Download service sheet and Passion Gospel (if your family wishes to read it in parts). An easy way to divide up the parts in the Passion Gospel (the story of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion) is to have three readers: the Narrator, Jesus, and everyone else. If you have more people, you can have different readers take the parts of Pilate, Judas, Peter, and so on. The service sheet has parts for the congregation — that means you! If you read the Gospel yourselves, the service resumes at 27:12 (that’s a time indicator).
Sermon
How quickly things change.
Just a few short weeks ago, we were all carrying on our lives as normal — going to work or school, playing sports, going to the pub or to a restaurant, traveling wherever we wanted to. Just a month ago, on 1 March, the First Sunday in Lent, we worshipped in all our parishes, as normal.
Two weeks later, on 15 March, I cancelled all the services except the one in Adare. And two weeks after that, we were all in lockdown, the churches closed, those over 70 told to stay home (I’ve heard a few in that age bracket bristle at the order), not permitted to exercise outdoors more than 2 kilometers from our home. It is the same in most of the rest of the world, the whole world held in the grip of a virus.
How quickly things change.
We could have seen it coming, perhaps. Since the beginning of the year, we have heard news reports of a strange virus appearing in China. We watched it spread. But still, life continued here in Ireland as normal. Until suddenly life was no longer normal.
How quickly things change.
It’s one of the lessons of Palm Sunday, how quickly things can change. Palm Sunday has a strange double observance. We remember Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey and the people lay branches before him on the street. They hail him as king, as coming from God.
And then, a short time later, with just as much passion, they call for him to be crucified. Nothing has happened to change their minds, other than being swayed by those around them, swayed by the leaders who want Jesus dead, perhaps caught up in the sensationalism of it all.
Even the disciple Peter shows how quickly a person can change. At the Last Supper he tells Jesus that he will never desert him, never deny him. And probably not even twelve hours later, three times he denies that he knows Jesus. When the cock crows, he realizes his error, his sin, and he weeps bitterly.
The human heart is fickle. Events unfold in ways we do not expect. Our lives can change in a flash. How quickly things change.
Is there anything that is constant? Yes. God. In the events of Palm Sunday, as Judas betrays Jesus, and Peter denies him, and the crowd flips and flops, and Pilate refuses to do what even he recognizes is the right thing to do, as the leaders and the soldiers mock Jesus, there is one constant, and that is Jesus. From beginning to end, even through the agony in the Garden, he remains constant in his focus on God, and he never wavers in showing God’s care and even forgiveness towards the human race. In the midst of turmoil and upheaval, Jesus is the constant, the unchanging.
In these past weeks, I’ve been reminded of an Anglican prayer often said at night time. It is this:
“Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the silent hours of this night, so that we, who are wearied by the changes and chances of this fleeting world, may repose upon thy eternal changelessness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
As we live through this time of massive change, when the exact shape of the future is not yet known, may we rest assured that God is constant, God’s care for us through Jesus Christ is unfailing, for God is our rock and our refuge, a very present help in trouble.
May God watch over you, protect you, and guide your thoughts, your words, and your deeds, this day and in the days to come.