Mark 11:1-11

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this: ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’ ”

They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They told them what Jesus had said, and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,

“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!”

Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple, and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Sermon Text

 When we gather together on Sundays, what do we tend to call our meeting? Two terms come to mind – we gather for “Service,” and we gather for “Worship.” The two terms are related, but how do we make that connection and why? What about our gathering is a service and how are we ever able to define “worship?”

The first is easier than the others. We are not, as my initial thought when I started looking at these words, calling what we do “Service,” in the sense of us helping God. That would be a strange way to talk about Sunday mornings. Service, it turns out, does not actually mean “help,” not in its literal meaning at least, though we use it that way all the time. If we trace it back to origin of the work in French and by extension Latin, then the focus moves from just helping to a more wide-reaching action. To serve is to make oneself available, to pay homage, to give oneself over to work for someone. Servitum, from which we derive the word service is also the root of “servitude,” after all.

To make the statement that we are gathering for “service,” means that we gather here on a Sunday to offer ourselves up to God. We offer ourselves up to follow what God is asking us to go into the world and do. We offer ourselves up to receive what God is offering to give to us. We offer ourselves up and empty ourselves of anything but what God would have us do and be and receive. We offer ourselves up in worship and that is why we call it, “Service.”

Worship then is the word we still have to define. What does worship mean? I’ll open that up to you all, what does it mean to worship God? All of these are aspects of what we are getting toward with worship. In English, “Worship,” comes from an older word which essentially means “to give what is owed to what is worthy.”[1] Specifically this came to mean giving something to a god that fit the status of that god in the giver’s heart. So, on this level “worship,” means to give something to God, simple enough right?

Not apparently. The concept of giving something to God is complicated enough that the Church developed two different words to describe how people give honor to something. These terms were “latria,” and “dulia.” Latria is what we give when we honor great people, lifting up heroes or saints that we celebrate for the example they give us to follow. Dulia was meant only for God though, a special kind of honor. The gifts we bring to God, whatever they may be, are therefore meant to be different and more significant than that kind we give to anything else in our life. “Worship,” then, is something special we offer up to God. Something that can be captures in presence, in prayer, singing, and in the work and resources we offer to our neighbors.

I think there’s a simpler way to understand “worship,” though, and that is with a bit of an antiquated word, “adoration.” Adoration is another word that comes out of ancient terms for worship, but it conveys something that connects more clearly to our modern understandings of language. When we hear old hymns and prayers that describe Christ as, “Our most Adorable Lord, Jesus,” it may seem weird, but I want to give you a direct examples of why that language still works. Babies. If you bring a baby into the room, people immediately and often involuntarily react. “Aww!” “How cute!” “Wow so much hair!” All kinds of reactions just happen. While this is an example of “latria,” in the old way of naming these things, I think it shows us something about how Palm Sunday happened the way it did so many centuries ago.

Today is a day that the Church celebrates “worship,” in its purest sense. When we see something come and offer ourselves up  to God, when we give God all that we can in a way we can only give to God. There was a natural outpouring in response to Jesus entering the city and it was not like anything Jerusalem had seen for years and years. People were ripping their clothes off and throwing them in the roads, tearing down trees so they could shake them and throw them on the ground as they sang. They screamed out “Hosannah!” A word we do not fully understand the meaning of today, but seems to be a deep, heart felt cry meaning something like “Save us!”

In worship we are often waiting for something to inspire us to react this way. However, the only thing that can really bring us to that place, authentically, is God. Music is nice, prayers written well are nice, but it is only an authentic meeting with God that causes us to cry out “Hallelujah!” and “Amen!” When God shows up, we react, and that can take so many forms. Hands in the air! Tears streaming down our face! Or, most frightening and powerful, a sudden impulse to give everything we have to all that God would have us do.  There are wonders at work in God’s creation and when God shows up, I pray that we can cry out like the crowd did by the gates of Jerusalem long ago.

We have Palm Sprigs in hand, we have the songs of our faith resting in our mouth, now we need to let ourselves embrace the Spirit when it comes. In Bible Study recently we saw two ways that God meets with people – spontaneously and suddenly – but also whenever God’s people called on God’s name, God appeared. We have to trust that God shows up when we gather, trust that God is at work on every day that we wake up and say “Yes!” to what God is doing. We have to be willing to see what God is up to and celebrate when the divine crosses our path. Open your eyes, open your ears! Salvation is coming! Hallelujah! Hosannah! Amen!

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[1] Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/worship,