大象传媒

MUSIC - Track: Loftus Jones / Performer: Robin Williamson / Album: The Iron Stone /Composer: Traditional arranged Robin Williamson et al / Label: ECM Records

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PHILIP

Good morning and welcome to Sunday Worship. My name鈥檚 Philip Blackledge and I鈥檓 the Rector of a church here in the Scottish borders, in the wee town of Melrose. Melrose has a lot of history to it 鈥� the hills I鈥檓 climbing up right now were known to the Romans as Trimontium 鈥� the three mountains. They were called the 鈥渉ollow hills鈥� by Thomas the Rymer, an ancient poet who legend had it was whisked away by the fairy queen to live inside the hill for years.

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But we know them as the Eildons. They tower above the town, and when you鈥檙e up here, on 听top of the highest of the trinity of hills, you get an incredible vista of the world around you.

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You get the feeling in a place like this that there鈥檚 something eternal about the world below you, but in fact the whole of the land around me is marked by centuries of time. Round the other side of the hill here, is an ancient stone Broch, part of a Bronze Age Settlement. Down by the field there next to the railway viaduct is an old Roman fort, now long gone but even now in dry spells the land shows the shadows of the remaining walls and buildings in the dry earth. And in the town of Melrose, my home, is the Ancient Abbey, built in the eleventh century, now a splendid gothic looking ruin.

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Right up here, at the top of the hill, is a cairn. You see a lot of them in Scotland and elsewhere. It鈥檚 just a collection of rocks and stones really, there鈥檚 nothing formal about it. But cairns go back a long way into prehistory, people have marked places with cairns. Sometimes burial sites, sometimes waymarkers, sometimes 鈥� well who knows, maybe it鈥檚 just nice to add a stone to a pile that other people have started, feeling a sort of connexion with people from long ago.

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About a year ago, I took a wedding here, right next to this cairn. It was a beautiful, sacred time. Those hills 鈥� they said more than any preacher could about God and about love. And the wedding itself felt like a cairn does, a sort of sacred marker in time 鈥� a high point in the lives of the couple, and their families and friends.

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As our minds turn to the coronation, we celebrate those marker points in our lives, and explore one of the strangest and most mysterious gifts that God gives us 鈥� the gift of time.

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MUSIC 鈥� Track: O Bone Jesu / Performers: The Sixteen directed by Harry Christophers / Album: Robert Carver / Composer: Robert Carver / Label: Coro

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Our prayers are led by Claire Nicholson, a member of the clergy with me at Holy Trinity Scottish Episcopal Church in Melrose.

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CLAIRE

May I rise in the morning with the knowledge of God at my first breath.

May my work and my words show the love of God to all who see me.

May my joys be shared; may my sorrows be offered up.

May the end of my day be a contentment of a life lived in the presence of the Lord.

May I sleep and rest my head in the knowledge that the light of Christ is still upon me.

May God me my shield, my comfort, my challenge and my inspiration, this and all days.

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God to enfold me, to surround me
God in my speaking, in my thinking.

God in my sleeping, my waking, my watching, my hoping.

God in my life, my lips, my soul, my heart.

God in time and in eternity. Amen.

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PHILIP颅颅

In the bible people are always going up mountains as a way of widening the lens, seeing the bigger picture. But it wasn鈥檛 just the world they were seeing 鈥� there is a very important relationship with time in those stories too. The Greek word which describes wilderness, eremos, implies a place not just outside civilization, but out of time too, a place with no marker points, no seasons, no measuring of time. It鈥檚 an unsettling feeling, because from the beginning of the book of Genesis, the presence of God has been with us, and has been marked by time.

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Time is an extraordinary thing. Sometimes it sits heavy on our hands, sometimes can鈥檛 find enough of it. Sometimes it feels like a straight line stretching infinitely into the distance, sometimes, it feels cyclical, like the changing of the seasons. In a place like Melrose, all those markers of the church鈥檚 year, Christmas, Easter, Michaelmas and St Andrewstide, come with memories of the colours and smells of those seasons.

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MUSIC 鈥� Track: All My Days (Beautiful Saviour) / Performers: St Michael鈥檚 Singers directed by Paul Leddington Wright / Album: The Hymn Makers 鈥� Stuart Townend (How Deep the Father鈥檚 Love) / Composer: Stuart Townend / Label: Integrity Music

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PHILIP

Those marker points in our lives that we celebrate can have mixed emotions for us. They can be joyful, golden times which we treasure, but they can also make us wistful and melancholic for those things which have gone from us, lost forever in the onrush of time. In this reading from the book of Ezra, we hear that even the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem was a cause of both great joy, and sorrow for what has gone.

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READER 鈥� OLLIE: EZRA 3:1, 12- end

By the seventh month, the Israelites had settled in their towns, and the people assembled as one in Jerusalem. Then Jeshua son of Jozadak and his fellow priests, began to build the Altar of the God of Israel.

When the builders had laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their
apparel with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their
positions to praise the Lord, as David king of Israel had prescribed. And they sang
responsively with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord:

鈥淔or He is good; for His loving devotion to Israel endures forever.鈥�

Then all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord had been laid.

But many of the older priests, Levites, and family heads who had seen the first temple wept loudly when they saw the foundation of this temple. Still, many others shouted joyfully. The people could not distinguish the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the
people were making so much noise. And the sound was heard from afar.

MUSIC 鈥� Track: Sanctus / Performers: /
Album: / Composer: / Label: Naxos Sweden 鈥� Proprius Records

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The sounds of weeping and the shouts of joy mixed into one. Such joyous events are often accompanied by the knowledge of time passing, and a certain poignancy of what has gone from us. Ollie Drake, who read that reading from Ezra, is a member of my congregation at Holy Trinity and a singer in our choir. He has some particular memories of the coronation of our late Queen Elizabeth, which was a huge event in the life of Britain at the time, and for him it also brings memories of his father.

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INTERVIEW WITH OLLIE DRAKE about his father, New Zealander Bryan Drake, who sang at The Late Queen鈥檚 Coronation.

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MUSIC 鈥� Track: All Is Fulfilled (Es ist Vollbracht!) from St John Passion / Performers:
/ Album: / Composer: JS Bach / Label: Regis Records

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PHILIP

Even in the happiest and most joyous of times, we remember those who have gone. Every wedding I have taken tends to have a point where we remember those we wish were there to celebrate with us, but are lost to us by time.

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However much we look back, time moves on. 听Time like an ever rolling stream ticks by.听 Time is a roller coaster we can't get off, and if we lose something, or someone, it can feel as though they are whipped out of our hand, lost into the past and try as we might, we can鈥檛 hold on to them.

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I remember the first time I lost someone dear to me. I had lost grandparents as a child of course, and that's very, very sad and difficult, but there鈥檚 a normality to that. But the first real loss I remember was when I was at University and a friend of mine, my own age, took his own life.

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And I remember being told, gently, by someone and immediately feeling as though someone had just unpicked a thread from my life, a thread that belonged to me, and someone had just taken it away and there was a hollow part of me instead of where that person was supposed to be. And as people tried to tidy up my grief with single sentences, I resented that, and I resented time, racing off with me in it while they were lost in its wake like a speedboat racing away from a drowning man.

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And that was nearly thirty years ago now, and there will always be days when I feel like that. And just like the Israelites at the building of the new Temple, it is, often at the most joyous times, weddings and coronations and big moments, that I remember those who have gone, because I wish I could share those moments with them. 听It's important, because they still matter to me.

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And when the future feels an anxious place, as it often does, and memories of happier times and beloved people are in the past, it can make us feel melancholic.

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That is how time is for us, in this Universe, in this part of God's creation. But that is not how it is for God. We live in a small part of a vast Universe. And what we experience is not everything that is.

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MUSIC 鈥� Track: Spem in alium / Performers: Taverner Choir directed by Andrew Parrott / Album: Tallis: Latin Church Music / Composer: Thomas Tallis / Label: EMI Records

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READER 鈥� 惭础滨搁脡础顿:听 ECCLESIASTES 3: 1-15

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For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time for war, and a time for peace.

What gain has the worker from his toil?

I have seen the business that God has given to the children of earth to be busy with.

God has made everything beautiful in its time; also God has put eternity into the human mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.

I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live;

I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it;

That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

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PHILIP

I spoke with Professor Mair茅ad Nic Craith, an ethnologist at the University of the Highlands and Islands, who read our reading from Ecclesiastes for us, about the attitude towards time in the past.

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INTERVIEW WITH 惭础滨搁脡础顿 NIC CRAITH

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MUSIC - Track: Loftus Jones / Performer: Robin Williamson / Album: The Iron Stone /Composer: Traditional arranged Robin Williamson et al / Label: ECM Records

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PHILIP

I鈥檓 walking in the grounds of the Abbey at Melrose, built nearly a thousand years ago. My church stands on High Cross avenue, so named after the great cross which was erected as a waymarker, a cairn, pointing the pilgrims on their way to the Abbey. But the cross is long gone and the abbey now in ruins.

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MUSIC - Track: Holy Water Blessing: Vidi Aquam / Performer: The Monks of Pluscarden Abbey / Album: The Liturgy of Easter (Remastered) /Composer: Gregorian Chant / Label: Ffin Records

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PHILIP

And yet, when I walk along this river when the mists are down, the glimpses I see of the Abbey can feel so present, so real, that in my mind I can hear an echo of their song from the Abbey chapel.

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The monks in this place of course knew about time 鈥� they were dependent on it 鈥� knowing when to plant the seed and when to tend the branches. They marked the days in prayer binding themselves to God at every opportunity. They knew their seasons and their sacred days. And every day, they sought to put themselves in touch with eternity.

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St Augustine, who lived seventeen centuries ago, and one of the pillars of Christian theology, believed that God was omniscient. All knowing, all seeing. For Augustine, time was not a linear thing to God. He said that God lived in the eternal present, where eternity was a single moment, and where one moment was the whole of eternity. It's a dizzying concept to us, but for God, all things are now.

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And what that tells me, mysterious and confusing as it is, is that nothing is lost to time, not for God. No-one is snatched out of our hands. It can sometimes feel as though, when people die and memories recede, that threads are taken out of the tapestry of our lives, that we are left hollow and bare. But those threads of our lives are not missing, that's how we experience it for now, but we experience only a shadow of the true life.

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Nothing is lost, nothing is snatched out of our hands for ever. Because God, for whom all things are now, holds us in the palm of his hand.

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When I walk these paths around the Eildon hills, I wonder how many feet have walked them, from the neolithic people who set up their brochs, to the monks gathering the brambles and wild raspberries near their abbey. And I hear the birdsong, and up here away from the noise and the haste of the towns and roads, that birdsong can sometimes be almost deafening.

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And I wonder, if it鈥檚 the same birdsong that the monks were listening to a thousand years ago when they set up their monastery, and the same birdsong the Romans heard when they first camped here, or the neolithic people up in their brochs. And that sound still belongs to us, just like it belonged to them, still present, still of the moment, as well as being as ancient as the hills themselves.

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And when I sit by the cairn on top of the Eildons, I remember the cairns in my own life 鈥� the golden moments, sacred and joyous times, with beautiful and beloved people. And somehow when I鈥檓 up here there is less melancholy in my remembrance. Perhaps because from this perspective, I鈥檓 watching those things - but with God nearer to me than I sometimes allow him to be when I鈥檓 in the thick of a busy life.

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Philip relates story of conducting a funeral during the pandemic when singing was not permitted.

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When I see the world through God鈥檚 eyes, the world changes. Those ancient Brochs, a bare stone circle now, the old abbey, ravaged by time and conflict; the field where once lay a vast Roman army, and the town that I know and love, which will one day be like those older things 鈥� when I see them through God鈥檚 eyes, I can almost hear the words behind the birdsong - 鈥渂ehold, I make all things new鈥�.

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MUSIC - Track: Instrumental Piece 1 (Based on Hildegard's "O viridissima virga") /
Performers: Sequentia, Barbara Thornton / Album: /Composer: Hildegard von Bingen / Label: Deutsche Harmonia Mundi

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PRAYERS: CLAIRE, OLLIE AND 惭础滨搁脡础顿

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Lift us up O Lord, into the pure serene light of your presence, that there we may breathe freely, there we may be at rest, shining with your love, safe in your arms. May we hear a strain of the angels song. May we feel the measure of eternity. May we be filled with your grace, that when we return to ourselves, we may be able to do and to bear whatever is your will, and walk the paths you set before us, until our journeys鈥� end.

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In our days of celebration and days of joy, we give thanks for those who have shaped us, loved us and nurtured us in our lives. Those who are beloved of us and beloved of God, whose memories we treasure. Though lost from us to time, may we have faith that they are never lost to God, who holds all things in life.

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We remember in our compassion those whose lives are lived in anxiety and fear; those for whom the future is a darkness and whose present lives is marked by oppression, violence, anger and despair. We remember those for whom the past is difficult, and those histories of trauma shape their days. God of love, we thank you for the gift of compassion which causes us to feel the pain of those who struggle. May we be inspired to do all we can in the service of those whose lives are more difficult than our own, that we may show your presence among them in deed and in word.

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Thanks be to God for the marking of our days with the dawn and the dusk.

Thanks be to God for the changing of the seasons and the turning of the earth.

Thanks be to God for the circling of the earth around the sun, and the slow dance of the stars in the heavens.

Thanks be to God for the gifts of time; time for forgiving, for healing, for celebrating, for weaving ourselves into the lives of those we love.

Thanks be to God for the taste of eternity that we find in prayer, in silence, in music, in creation.

Thanks be to God for the breath in our bodies, the life in our veins, the ascent of the soul, the love of neighbour, the grace of God.

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PHILIP -听 BLESSING

Now may Christ and his saints stand with us, before us and behind us. May we listen to the prophets, learn from the scholars, weep with the mourners, dance with the joyous, rest with the weary, and shine with the light of the sun; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, be with you and those for whom you pray, now and always. Amen.听

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MUSIC - Track: Hymn 鈥� How Shall I Sing That Majesty (Tune: Coe Fen /
Performers: Huddersfield Choral Society directed by Joseph Cullen / Album: The Hymns Album / Label: Signum Records

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