Sunday March 24, 2024 Worship Service
Livestream at 11:10 a.m

GATHERING IN GOD’S NAME

PRELUDE — Allegro from Concerto in D Major — Georg Philipp Telemann
As the prelude begins, you are invited to begin your personal preparation for worship.

SILENT MEDITATION   
On Palm Sunday, Christians celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem, the week before his death and resurrection.  Palm Sunday begins Holy Week, a time in the church year when we remember how Christ gave his life in love for the world. As this service opens, the crowd waves palm branches, wanting to crown Jesus as king. But as the story of the passion unfolds this week, their shouts of praise turn to demands for his crucifixion; he receives a crown of thorns as he is handed over to be mocked and killed.

 CHORAL CALL TO WORSHIP — Ride Through Jerusalem Michael Bedford

CALL TO WORSHIP
With crowds from ancient times we cry,
       Hosanna! Save us!
O give thanks to the Lord, for God is good!
       God’s steadfast love endures forever.
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
       We bless you in the house of the Lord!
Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he,
       Humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Let us worship the living God!

PRAISE AND ADORATION

*OPENING HYMN #197 — Hosanna, Loud Hosanna  — ELLACOMBE
(*Please stand, if you are able.)
Palm Processional with children

CALL TO CONFESSION

PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Merciful God, as we enter this Holy Week of Lent, gathered at your house of prayer, we turn our hearts toward Jerusalem. We want to walk the way with Jesus, to be present each step from the Mount of Olives to the cross to the empty tomb. And yet we fall away. Forgive our stubborn resistance to Christ’s work and witness. Inspire us by your Spirit to follow in his way, until we enter with him into the city not made by human hands, the new Jerusalem, eternal in the heavens. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

SILENT PRAYERS OF CONFESSION

KYRIE ELEISON (#417) — Lord Jesus, Think on Me — SOUTHWELL                                             

ASSURANCE OF PARDON

*HYMN — Ride On, Ride On in Majesty — WAREHAM; Arr. Howard Helvey
(All)                Ride on, ride on in majesty!  Hear all the tribes hosanna cry;
 O savior meek, pursue your road with palms and scattered garments strowed.

(Men) Ride on, ride on in majesty!  In lowly pomp ride on to die.
O Christ, your triumphs now begin o’er captive death and conquered sin.

(Women) Ride on, ride on in majesty!  The host of angels in the sky
look down with sad and wond’ring eyes to see the approaching sacrifice.

(All) Ride on, ride on in majesty!  Your last and fiercest strife is nigh.
The Father on his sapphire throne awaits his own anointed Son.

(All) Ride on, ride on in majesty! In lowly pomp ride on to die.
Bow your meek head to mortal pain, then take, O Christ, your power and reign.

*WELCOME             
During the welcome, children are invited to come forward for a time with Dr. Zieman

TIME FOR YOUNG DISCIPLES

OLD TESTAMENT READING                Psalm 118: 1-2, 19-29   page 492 of the pew Bible

ANNOUNCEMENTS

FELLOWSHIP OF PRAYER

JOYS AND CONCERNS

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.                           

ANTHEM — And Can It Be? — Dan Forrest

PROCLAMATION OF GOD’S WORD

 SCRIPTURE READING — Mark 11: 1-11 page 823 of the pew Bible  
The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God!

SERMON— “Not Today“ — Dr. Zieman
Jesus’s Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem

*AFFIRMATION OF FAITH — The Confession of 1967
The life, death, resurrection, and promised coming of Jesus Christ has set the pattern for the church’s mission. His human life involves the church in the common life of all people. His service to men and women commits the church to work for every form of human well-being. His suffering makes the church sensitive to all human suffering so that it sees the face of Christ in the faces of persons in every kind of need. His crucifixion discloses to the church God’s judgment on the inhumanity that marks human relations, and the awful consequences of the church’s own complicity in injustice. In the power of the risen Christ and the hope of his coming, the church sees the promise of God’s renewal of human life in society and of God’s victory over all wrong.

*SANCTUS — Holy, holy, holy!  Lord God Almighty!  — NICAEA
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!

RECEPTION OF TITHES AND OFFERINGS

OFFERTORY — Meditation — Geoffrey Robbins

*DOXOLOGY (#711) — Lord of All Good — TOULON

*PRAYER OF DEDICATION
As the crowds cried, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” we are truly grateful for the greatest gift of all, Jesus Christ our Lord. Receive these gifts as a symbol of the dedication of our very selves to you, O God. Use our gifts and use us as a part of the inbreaking of your kingdom, which comes and is still coming into our world today. Amen.

*HYMN OF DEDICATION #209 — My Song Is Love Unknown — LOVE UNKNOWN
 Arr. Benjamin M. Culli

(All)              My song is love unknown, my Savior’s love to me,
love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be.
Oh, who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die?

(Women) He came from heaven’s throne salvation to bestow;
the world that was his own would not its Savior know.
But O my Friend, my Friend indeed, who at my need his life did spend!

(Men)      Sometimes we strew his way and his sweet praises sing;
resounding all the day hosannas to our King.
Then “Crucify!” is all our breath, and for his death we thirst and cry.

(Choir only) Unheeding, we will have our dear Lord made away,
a murderer we save, the prince of life we slay.
Yet cheerful he to suff’ring goes, that he his foes from thence might free.

(All) Here might I stay and sing, no story so divine!
Never was love, dear King, never was grief like thine.
This is my Friend, in whose sweet praise I all my days could gladly spend!

*CHARGE AND BENEDICTION

POSTLUDE — Hymns of the Cross — arr. Philip Keveren