Welcome to our service - 28 March
This service sheet can be used individually or with households.
We would encourage you to say (or even sing) hymns and songs out loud.
Prayers, other liturgy or readings can be said out loud or silently, corporately or individually.
If you are able, we would also like invite you to join us for our main Sunday service, 10am, live on Zoom. Even if you have never been to St Gabriel’s before we would love you to join you. Please get in touch with the vicar Alistair (vicar@saintgs.co.uk) and he will send you the Zoom details.
Please join us for public worship in the church building this Sunday, 11:30am, for a service of Holy Communion.
Sisters and brothers in Christ, during Lent we have been preparing by works of love and self-sacrifice for the celebration of our Lord’s death and resurrection. Today we come together to begin this solemn celebration in union with the Church throughout the world. Christ enters his own city to complete his work as our Saviour, to suffer, to die, and to rise again. Let us go with him in faith and love, so that, united with him in his sufferings, we may share his risen life.
SAY:
Hosanna in the highest.
Hosanna to the Son of David, the King of Israel.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.
SONG: https://youtu.be/B_p7810nDx0
Hosanna, hosanna,
hosanna in the highest.
Hosanna, hosanna,
hosanna in the highest.
Lord, we lift up your name,
with hearts full of praise.
Be exalted, O Lord my God -
hosanna in the highest.
Glory, glory, glory to the king of kings.
Glory, glory, glory to the king of kings.
Lord, we lift up your name
with hearts full of praise.
Be exalted, O Lord my God -
glory to the king of kings.
Carl Tuttle (c) 1985 Mercy Publishing/Thankyou Mus
CONFESSION
Lord Jesus Christ,
we confess we have failed you as did your first disciples.
We ask for your mercy and your help.
When we take our ease
rather than watch with you:
Lord, forgive us.
Christ have mercy.
When we bestow a kiss of peace
yet nurse enmity in our hearts:
Lord, forgive us.
Christ have mercy.
When we strike at those who hurt us
rather than stretch out our hands to bless:
Lord, forgive us.
Christ have mercy.
When we deny that we know you
for fear of the world and its scorn:
Lord, forgive us.
Christ have mercy.
May the Father forgive us
by the death of his Son
and strengthen us
to live in the power of the Spirit
all our days. Amen.
COLLECT
True and humble king,
hailed by the crowd as Messiah:
grant us the faith to know you and love you,
that we may be found beside you
on the way of the cross,
which is the path of glory. Amen
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNWkKuj1Hq4
This is the day,
this is the day that the Lord has made,
that the Lord has made.
We will rejoice,
we will rejoice and be glad in it,
and be glad in it.
This is the day, that the Lord has made,
we will rejoice and be glad in it.
This is the day,
this is the day that the Lord has made.
Les Garrett © 1967,1980
Scripture in Song/Thankyou Music.
READINGS
Psalm 118:1-2, 19 - end New International Version - UK
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures for ever.
Let Israel say:
‘His love endures for ever.’
Open for me the gates of the righteous;
I will enter and give thanks to the Lord.
This is the gate of the Lord
through which the righteous may enter.
I will give you thanks, for you answered me;
you have become my salvation.
The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
the Lord has done this,
and it is marvellous in our eyes.
The Lord has done it this very day;
let us rejoice today and be glad.
Lord, save us!
Lord, grant us success!
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
From the house of the Lord we bless you.
The Lord is God,
and he has made his light shine on us.
With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession
up to the horns of the altar.
You are my God, and I will praise you;
you are my God, and I will exalt you.
Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
his love endures for ever.
Mark 11:1-11 New International Version - UK
As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, ‘Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, “Why are you doing this?” say, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.”’
They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, ‘What are you doing, untying that colt?’ They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,
‘Hosanna!’
‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’
‘Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!’
‘Hosanna in the highest heaven!’
Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.
This is the word of the Lord,
Thanks be to God.
Talk by Stuart Ibbotson
Being a Christian is like being on a journey of a lifetime. But unlike when we plan a trip, or perhaps a little like some unplanned diversions, we don’t always know where we might end up, or exactly how we will get there!
As many of you may know I have been fortunate to be able to travel a bit, something that we are all probably looking forward to increasingly with each passing week of restrictions. Our biggest ‘trip’ as a family was to Canada for myself to do a teacher exchange for a year when our children were quite young over 20 years ago and more recently going to Australia where one of our daughters lives and from there onto to New Zealand about 18 months ago. For a trip from almost one side of Canada where we lived just outside Toronto to Vancouver Island and back, which was 10000 km in total.
Then around both islands of New Zealand.
For both of these trips we considered hiring motor homes at first.
A motor home would have allowed us to put all the conveniences of home on wheels, not having to keep packing and unpacking at each new stop.
Unlike when I was a scout using campsites no longer would mean having to contend with sleeping in a sleeping bag, cooking over a fire, or hauling water from a stream or a lone tap. A camper can park a fully equipped home, often surrounded by trees and hook up to a water line, and electricity.
Many motor homes now have a satellite dish attached on top. No more bother with dirt, no more smoke from the fire, no more drudgery of walking to the stream or tap. Now it is possible to go ‘camping’ and never have to go outside if the weather is awful. So, both trips seemed to suggest a camper van would be a great option.
However, I quickly calculated that on both trips, firstly across Canada with a family of 5 and then around New Zealand with 4 adults, a camper was more expensive to hire and run than just having a car and renting places en-route. The other thing about a camper van is that we might be limited as to where we could drive and would usually be parked up on the edge of places whereas by renting different places we could experience new and different things each time from the places that we stayed in- some great, some not so good! It is always a bit more of an adventure to us to arrive at a new destination not quite sure what to expect and able to experience local variety- all a bit of an adventure.
Following Christ is a bit of an adventure, as I said we can never be sure where it will lead us and how we will get there. The adventure of new life in Christ begins when the comfortable patterns of the old life are left behind.
To truly see Jesus and his truth means more than observing what he did or said, it means a change of identity.
We don’t always see the potential in the things and the people around us. We can be blind to what really matters, we can become too familiar, a bit too comfortable perhaps.
When Jesus was living on earth, travelling around, teaching and healing, people did not understand who he really was. Some thought he was special, perhaps even a great prophet. But to others he was just a carpenter from Nazareth. For most of the time, it was as if he was in disguise.
And Jesus did nothing to discourage that.
For most of his public ministry, our Lord veiled his full identity. He played down the miracles and the extraordinary happenings. How often do we read of Jesus ministering in an extraordinary way and then disappearing into the crowd or retreating to a lonely place?
Jesus shunned popularity in the interest of a greater purpose.
He wanted people to hear the good news that the creator God really cares for humankind.
He desired everyone to know God’s love and the offer of forgiveness and cleansing that is at its heart.
He passionately proclaimed a new experience of spiritual life that would transform people and their understanding of the world and their neighbour.
He wanted everyone to realise that the best part of life was still to come so that people would be filled with hope. And, to emphasise all these important things, Jesus got himself involved with people’s lives at an ordinary level. He became one of us and in his early ministry, he did not disclose his full nature so as not to distance himself from ordinary people, who knew they were sinful.
In Philippians 2, Paul comments:
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Only after Easter did those with eyes to see and hearts to believe come to have a right view of Jesus.
The veil of obscurity was only really cast off at that stage.
Today, we remember the celebrations as Jesus entered the Holy City. That was the point when the veil of obscurity really began to lift; people could now see their true king and worship.
Each of the four Gospels tells the story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem but they all tell it in slightly different ways:
Matthew draws attention to the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy as the principal theme.
Luke suggests that the scene was self-evident. If the disciples were too dim to understand then the stones would declare the truth.
John emphasises the mystery of it all; the full truth would only be discovered later.
And then we have Mark, in the passage, we heard this morning he is more direct than the others. He tells us about the donkey, the colt.
The donkey was an honoured beast in Palestine. The mention of a donkey in Zechariah 9:9-10 fits the description of a king who would be “righteous and victorious.” Rather than riding to conquer, this king would enter in peace”, not on a horse prepared for battle.
Kings rode to war on a horse but returned victorious on a donkey. The donkey was not such a lowly beast as we might think in our 21st-century western world, second-best to a stallion, it was the beast for a victorious returning king to ride on.
In our gospel reading, we have a returning king, arriving with authority and power, just as the kings of old would have done in their moment of triumph. The disciples’ obedience, the friends’ loaning of the animal, the clothes and branches on the path, the shouting crowd, all indicate respect and honour due to a kingly person.
People’s anticipation of something special was rewarded.
The people gathered in Jerusalem were not let down as their Messiah rode in on the donkey.
He was fulfilling the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah:
‘9 Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’
Their liberator was coming; the one who would bring material prosperity, the one who would exercise political clout as the powerful Messiah King to break the Roman power- or so they thought, and who can really blame them. That’s why they shouted ‘Hosanna!’ Hosanna means “save now”.
The crowds were full of expectation. Expectation that the end of tyranny and oppression was at hand and that the Messiah would be able to topple the hated Roman aggressors now. We can sing ‘Hosanna’ this morning and really mean it, but in a different way from the crowds that day.
Jesus was about liberation but not in the way that the crowds imagined it.
He was setting up a kingdom, but not an earthly kingdom. Courageously, he turned their idea of political power and military might on its head.
Jesus did not reach out for political leadership because he knew that the root of the problem was not political; instead, it was the human heart. He came to challenge and reverse the human idea that right structures will produce good people.
The truth is that people are often sinfully selfish, I know that I am, and it’s only when sin is faced up to and dealt with that there is hope.
Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to signify that he wished to establish a rule of love, respect and honesty in people’s lives and the people missed the point.
We too can miss the point this morning.
We can believe in the Jesus that best fits our expectations and forget about the rest. For example, our Jesus can be meek and mild but not strong and opinionated. He can be inoffensive and gentle, but not decisive and suffering, and before we know where we are, we are following a Jesus made in our own image.
The crowds allowed themselves to be deceived that great day when Jesus came into Jerusalem.
Yes, it was right that they cheered and waved their palm branches and made a great fuss about him. That was appropriate, but their motives weren’t. They wanted the wrong things from their Messiah King and they would be very disappointed. As written in the Psalm this morning: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone;’. The people who were cheering for him because of their own expectations would reject him. If we have our own expectations of Jesus, then we too may reject him in our own way, without realising that we are doing so.
Jesus came to Jerusalem to die. He came to lose his life, not to gain earthly power, as those shouting hosanna that day thought he was going to do. Palm Sunday should challenge us about our motives. It should force us to look at our attitudes and our assumptions and to make us think again. What is it that we see in Jesus arriving on a donkey? The Easter events give us the answer to that kind of question, but that is something for next week.
May the Holy Spirit fill and guide each of us today and always, to place our faith and hope in the real Jesus and not one made in our own image. AMEN
Let us affirm our faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God:
Though he was divine,
he did not cling to equality with God,
but made himself nothing.
Taking the form of a slave,
he was born in human likeness.
He humbled himself
and was obedient to death,
even the death of the cross.
Therefore God has raised him on high,
and given him the name above every name:
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow,
and every voice proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Amen.
O LORD, HEAR MY PRAYER,
O Lord, hear my prayer:
When I call answer me.
O Lord, hear my prayer,
O Lord, hear my prayer:
Come and listen to me.
Jacques Berthier/Taizé.
Copyright © 1982 Ateliers et Presses de Taize (France).
PRAYERS - written by Christine Carney
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the beautiful sunshine and fine weather, for the daffodils, the buds and blossom on the trees and the signs of Spring all around us.
Give thanks to the Lord;
his love endures for ever.
Thank you, Father, for the courage and the humility of Jesus. He entered Jerusalem on a colt knowing that the crowds who were praising him and shouting, ‘Hosanna!’ would soon turn against him and crucify him. Please give us the courage to serve others and to share our faith with them this Easter.
Give thanks to the Lord;
his love endures for ever.
Thank you, Father, for the efficient rollout of the vaccine in this country which has given people hope. We pray for a fair and just distribution of the available vaccines throughout the EU and across the world, especially to poorer countries and refugees. Please give world leaders wisdom and a willingness to share.
Give thanks to the Lord;
his love endures for ever.
We commit to you, Father, all those who are struggling: those who are ill, those who are grieving, those who are lonely and feel trapped in their homes, those who have been made redundant and those who are fearful for the future. We pray for your comfort, your provision and your peace… We pray, too, for wisdom for Boris Johnson and the government as they make decisions about easing the lockdown – and also for wisdom for all those involved in the continuing trade talks with the EU.
Give thanks to the Lord;
his love endures for ever.
We cry out to you, Lord, for justice in our world. We pray for the protection of democracy and of people’s rights in China, Russia, Myanmar and Iran. We commit to you the need for action on Climate Change and we pray that President Joe Biden and Boris Johnson will take a strong lead on this.
Give thanks to the Lord;
his love endures for ever.
Finally, Father, we thank you for Alistair and Catherine and the Bless Greystones initiative. Please bless all the teachers at the primary school who have received the WellBeing packs. We thank you for the guests on the Alpha courses and pray that you will fill each of them with your Holy Spirit. We pray that you will continue to be at work, Lord, in Greystones, bringing hope, peace and joy.
Give thanks to the Lord;
his love endures for ever.
Amen
LORD’S 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.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever. Amen
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiXfvEA_Ysg
YOU ARE THE KING OF GLORY,
You are the Prince of Peace;
You are the Lord of heaven and earth,
You’re the Sun of righteousness.
Angels bow down before You,
Worship and adore, for
You have the words of eternal life,
You are Jesus Christ the Lord.
Hosanna to the Son of David!
Hosanna to the King of kings!
Glory in the highest heaven,
For Jesus the Messiah reigns.
Mavis Ford. © 1978 Authentic Publishing/Adm. by Kingswaysongs
OFFERTORY - Take a moment to consider how you are going to continue to give to the life of the church and support other aid agencies and mission organisations.
Yours, Lord, is the greatness, the power,
the glory, the splendour, and the majesty;
for everything in heaven and on earth is yours.
All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.
SING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo5pfl6z6lA
1. Ride on! ride on in majesty!
Hark! all the tribes Hosanna cry!
O Saviour meek, pursue Your road
With palms and scattered garments strowed.
2. 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.
3. Ride on! ride on in majesty!
The angel armies of the sky -
Look down with sad and wondering eyes
To see the approaching acrifice.
4. Ride on! ride on in majesty!
The last and fiercest strife is nigh:
The Father on his sapphire throne
Awaits his own anointed Son.
5. Ride on! ride on in majesty!
In lowly pomp ride on to die;
Bow Your meek head to mortal pain,
Then take, O God, Your power, and reign.
H H Milman
A prayer from the 1st Century oral tradition:
You are the peace of all things calm
You are the place to hide from harm
You are the light that shines in dark
You are the heart's eternal spark
You are the door that's open wide
You are the guest who waits inside
You are the stranger at the door
You are the calling of the poor
You are my Lord and with me still
You are my love, keep me from ill
You are the light, the truth, the way
You are my Saviour this very day.
Blessing
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage our hearts and strengthen us in every good deed and word.