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THEME The Interplay of Adulation and Rejection
THOUGHTS FOR REFLECTION
PRAYER
HYMNS
Amid the many thoughts. (BL)
Within the shadows of our thinking. (BL)
What can we learn from war? (BL)
My spirit shall rejoice. (BL)
Repaying force with counter force. (BL)
Help us, O Christ, to choose the path.
Upon a humble donkey’s back.
http://www.methodist.org.nz/resources/hymns/the_mystery_telling
Give joyful praise and honor. (STS1)
Singing the Sacred, Vol 1, 2011 World Library Publications
CHANT
RESPONSIVE READING (Paraphrase of the Beatitudes)
How liberated are those. (BL & SE / MU)
How happy are those. (BL)
POEMS / REFLECTIONS
see Peace Prayer of St Francis under Peace Sunday
PATTERN FOR PILGRIMAGE
Holy Week is a pattern for pilgrimage. A pilgrimage from the superficial analysis of the crowd on Palm Sunday to the complexities and manipulations, the affirmations and denials, the shouting and the silence, the lonely inner journey and the placing of oneself in the hands of God. Then follows concern for the future of other people and for one’s tormentors, the walk through the valley of suffering and death and finally the oneness beyond and within all of this – the all-encompassing reality of a new way of perceiving the mystery.
COMMENT
Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a foal of an ass; not as the victorious warrior on a war horse, but as the humble prophet and clown making an upside-down statement. The clown is the one who turns the images upside down and unmasks all that is pretentious and unreal. The clown confronts the powers-that-be with humor or with silence e.g. Jesus before Herod (Luke 23/9). The clown tells stories that have a hidden meaning e.g. Christ’s parables. If all this is true there was an element of the clown in Jesus, as indeed there is in any liberated human being. To be humorless is to be without hope, for it is only humor that can enable us to live with joy in the midst of the manipulative destructiveness that stalks through the land. Humor enables the fool to be ‘in the world but not of it’. The wisdom of fools is that they are willing to expose their own weakness and in so doing enable others to laugh at theirs. Weakness is destructive only when we cannot laugh at it.
FOCUS FOR ACTION
Both the prophet and the clown unmask the destructive forces that imprison human beings. What myths need unmasking in our society?
Should we examine our preoccupation with acquisitiveness, belief in racial or social superiority, male orientation, simplistic faith in economic solutions and acceptance that competitiveness is the best way?
Which of these are present within our church and how can we tackle them in a way which will lead to change?
Text and image © William Livingstone Wallace but available for free use.
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