01 Opening Hymn – “Be thou my vision”
01 Opening Hymn – from the sanctuary floor – “Be thou my vision”
2024 Sun March 17
Irish Elements in our service, March 17, 2024
On St. Patrick’s day we give thanks for our Irish Heritage. The Irish are the second largest nationality, behind the Germans.
The day is marked with the accomplishments of St. Patrick. Patrick while not Irish was determined to convert Ireland to Christianity from the Druids. In 431, St. Patrick was consecrated Bishop of the Irish and went to Ireland to spread “the Good news” there. He baptized thousands and ordained many priests to lead new communities of Christians.
Patrick is said to have used the shamrock to explain the Trinity, demonstrating that God is both three (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), yet one, as the shamrock is both three-leafed, yet a single plant. Shamrocks were sacred plants for the Druids, symbolizing eternal life. So he re-interpreted known symbols.
While this day is considered a festive, party day in America, it is a religious celebration in Ireland. (In fact until 1961 you could not buy drink in Dublin, Ireland on this day.) We are celebrating with the following Irish elements in our service:
1. The opening hymn, “Be thou my vision,” is a traditional Irish hymn.
It was on Slane Hill in County Meath around 433 CE that St. Patrick risked his life by climbing to the tallest hill in the area and lighting a huge fire. King Logaire of Tara proclaimed no one could light a fire before the king signaled the beginning of the pagan Druid spring festival.
As the ancient Irish people woke up, they could all see Patrick’s defiance of the king. Patrick wanted to show the world that God’s light shines in darkness, and that only He deserves praise. King Logaire was so impressed by Patrick’s devotion that, despite his defiance, he was permitted to continue his work as Ireland’s first Christian missionary.
Sermon, Rev. Tom Hughes, March 17, 2024 – “in him [Jesus] all things hold together”
“We have today to consider quite a few things that are presented as revolutionary things, things that have changed the world and things that should have changed the world. They begin with the idea of the coming of the Greeks. Now it’s not obvious exactly on the surface of that what that means but if you look back in in in Greek history starting with the early days of the philosophers Plato, what they did was they developed a way of thinking that we now call rationalism. Being rational is something that everybody aspires to. If you’re not acting rational that’s seen as some sort of aberration so that the Greeks then depended upon a kind of thinking that was rational. Now that’s good under many circumstances and we certainly can’t go through our life without that but it’s very limiting because the Greeks did not perceive anything that we would call spiritual. It was all the way you thought about life and the way you lived life through what you thought that mattered. They had no consideration of deeper things we might call spiritual things.
“Now contrast with that we also have another character in this play, Caiaphas the high priest was bound to the law. His role as a high priest was to make sure everybody followed the law. The law was very clear. It had been passed down from God and you didn’t deviate from it. Now, the problem with that is the law also requires some spiritual insight in order to know it and to live it. It’s not just what the words are on the paper but how God speaks to your heart so those are two considerations that are real in our present day to day. We are rational people and often we’re law-bound people. I want to suggest to you that neither one of those lead us to a spiritual understanding of Life. The spiritual understanding of life comes from an entirely different source – in scripture.
God’s Garden makes “Resurrection Eggs”
On the week before Palm Sunday, the children created “Resurrection Eggs”. There were 12 numbered plastic eggs each with an object, a symbol of the events on that day of Holy Week. The children numbered the eggs, put an object in the eggs and heard a story. For example, the first was a palm branch for Palm Sunday. The story is taken through Holy Week to the Resurrection.
Here are the two handouts followed by the video segments:
Bulletin, Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 17, 2024
Click here to view in a new window.
Lectionary, Lent 5, Year B
I.Theme – The new covenant
"Sunset: Wheat Fields Near Arles 1888"- Vincent Van Gogh
“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” – John 12:24
The lectionary readings are here or individually:
Old Testament – Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm – Psalm 51:1-13 Page 656, BCP
Psalm – Psalm 119:9-16 Page 764, BCP
Epistle –Hebrews 5:5-10
Gospel – John 12:20-33
In this Sunday before Palm Sunday, we prepare for the New Covenant. We have been reflecting back upon God’s covenants throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, from Noah to Moses, and now we recognize a new covenant that God has written upon our hearts, where we know God, where God forgives our sins and remembers them no more. Jeremiah, speaking to a people who have continually failed to remember God and their part in the covenant, brings this message of hope, where God’s covenant cannot be forgotten because it is within one’s own heart. No longer will it appear that God has failed them when their leaders fail them, because God is bypassing the religious leaders and entering one’s own heart.
Psalm 51:1-12 is a song seeking forgiveness, where the psalmist confesses their sins and desires for God to show mercy and to be restored. The psalmist asks God to create a clean heart, where the writer can be fully restored to God. In reflection with the Jeremiah passage, we remember that God will forgive us and remember our sins no more by writing God’s covenant on our hearts.
Psalm 119:9-16 is from a different perspective, the desire of someone wishing to avoid sin and one who wants to stay close in relationship to God. The psalmist’s heart is open to seek God, the heart of where God’s covenant is written.
John 12:20-33 speaks of the way of the Cross, which is to die to this world. Those who seek to save their life will lose it, and Jesus says those who are willing to lose (in John’s Gospel the word is hate) their life will keep it. We must be willing to die to the things of this world, the sin that separates us, the greed and desire of worldly ways. We need a new heart to be open to God, and in order to have a new heart, we must be willing to follow Jesus, love others and love God, and put aside our own worldly desires and greed. Jesus models this in his life by glorifying God (Abba) and not himself. Throughout the Gospels, whenever Jesus performs a miracle, Jesus does so to show the glory of Abba God, not of himself. In this strange passage, where Jesus calls upon Abba God to glorify God’s name, God’s voice echoes back like thunder. Jesus says this was for the sake of the people, not for his own–that they might turn to Abba God, Creator God, God above–and recognize that in order to truly live, they must be willing to die to the world.
The new covenant with God is to give our lives over to Christ, to lose our lives, and even to use the strong language of Jesus, hate our lives. We need to be willing to put aside our own desires for our life to look to the needs of others–to love other and love God, not the success and ways of this world. As we prepare for the journey to the Cross of Holy Week, we recognize that our hearts are made new with God. The desires of this world have been replaced with the desire to intimately know God and to love our neighbors as ourselves, and God’s covenant is written on our hearts, to forgive our iniquity, and remember our sin no more.
Voices from Lent 5, Year B
1. St. Stephens, Richmond
This Gospel reading is set during Jesus’ third and last visit to Jerusalem in the Gospel of John. He and his disciples have come for the festival of Passover. This passage follows those in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with perfume, and Jesus makes the entry into Jerusalem that we remember on Palm Sunday.
The dramatic intensity is increasing. The raising of Lazarus has set Jesus on a collision course with the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. His triumphal procession into Jerusalem as the “Kings of the Jews” has put him at odds with the Roman rulers. As we read these passages we feel the wonder and excitement of the crowd, but also the foreboding that lurks between the lines.
Then we are confronted with this curious passage. What is the point of the Greeks asking to see Jesus? Why does this set Jesus saying “The hour has come…”?
It seems that the approach of Greeks (i.e., non-Jews) wanting to meet Jesus is an indication of an important development. In John 10:16 during his discourse about “The Good Shepherd,” Jesus says, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.” The Greeks seeking Jesus are the signal that his message is reaching beyond the Jewish community and that the other sheep are being drawn in.
As for the significance of his statement, “The hour has come…,” earlier in the Gospel, at the wedding in Cana, Jesus said to his mother, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” (John 2:4) Now 10 chapters and some three years later, he says his hour has come. That hour is for the glorification of the Father, and through the Father, the glorification of the Son of Man.
Jesus follows this with the curious analogy of his life to that of a grain of wheat. His death/glorification will bear much fruit. Apparently his death will bear even more fruit than his life, for from it more life will spring. Jesus further tells his listeners that it is not he who will be glorified, but that it has been Jesus’ work to glorify the Father.
Once again, as in last Sunday’s reading, Jesus speaks of being lifted up from the earth. In the previous reading the lifting up was so “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” This time he states that the lifting up, the crucifixion, “will draw all people to [him].” Jesus’ encounter with the cross is close at hand, but, at least in John, that encounter is in his hands. Jesus’ death is not ignoble, but a glorious raising up of the Son of Man that draws all people to him and thus to the Father, and brings salvation to all who believe.