大象传媒

Rev Richard Frazer: 听Good morning and welcome. 听听What we can see from the Greyfriars Kirkyard where you join us is one of the most dramatic skylines in the country

Dr Alison Elliot:听 听Standing outside the Kirk here and looking out over the city, we can see, at the top of the hill, the castle, which is a military barracks, as well as a tourist attraction. A little further down, you see the spire of the old Highland Tolbooth Church, which is now the headquarters of the Edinburgh International Festival. Close by are the twin towers of New College, Edinburgh University鈥檚 School of Divinity, just beside the dome of the Bank of Scotland. Across the road, you find the crown of St Giles Cathedral, surrounded by the law courts and the City Chambers. At the foot of the hill lies the Scottish Parliament, looking across to the Royal Palace of Holyrood house.

搁颈肠丑补谤诲:听 听So, in a short space, you find the symbolic centres of various kinds of power in Scotland 鈥� military, cultural, intellectual, commercial, religious, legal, civic, political and state power. These are the powers that Jesus set out to engage with in Holy Week. And, on Palm Sunday, he set it all in motion as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Let鈥檚 go inside the Kirk now and worship God.

Hymn: Scottish Church Hymnary 4th Edition (CH4) 364 听All glory, laud and honour (Tune: St Theodulph)

Prayer of approach

Richard:听

Our prayers are led by members of Greyfriars鈥� ministry team, Martin Ritchie and Lezley Stewart.

Lezley:听 听Great God, we honour you, the creator.

The stars that trace their courses through the heavens are your handiwork.

You are the craftsman supreme and we praise you.

听

Martin:听 听Gracious Spirit, we honour you, the life giver.

We see and feel and touch and dream because you animate our souls.

You grant us awareness of you, of one another and the created order.

You are the author of our souls and we praise you.

听

Richard; 听Generous Christ, we honour you, the companion for our journey.

You are love at work in the wastelands we make.

At the start of this Holy Week, we remember your passion.

The love that goes to the Cross to begin the task of remaking a broken and blighted world.

You are love unbounded and we praise you.

听

And today, on Palm Sunday, we remember you, Lord Jesus, as you entered the great city.

听

Lezley:听 听Humble and riding on a donkey, we greet you;

acclaimed by crowds and carolled by children, we cheer you;

Moving from the peace of the countryside to the corridors of power, we salute you:

Christ our Lord

You are giving the beast of burden a new dignity;

You are giving majesty a new face;

You are giving those who long for redemption a new song to sing.

With them, with heart and voice, we sing Hosanna!

听

Hymn: CH4 651听 Holy, holy, holy (Sanctus and Benedictus, St Anne Mass 鈥� James Macmillan)

Martin: 听Reading: Mark 11: 1-11听

Let us hear the story of Palm Sunday as it is told in the Gospel according to St Mark.

Jesus鈥� Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem

11When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples 2and said to them, 鈥楪o 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. 3If anyone says to you, 鈥淲hy are you doing this?鈥� just say this, 鈥淭he Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.鈥� 鈥� 4They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, 5some of the bystanders said to them, 鈥榃hat are you doing, untying the colt?鈥� 6They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. 7Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. 8Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. 9Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
鈥楬辞蝉补苍苍补!
听听听Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
10听听听Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!鈥�

11听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.听

听

Anthem - Gesius:听 Hosanna to the Son of David

Alison:

An anthem by the German composer Bartholomaus Gesius, sung by the choir Cadenza who have joined us this morning.

The episode we heard from St Mark鈥檚 gospel is often referred to as the Triumphal Entry. Jesus certainly caused a stir that day, but it鈥檚 stretching things a bit to call his entry into Jerusalem triumphal. In the ancient world, they understood pomp and triumph and how to choreograph magnificent processions. If you visit the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, you can see a reconstruction of the Processional Way from Nebuchadnezzar鈥檚 Babylon. It stretched for half a mile and was edged with walls over 50 feet tall, adorned with over 120 sculptures of lions and flowers, set against enamelled yellow tiles. At the head of the Processional Way was the vast Ishtar Gate, decorated with sculptures of bulls, lions and dragons against vivid blue tiles, probably lapis lazuli, originally one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Just imagine the magnificence of the celebrations that took place there. Compared with this, a straggle of children, disciples, palm branches and a donkey hardly cuts it. So, what was going on? Let鈥檚 see if St Paul can shed some light on it.

Lezley:听 Reading: 1 Corinthians 2:1-12

From the first letter to the Corinthians at Chapter 2 verse 1, we read of Paul proclaiming Christ crucified.

2When I came to you, brothers and sisters,* I did not come proclaiming the mystery* of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. 2For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. 3And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. 4My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom,* but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

The True Wisdom of God

Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. 7But we speak God鈥檚 wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9But, as it is written,
鈥榃hat no eye has seen, nor ear听heard,
听听听nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him鈥欌��
10these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God鈥檚 except the Spirit of God. 12Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.

Hymn:听 CH4 269听 Eternal Ruler of the Ceaseless Round听 (Tune:听 Song 1)

听

Alison:听 Reflection

鈥淗osanna to the Son of David!鈥� they shouted, stripping off palm branches to wave and spreading their coats in front of Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem. He鈥檇 been attracting big crowds to his preaching in Galilee, and most recently he鈥檇 brought his friend Lazarus back to life so there was lots of interest in him. The excitement was palpable and even the children joined in the celebrations.

Something momentous was happening, and expectations of lasting change were high.

Mark paints Jesus as a reluctant celebrity. In the rest of the Gospel, he鈥檚 continually telling people not to spread the news about what he鈥檚 done. He鈥檚 tended to retreat from the crowds, escaping across the lake when they got too much for him. But this time it鈥檚 different. This was what his ministry had been building up to and Luke tells us that, knowing what was in store for him, Jesus steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem. To go to the centre of political, military and religious power and face up to them.听听听

Few of us will have had to tangle with the authorities at the level that Jesus did but we鈥檙e all at least bystanders to the passions of power, particularly in this election year when there are so many people in the limelight keen to achieve political office. But these kinds of passions play out just as much at a more local level, in the golf club, or the church, or the office. Wherever public decisions have to be made, power has an insidious capacity to draw you into a particular way of looking at the world, one dominated by rivalry, by dogma, by factions. 听

That was the problem that Paul was addressing in his letter to the church at Corinth. The church had splintered into several parties, each following its own leader, promoting its own version of the truth. Corinth was a prestigious city, with a commitment to rigorous argument, and the church there was asking Paul to adjudicate in their disagreements about the finer points of theology and practice. For Paul, this was no way for a Christian community to behave. They鈥檇 imported into the church ways of thinking that had been honed in the rest of the world that didn鈥檛 bear the mark of God鈥檚 wisdom. As Christians, they belonged to a new order of things, which ought to be marked by unity and mediated through the Spirit of God, not divided by tribal allegiances and by splitting intellectual hairs. They should behave accordingly.

That tension between the wisdom of the world and God鈥檚 wisdom is at the heart of Palm Sunday. Jesus didn鈥檛 face up to the Roman and religious authorities on their terms but on his. In riding into the city he was marking himself out from the rest of the crowd already, because the Passover was a foot festival, and people were expected to walk to Jerusalem for it. But his procession turned upside down the expectations people would have of a king coming to claim his kingdom. Seen from the point of view of those familiar with imperial processions, this was a joke. But from point of view of the message Jesus had been preaching, this was God鈥檚 wisdom in action. By choosing a donkey as his steed, he was endorsing a different meaning of kingship, one stripped of the trappings of power. His authority came from within, not from the extravagance of a Processional Way. He was giving a beast of burden the dignity of carrying a king. He was affirming the worth of his supporters, welcoming children, putting their humanity with all its messiness before the tidy discipline of a military escort. He was creating a new language for how power should be exercised and why.

鈥淚t鈥檒l never work!鈥� So often, that鈥檚 the reaction when you try to challenge the status quo, or try to come up with new ways of solving problems. Yet these same critics seldom ask whether the current way of doing things is 鈥渨orking. 听Admitting that the wisdom of the world isn鈥檛 as wise as we鈥檝e been led to believe is deeply unsettling, because it means we have to change our ways of thinking and the way we behave.

In our day, one of biggest gulfs between the way the world is and the way it should be is in relation to the environment. Some of you may be reading Desmond Tutu鈥檚 book, In God鈥檚 Hands. In it, he graphically describes seas that are dying, fish covered in cancerous sores, polar bears drowning and islands disappearing beneath the sea. This is where our exploitative approach to God鈥檚 creation has brought us. Time and again, the story is the same, one of thoughtlessness about the effect of our actions on other parts of creation.

Examples of these effects are all too numerous. Let me tell you about one that I鈥檝e been close to recently. Last month, my husband took part in an expedition to South Georgia, a large island in the South Atlantic, which is a haven for penguins, fur seals and many species of sea birds. It has a delicate ecology that鈥檚 being threatened by colonies of rats, introduced over the last three hundred years since Captain Cook discovered the island by ships hunting seals or whales, or by cruise ships. For a time the rats were isolated in certain parts of the island, but, now that the glaciers are melting, they can spread across the island, eating seabirds鈥� eggs and attacking their chicks and seriously diminishing the diversity of creation in that part of the world. In the drive to produce wealth and consumer goods for a European market, our predecessors hadn鈥檛 thought about their impact on this remote environment.听 They鈥檇 forgotten to treat God鈥檚 creation gently, with care. 听

Like so much else in Jesus鈥� ministry, the Palm Sunday procession left people bemused. For all the enthusiasm of the crowd, the religious authorities were not impressed. The procession ended in the temple, but there was no reception committee there to greet Jesus. Mark tells us that 鈥渨hen he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve鈥�.听 A bit of a damp squib. Yet, we know that ultimately this was no triumph for Jesus鈥� critics. God鈥檚 wisdom is not our wisdom. God鈥檚 power is not the same as our power writ large, as the disciples were to discover. On Easter morning, a new era truly began, ushering in an upside down world in which death does not have the final answer and in which the meek will inherit the earth.听听

Hymn: CH4 243 听Touch the earth lightly (Tune: Tenderness)

Prayers of Intercession

搁颈肠丑补谤诲:听 听And now our prayers; let us pray.

Lord Jesus Christ, we want to journey with you through this Holy Week:

to recall your humility, because it challenges times when we鈥檝e been self-important;

to recall your response to authority, because it gives us a Divine vision that wholly subverts our ideas of power;

to recall your refusal to take up arms, because our world is deeply scarred by anger and brutality: it is lost and looking for a better way;

to recall your deep tenderness, even in your suffering, because we find it hard to go on loving those who let us down.

We want to journey through Holy Week with you, because through your Passion and beyond the cross, a new hope begins to illuminate our world like the first glimmer of the dawn at the end of a dark night.

For this week, filled as it is with challenge, promise and alternative imagination, we give you thanks and ask you to help us to embrace more fully the meaning, mystery and message of your passion.

Anthem:听 Chilcott 鈥� God so loved the world

Lezley: 听Hear us now Lord Jesus, as we pray for those who are the innocent victims of violence, tyranny and prejudice.

Especially, we remember in our prayers all the people caught up in the German plane disaster this week. As the unimaginable horror of what unfolded sinks in, we grieve for families and communities bereft and ask that the strength of your deep compassion may be present amongst those now offering support.

For people everywhere who live in fear because of their faith, the colour of their skin or their sexual orientation, we pray. For innocent children caught up in the anger and barbarism of our times, left without nurture and safety.听 For those living with mental illness, facing prejudice and misunderstanding, and in need of healing support and love.听 For the displaced and the homeless throughout the world, Lord be present with your compassion and your cry for justice.

And we pray for the peace makers, the aid workers and diplomats, the peace keepers and all who risk their lives for the sake of hope.

Christ Jesus comes in lowliness and love and invites us to share in the ministry of hope and reconciliation:

Refrain: CH4 651听 Benedictus, St Anne Mass 鈥� James Macmillan

Martin:听 听Hear us now, Lord Jesus, as we offer to you our loved ones, people we know in any kind of danger, sorrow or sickness. Hear us as we remember gratefully those we have known and who have loved us, shaped us and sown the seeds of your kingdom in our hearts. May their love continue to sustain us and the example of their goodness inspire us. Give us the faith to trust that they are with you still, living God.

Richard: 听And hear us now as we dedicate ourselves to the cause of love and justice, peace and hope and the message of reconciliation for the world. We can feel defenceless under the night sky, our grasp of you can feel so frail, but you uphold us and chinks of light illuminate the horizon wherever people of hope show an affirming flame and ally themselves to the way of the Galilean, who comes in the name of the Lord.

Refrain: Benedictus 鈥� Macmillan

Richard leads:听 The Lord鈥檚 Prayer

Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,

your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours,
now and forever.
Amen

Hymn: CH4 365 Ride on, ride on in majesty听 (Tune: Winchester New)

搁颈肠丑补谤诲:听 Benediction

Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the gentle night to you.
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.
Deep peace of Christ,
of Christ the light of the world to you.
Deep peace of Christ to you.

All:听 Amen

Organ Voluntary:听 JS Bach BWV 736 听Valet will ich dir geben

Publisher: B盲renreiter

听听