Sunday 5th AprilPalm Sunday |
Message from The Rector
And so we arrive at the most important week of the church year, Holy Week, and we trace Jesus’s journey to the cross, and beyond. I am sure that you share with me the sadness of not being able to worship together in church. There are alternatives but, of course, they are not the same – we all know that. I do hope, though, that if you have access to the internet you have been able to share some of the resources that I mentioned last week. There is daily worship online from either Bishop Martin’s house or our cathedral. This week we are going to try something a little more local too. I have managed to stitch together some gadgetry and, all being well, should be able to stream some services from The Vicarage.
The first will be on Sunday morning (Palm Sunday) at 10.30am. It will be a service based on the traditional Palm Sunday service though without Holy Communion. If you would like to dig out a palm cross from a previous year it will come in useful. Then from Monday to Thursday next week there will be a service at 6pm. Each day we will send out an email with an Order of Service and the relevant readings which you will be able to use (please do contact Claire if you wish to opt out of daily emails during Holy Week).
On Monday-Wednesday the service will follow the pattern of Night Prayer (Compline) followed by a short meditation. On Thursday, reflecting what we would usually be doing in church, I will celebrate Holy Communion for Maundy Thursday and then, in some token way, ‘strip the altar’. On Good Friday there will be a short service at 12 noon and, again, we will send out some suitable material to help with solemn meditation. Then, on Easter morning, … well, watch this space! Something celebratory will happen and it may be somewhat weather-dependent! Let’s see.
So, where do you find these services? I have set up a channel on YouTube in the name of the Alde Sandlings Benefice and you can go straight to it with this link.
Each day from Sunday onwards, at the appropriate time, a live link will appear which, if you click on it, will join you to The Vicarage. It is all somewhat experimental and I would very much appreciate your feedback.
The rest of this document contains the readings for Palm Sunday (which I will use on Sunday morning) and a typically thoughtful reflection from Nicky. I do hope that you find time to be able to be with us in prayer in some way or other. Wherever we are, whatever our individual circumstances there is one thing that we can be sure of – that God is with us, always and forever.
Mark
Collect
Almighty and everlasting God, who in your tender love towards the human race sent your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ to take upon him our flesh and to suffer death upon the cross: grant that we may follow the example of his patience and humility, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Post Communion
Lord Jesus Christ, you humbled yourself in taking the form of a servant, and in obedience died on the cross for our salvation: give us the mind to follow you and to proclaim you as Lord and King, to the glory of God the Father.
First Reading
Isaiah 50:4-9a
The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens—wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.
The Lord God helps me; therefore, I have not been disgraced; therefore, I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?
Second Reading
Philippians 2.5-11
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Gospel
Matthew 21:1-11
When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The 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!”
When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”
Reflection by Revd Nichola Winter
Like so many this year I shall miss singing the wonderful Palm Sunday hymns we are so used to. ‘Ride on, ride on in majesty…’; ‘All glory laud and honour to thee, Redeemer King…’ and others. I’m going to miss being part of the crowd that walks along Aldeburgh High Street with the stark wooden cross on Good Friday. And I’m going to miss the excited crowd gathering on the beach at dawn in Thorpeness to celebrate Easter Day and our risen Saviour.
Crowds are often such a feature of our everyday life. Crowded streets, shopping centres, beaches. Football matches, crowds at concerts, theatres and cinemas. We’re used to being surrounded by people. But that has all changed for the time being. Even smaller groups and gatherings are no longer allowed.
Imagine how it might have been in the time of Jesus without the crowds. No cheering, no waving of palms. No joyful sounds of song and acclamation. How significant was that clamorous gathering as Jesus arrived in Jerusalem?
Jesus had engaged in a popular ministry marked by personal encounters with disciples and onlookers, trying to teach them what he was all about. Finally, the road to Jerusalem, into the glare of national, political, public debate and conflict. And danger.
Jerusalem was not a peaceful, prosperous city. It was a city with a history of repeated invasion and attack, in a country occupied by a mighty imperial power. A city full of rumours, threat, discontent. Like the poor of so many cities throughout history, the people of Jerusalem expected deliverance to come through military force – their own prophets had told the story of conquest often enough. But there was always the promise to keep hope alive in testing times – the promise of a Messiah, a deliverer. Many of them looked for a great leader, a warrior hero to save them. Some of them, as the rumours spread like wildfire through Jerusalem, thought that Jesus might be that leader. Clearly Jesus was aware of that – this was no attempt to slip quietly into the city without anyone noticing. The way he came, the time and manner of his coming, all of this referred back to the scriptural prophecy. Jesus came to Jerusalem – but he entered it in the humblest of fashions, riding on a donkey. There is little doubt that the crowds would see Jesus’ entry in the light of this prophecy. A donkey was not the customary mount for a warrior or a king. It was the mount of a civilian, a merchant, perhaps, or even a priest. Many of the prophets saw ‘the Messiah’ as the prince of peace – but now, see how he arrives…
This posed a real challenge. Jesus appears, making the most audacious and apparently blasphemous claim, trailing a vagabond army of followers from the north, into a holy city in an occupied territory of the greatest power on earth. It posed a challenge to the Pharisees, who did not want anything to upset the Romans, in case it might threaten their freedom to practise their religion. It posed a challenge to Herod, who was already very confused about what was going on. It posed a challenge to the military, who didn’t want their job of controlling a city – and a country – made any more difficult by yet another popular insurrection. And it posed a challenge – or at least, a question – to the ordinary people of Jerusalem. Jesus had asked, ‘This is who I say I am. Who do you say I am?’ The entry into Jerusalem was probably the most political act of Jesus’ life.
Yet, all of them, in their different ways, missed the point of this very public challenge. The Pharisees – scholars and theorists as they were – did not know how to respond to this man who refused to debate or argue with them. Jesus hardly spoke to them at all, in fact, but countered their intellect nit-picking and entanglement by doing things which, infuriatingly, were hard to argue with but left them feeling foolish and exposed. The military authorities knew how to put down armed uprisings, but they had no strategy to deal with someone who offered no violence to anyone – who discouraged his followers from using violence – and yet still posed a threat to public order.
And what about the people? They had crowded the streets of the city to welcome him; they wanted peace. They wanted an end to occupation; they wanted bread to feed their families; they wanted a better life – things that people always want. Of course, they were going to welcome him. But crowds are fickle… Crowds love a spectacle. A crowd will come out for celebrations and carnivals – it joins in with enthusiasm, is good- natured. It comes out equally for death, for funerals and wakes, when it will stand silently, or weep and pray. It will come out in solidarity, to make a point, to demonstrate a feeling. But a crowd can also turn angry, become threatening, turn nasty and do terrible things. What changed the mood of the crowd that had welcomed Jesus with such excitement and anticipation?
Was it when they realised that peace was not going to be an instant quick-fix? For Jesus, peace was not an outcome but a way – and a challenging way at that. Did the mood change when he challenged the crowd to make hard choices that went against conventional wisdom, that might even lead them into danger?
The crowd’s suspicions were well-founded. Jesus’ friends had already found themselves on the losing side. They’d given up their quiet lives. They’d let go their livelihoods, their family attachments – all the things that had made them who they were. They had to give up their prejudices and their preferences. Some of them had to give up their lives.
Jesus was the catalyst for change in that crowd in Jerusalem. We can perhaps think of crowds we have witnessed through news reports and TV coverage. The moods that rippled through Jerusalem have all been visible to us in some way or other – in city mobs, in the challenges they present. Palm Sunday is always happening somewhere in the world and we are always being confronted by the challenge of that different ‘way of being’; the way of peace that does not shrink from conflict but refuses violence; the way that does not theorise, but engages with the real needs of suffering people; the way that sees the people who are overlooked and not counted; the way of self-offering.
We cannot be part of the crowd right now. There is a sadness in this abrupt departure from the gathered worshipping community. Almost a sense of abandonment; certainly a loss of that sense of security and companionship that comes with our weekly worship. A signal of just how fragile society can be. Is now the time when we can find opportunities to draw closer to God – closer to the one ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’? A strange time to have it inflicted on us but as we walk with Jesus through Holy Week, let us pray for the courage to face these challenges.
O Christ, you entered the city as a poor man, not in style, but simply,
yet still you caused uproar, and questions everywhere;
you drew the expectations of a hungry crowd,
and brought buried conflicts to the light.
May we, who are sometimes swayed by the crowd’s approval,
and who often avoid conflict for fear of its cost to us,
hold fast to the gospel of peace and justice,
and follow faithfully in your way of compassion and solidarity
with those who are poor and excluded,
wherever it may lead us.
Amen. (Based on ‘Palm Sunday is always happening’, by Kathy Galloway
The Church of England is producing lots of good material and advice at present. This includes some excellent prayers for us all to use and I commend them to you:
https://www.churchofengland.org/
You can also join the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich weekly newsletter mailing list by visiting:
https://www.cofesuffolk.org/publications/e-news
The Week Ahead
Holy Week – Including Maundy Thursday and Good Friday |
Next Sunday – 12th April -Easter Day
A message from Canon John Giles –
Palm Sunday, a time when we are normally all together.
It is unthinkable that we cannot be together in church for Palm Sunday. But there it is. We all know why things are as they are. These hymns may help.
All Glory, Laud and Honour (60 in the red books): We had uncanny echoes of that first Palm Sunday on Thursday last at 8pm when people gathered at their windows to applaud and cheer on the NHS doctors and nurses and other staff who are exposed to such danger in these dark days at home “. .to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring”. Here again were children’s voices mixed with older voices cheering. There was a note of celebration, for here were human beings at their best. And all those years ago there was the teacher from Galilee entering Jerusalem, bringing a message of hope to the people of the city.
We find the same hope in Christ’s message today.
Our second hymn to recall is “Ride on, ride on in majesty” (61) – a grand and noble hymn which brings to the cheering celebration of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem a deeper note of impending tragedy tinged with the foretaste of an unlikely victory: “the winged squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice”, followed by “bow thy meek head to mortal pain – then take, O God thy power, and reign.” Yes. There is, and there was, a sacrifice.
The solemnity of the words and the music fits the sheer determination of Christ’s unwavering commitment to his faithful following of God’s will, and the cost of it. We know also there will be a victory of love the other side of the injustice, the cruelty, and the humiliation of Christ’s crucifixion
Our third hymn is truly astonishing: “My song is love unknown” (63) – astonishing as it sounds so contemporary – and yet it was written in the dark days of England’s civil war, looking back to similar times when . . “men made strange, and none the longed-for Christ would know. But O my Friend, my Friend indeed, who at my need his life did spend. . . 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.”
In the dark days through which we are passing we must support one another in a fellowship of the spirit, aided by three great hymns for Palm Sunday and Holy Week.
NOTICES
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