We have now entered Holy Week.  We began this most important week of the Christian year with our Palm Sunday Eucharist in church, although we had to modify the service because of Covid restrictions.   Each year on Palm Sunday we recall the occasion when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey to the great acclaim of the watching crowds who waved palm fronds and called out their support for Jesus.  Under normal circumstances, our church service would imitate that occasion with a procession around church (inside or outside), singing joyful hymns such as ‘All glory, laud and honour to thee, Redeemer, King’.  This year we had to omit the procession and the singing, although we still distributed small hand-held palm crosses.  The main focus of the service was the dramatic reading of the events in Holy Week.

Traditionally the Passion Gospel is read by at least 10 people who take the different characters in the narrative. The story unfolds from Jesus’ celebration of the Last Supper with his friends, followed by his lonely time in the Garden of Gethsemane awaiting arrest.  The narrative leads through the trial of Jesus, his friends’ denial of knowing him, and the cruel mockery of Jesus by the Roman soldiers who torture him in a cruel travesty of acknowledging him as King of the Jews.  The agony of Jesus’ crucifixion is told, and the reaction of those who stood around him, some scornfully deriding him, but others grieving to see their beloved Lord in pain.  At the moment when Jesus breathed his last, the Roman centurion recognised “Truly, this man was God’s Son.”

Because we are limited by Covid restrictions on mixing households in church, we had to work out the practicalities of having different voices to participate.  Blessed by the huge space in St Mary’s, we were able to have one family group on the dais at the front, one reader elevated in the pulpit, two readers from one household next to the font at the back, and the narrator located high up in the balcony, holding the storyline together.  Each area had its own dedicated microphone, and our live-streaming team set up four different cameras so that all four areas were broadcast on screen simultaneously.  The overall effect for the congregation in church was extremely powerful, as they were immersed in the middle of the story with voices speaking from all around them.  Remarkably, this was another example of coronavirus compelling us to come up with an imaginative alternative which, according to one congregation member afterwards, “was the best Passion Gospel reading they had ever experienced”.  God truly can bring good things out of difficult circumstances.

For me personally, it was a wonderful occasion to be back in church after 13 months of only taking services online.  It was incredible to reflect on the fact that I had last celebrated the Eucharist in church and led Choral Evensong on 1^st March 2020.  I’m so glad that I didn’t know at the time that I would not be able to return to lead a service again in St Mary’s until over a year later, but it has made Palm Sunday 2021 all the more memorable for me as the start to this year’s Holy Week.  The following verse has given me much comfort throughout:

So do not fear, for I am with you;     

do not be dismayed, for I am your God. 

I will strengthen you and help you;     

I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.                               (Isaiah 41:10)

Sarah Bourne, Chaplain for the Arts – 31^st March 2021       sarahbourne@banburystmary.org.uk