Barnabas Northolt an Anglo Catholic and a revised version was preached April 2025 at St Christophers Hanwell, an inclusive evangelical church.
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Today we are here to bore you. That is what worship is all about. After all, that is what happened on the first Palm Sunday. As Jesus entered Jerusalem a few bored people managed a half hearted {sigh} “Hosanna to the Son of David”. A few more people who had been daydreaming woke up at that point and joined in with the second line “blessed is the coming kingdom…”
{change voice to an enthusiastic one}
Except that is not what happened!
‘Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
Dr Christian Schwarz in his very thorough research of what makes churches grow or decline identifies 8 Quality Characteristics we need to pursue. One of them is “Inspiring Worship”.(1) What’s the opposite of inspiring worship? Dull worship. Boring worship. Worship that makes you say [do in a slightly extreme voice] “please God will this be over”
That’s not what Worship is meant to be like. It’s not what Palm Sunday was like.
Worship is like sex. If you are only having sex because you love your partner and you know they are into it but really you just want to get it over with, then you are missing the point. It is meant to be fun. It’s the same with worship. If you are only doing worship because you love God and you know he’s into it but really you just want to get it over with, then you are missing the point. Worship is meant to be fun.
Worship flows throughout the Gospel narrative.
Our Lady hears that she is going to give birth to the Son of God, and what does Mary do? She bursts into song. “My soul proclaims the glory of the Lord, My spirit rejoices”.
Then the angels appear to the Shepherds and… burst into song. The wise men appear before the baby Jesus, kneel down and worship him.
Sometimes worship involves physical actions like the woman washing Jesus’s feet with her hair or the sharing of bread and wine at the last supper Sometimes it involves singing like Mary did. Often like on Palm Sunday it involves both. And it’s never half hearted. At least it wasn’t then.
But what about today
Fr Michael White, an American Priest describes going to worship while on holiday. He happens to be catholic but I think his description could apply as much to the Church of England or to any other denomination.
“At the door a grumpy usher grunted at me. Everyone else avoided eye contact and ignored me. ... the congregation exuded a huge “us versus them” culture… a hundred little details (the devotional prayers insiders prayed before mass that the rest of us didn’t know or the weird way that they passed the offertory basket) underscored for me that as a visitor I did not belong.
There was no opening hymn because the organist had not shown up on time. The organ was in the sancturary so you could see she wasn’t there and you could also see when our luck ran out and she did show up. (during the [sermon]). When the music came it was old school stuff that everybody knows and nobody likes. Nobody sang or even pretended to try….
The lector read the readings in a way that convinced me he had never laid eyes on them before. The celebrant was not the pastor, but some other priest who did not bother to introduce himself. He sort of assumed we knew who he was, but it didn’t matter. Who he was or what he had to say seemed deeply irrelevant to the assembly….
He began “Your pastor loves you so he told me not to talk for more than five minutes”. The fellow in front of me replied in only a half whisper “If he really loved us, he would tell you to shut up”...
{he issued pledge cards for the mission he worked for.} Instructions for filling out the cards took up the rest of the sermon. It turned out to be twice the length promised.. Here’s the thing. Virtually no one paid any attention. They stared at the ceiling. They stared at the floor. They talked to one another. The glanced at the card. They dropped it on the floor, but they paid no attention and as far as I could see no one actually made a pledge.
...Then we powered through the rest of mass as if the building was on fire. When I returned to my seat from communion almost the entire section I was seated in was gone. Finally the remaining faithful were inundated with a string of announcements which were actually (unbelievably) more fundraising appeals, this time for the parish itself.
At the dismissal, instead of some charge to “go in peace and serve the Lord”, the celebrant says “Don’t forget, at the beach it’s always happy hour”...
Why would I want my dechurched family to ...witness this…? The last place I would want to reintroduce them to worship was this half empty church for a half hearted exercise in fundraising and a full miss when it comes to what the Christian Community is meant to be about.
Meanwhile, just down the street at Uncle Andy’s Pancake house, enthusiastic crowds formed a waiting line that snaked around the block. Hmm… Uncle Andy’s got pancakes. We have got the living Word of God. What is wrong with this Picture” (2)
Contrast that with Palm Sunday where the crowds are so exuberant, singing and shouting their hosanna’s and waving palm branches around.
In Luke’s account when the Pharisees said to him “teacher tell your disciples to stop!” He answered “I tell you if these were silent the stones would shout out”
In Matthew’s account “when the chief priests and scribes …. Heard the children crying out “Hosanna to the son of David” they became angry and said to him “do you hear what the yare saying?” Jesus said to them. “Yes. Have you never read “out of the mouths of infants and nursing babes you have prepared perfect praise for yourself.”
This is exuberant stuff. According to the 16th century Westminster Catechism, “the chief end of man is to worship God and enjoy him forever”. We are “wired for worship”. It’s what we were made for.
And yet all of us, myself included, we don’t sing as loudly as we could or should. I can think of at least 5 reasons why that might be so. Which one applies to you?
Perhaps it’s because we are afraid of looking silly. We British people are very easily embarrassed. Whenever I have been to Africa – Sierra Leone, Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique the Christians who met me at the airport burst into song to thank God for our safe arrival. They don’t care who else is there are the airport they just burst into song.
Then there is the service on a Sunday. Structure-wise the service in say Mozambique isn’t that different to a service in the Church of England. Except that it goes on for three hours and nobody even notices because they are so engaged. They have all four readings – Old Testament, Psalm, Epistle and Gospel – well first the youth choir got up to sing then the Mothers Union choir, then a song that everyone joined in with. Some of these are the same hymns we sing here, some local ones, but all to an African beat with swaying, clapping and dancing.
Or take a Church in South Africa – where they shared the peace and sang as they all shared it with everybody. Then they sang again as they danced up out of the pews to put their collection in a box in front of the altar, then there was another song as the bed and wine were brought up to the altar and the altar got ready. And these were not all starting from the front. If the singing ran out and stuff was still going on, anyone in the congregation would just start a hymn and everyone would join in.
When I was in South Africa for three months, my daughter went to a local primary school. I went along to one school assembly there to give a talk – and during the assembly the teacher would just turn and go “Lundiwe – you start a song” – a little 8 year old girl would do just that – and all the other kids would join in enthusiastically.
Just like on that first Palm Sunday – the crowds picking up their palm branches and waving them, adults and children alike chanting and singing Hosanna
(Burst into song – “Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna to the king of kings….)
Wouldn’t it have been wonderful to be there?
And then the pharisees – muttering – and demanding of Jesus “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”
Oh the Pharisees: sadly we British can be far too like the pharisees - , not wanting to make a scene or look foolish, reluctant to sing too loudly just in case anyone notices - that’s pride.
And Pride is a sin. The crowd in Luke’s Gospel have no such problem. The children in Matthew’s Gospel have no such problem .“out of the mouths of infants and nursing babes you have prepared perfect praise for yourself.”
Now perhaps ..
Perhaps it’s because we don’t know the songs well enough. I used to find in my old church that there were certain songs like Faithful One that we all knew so well that it was easier to get people to sing them loudly. I don’t know what your local anthems are – when I was an intern, my vicar told me – “Your first and last hymn, make sure you always begin and end with a tub thumper!” If someone new comes to this church, how many weeks will they have to come back for before they hear a song they have heard before? When I was running a church plant, we had quite a lot of songs in our mass, and I used to make sure that we had at least one song that we sang last week, and at least one that we sang the week before, so that if a new person came back they would recognise at least one new song. how many weeks will a newcomer have to come back here for before they hear a song they have heard before?
Two often churches are divided into one of two camps – your stereotypical traditional church has hymns that perfectly match the bible readings and season of the year. You have been singing these for years. But because you only sing each hymn basically once a year, no body remembers them
In contrast your stereotypical contemporary church always has new songs – but because there are so many new songs – there is never time to learn them.
Seasonal hymns are good! New Songs are good! But we also need repetition. The people on the road knew to burst into “”Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna to the King of Kings!” And boy did they sing it loudly
There’s another side to it though. The more frequently each of us comes to church, the better we will know the songs, the louder we will sing and the more we will get out of worship
So perhaps it’s because we don’t know the songs well enough
Or Perhaps it is because we are worried about singing out of tune. This is certainly one for me because I can’t sing to save my life. When I was child there was a man called Mr Gray who used to sing the hymns very loudly and very out of tune. That made me not not want to sing because I was worried I would be the same. But later on I realised the problem was not Mr Gray. You see God is tone deaf. God can only hear the heart. And if you can hear Mr Gray singing too loudly out of tune, there’s a reason for that - it’s because you are not singing loudly enough yourself.
So perhaps it’s because we don’t know the songs well enough
Or Perhaps it is because we are worried about what others will think of us
Or perhaps it’s because we haven’t yet grasped the gift. When the ex-Prostitute washes Jesus’s feet and dries them with her hair, other more respectable guests are scandalised because they had not grasped how amazing forgiveness is. In our Passion Gospel we heard the full horror of how Jesus laid down his life. He did that for you and he would have done that if you were the only person in the world.
Perhaps it is because we are sitting too far apart from each other. Church of Scotland priest John Bell describes many churches as like “The Body of Christ with Acne - a spot here, a spot there”. This is shocking news for us Anglicans, but it is much easier to sing louder when you are sitting close together.
I don’t care how you worship vibrantly. I don’t care if the songs you sing at the top of your voice are 16th century hymns or 21st century worship songs. [act the following bits out] I don’t care if you wave your arms in the air or cross yourself, if you genuflect or dance and clap. – But like Mary with her Magnificat - worshiping vibrantly is vital. It is what God made us for. “The chief end of Man is to worship God and Enjoy him forever”
But - there’s another lesson of Palm Sunday. It’s not enough. It’s no good being like the Pharisees who refuse to join in. But it’s also no good being like some of the crowds who on Palm Sunday cry “Hosanna” and five days later cry “crucify”.
One Sunday morning King Louis XIV of France, who held the throne in the 17th century, went to church with his attendants. When they arrived they discovered they were the only ones present. He looked at the court preacher, Francois Fenelon, and asked, “What does this mean?” Fenelon replied, "I had published that you would not come to church today, in order that your Majesty might see who serves God in truth and who simply wants to flatter the king." (3)
As we will hear on Good Friday - “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart you will not despise” Psalm 51:17. We need to sing at the top of our voice, but even more importantly we need to sing from the bottom of our hearts.
We began lent with a cross of ash on our forehead. We end lent with a cross of palm which we wave in the sky. But most of all we need that cross engraved on our hearts. Amen? [let congregation respond Amen!]
(1) Natural Church Development Handbook – Dr Christian Schwartz
(2) Michael White, Rebuilt, Ave Maria Press 2013 p89-90
(3) From a sermon on this site by Russ Adams
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