Palm Sunday 28th March 2010

I hear – I forget. I see – I remember. I do – I understand.

The remembering and understanding of God’s love has come to Christians all through the centuries through what they have seen and done in Holy Week.

The Christian faith handed down from generation to generation is more caught than taught. It’s caught from holy lives and it is caught from holy actions – the actions we are, for example, about to go through in Holy Week.

The Church knows people hear and then forget so she puts the love of God before us in action this week. Just as God’s love came to us practically in Jesus, so this week we do something practical.

We go to Jerusalem, to the Upper Room, to Gethsemane, to Calvary and to the Tomb.

Actions speak louder than words in the Christian religion. Actions teach God’s love.

The aim of Holy Week is that we may own more fully what the Lord has done for us in his great love and catch more of what He has in store for us as individuals and as churches.

The outward rites of the Faith are mighty to teach, but they need backing up by a time of quiet reflection this Week.

My advice, if asked how to make the most of Holy Week, is come to the Liturgy, especially on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Come to the Liturgy, but also go to the Lord yourself in silence. With a Bible maybe. But in silence.

Listen. Listen and let the Lord speak to you personally of his great love for you and for all.

In reflecting on today’s liturgy I was drawn to the prophecy in the ninth chapter of Zechariah which it fulfils: Lo your King comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

This is the prophecy Christ fulfilled which we’re about to re-enact with palms and donkeys.

My eyes moved back a chapter in Zechariah from chapter 9 verse 9 to chapter 8 verse 23. There we read a prophecy that people would one day in the future come up to believers and say ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard it said that God is with you’.

My hope for Holy Week in Horsted Keynes is that the people of our parish may get more and more intrigued by God’s people here so they get drawn along, just as we hope a few will get drawn in to our procession this morning.

‘Let us go with you, for we have heard it said that God is with you’.May that prophecy come true among us as we live and express an ever more joyful faith in Christ as our Lord and Saviour.