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Please note:

This script cannot exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors that were corrected before the radio broadcast.

It may contain gaps to be filled in at the time so that prayers may reflect the needs of the world, and changes may also be made at the last minute for timing reasons, or to reflect current events.

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³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 4. It’s ten past eight and time for Sunday Worship. The fifth service in our Lent series comes from John Keble Church, Mill Hill in north London and is introduced by the Vicar – Canon Chris Chivers. It begins with the spiritual: ‘I want Jesus to walk with me’.

Choir: I want Jesus to walk with me

CC:

Good morning and welcome to John Keble Church in Mill Hill

where I'm joined by Rose Hudson-Wilkin who is a chaplain to the Queen, chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons and a vicar in Dalston and Haggerston in London's east end.

RHW:

Today is the start of Passiontide, when the Church begins to move closer with Jesus towards Jerusalem and walk with him the lonely, fearful road that leads to his cross and on to an empty tomb.

It's a season that invites us to get inside fear; the fear that Jesus experienced at its most acute. A fear which led him to question his father as loving and good. A fear which saw him cry out in desperation from the cross, My God, my God why have you abandoned me?

But the flip side of this most agonised of questions is the truth that, even as it was being expressed, all fear was being overcome and conquered for each of us. That's what the mystery of this one man's death and resurrection does for the whole of humanity.

CC:

‘

I want Jesus to walk with me’, the slaves used to sing at moments when their daily lot of ritual humiliation and suffering was at its worst. ‘In my trials, Lord’, their voices soared, ‘when I'm in trouble, Lord, walk with me’. They cried this with an intensity we can still feel in the music. But as we all cry out to Jesus in our moments of fear, so Passiontide teaches us that we overcome and conquer fear when we survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died.

Hymn: When I survey

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RHW:

Love so amazing, so divine, teach us that as we accompany you in your fearful suffering, so our fears and concerns, our hopes and expectations find their ultimate meaning and healing.

ALL: Amen.

CC:

A five year old boy stands horror-struck. He's been ushered into his parent's bedroom. He clasps his four year old sister's hands as tightly as he

’s ever clasped them. The tall figure of their parish priest, Father Bennell, gently leans over the bed saying words they know from the Bible and praying gently. No one has explained anything to them. But they sense things aren't good. They can feel it in the air. Their young mother’s been ill for weeks, coughing and wheezing, entering in and out of consciousness. They can see that she’s very weak. She tries to say something to them. But they can't understand her words except that she keeps mentioning their father. She reaches out to them and then sinks into the pillow through the effort of holding their hands. They feel the blood drain from their faces. They sense that life is about to change. Everything is being transformed around them. They don't know how but they know it's happening. They’ve never experienced fear like it. As they leave the bedroom, they hear Father Bennell say some words that people have used at such moments down the centuries.

Reading:

Psalm 23

1 The Lord is my shepherd:

therefore can I lack nothing.

2 He will make me lie down in green pastures:

and lead me beside still waters.

3 He will refresh my soul:

and guide me in right pathways for his name's sake.

4 Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil:

for you are with me, your rod and your staff comfort me.

5 You spread a table before me

in the face of those who trouble me:

you have anointed my head with oil,

and my cup shall be full.

6 Surely your goodness and loving-kindness

will follow me all the days of my life:

and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

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CC:

Standing, holding my sister's hand as we realised our 39 year old mother was dying was undoubtedly the experience of fear that most stands out from my childhood. As it happens, she didn't die of the pneumonia and pleurisy for which she couldn't receive penicillin. Miraculously, she lived and is still alive over forty years later. But what got my sister and I through our part in that fearful experience for such young children however was the presence of our parish priest Father Bennell. Was it the softness of his voice, the gentle touch of his hand on our shoulders, the connection he made for us with the reassuring presence of church? I'm sure it was something of all three. But I realise all these years later that it was also the rhythm of text and story that he used. It was the way, as he recited a psalm - which down the years has provided context and comfort for so many - and followed this with the Lord's Prayer - that his presence with us actually embodied the presence of God.

RHW:

It's surely significant that at the moment when Jesus was at his most fearful - praying in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his death that this cup of suffering be taken from him - just as his cry from the cross echoes a verse of the psalms, so his prayer uses a snatch of that prayer he taught us all to say - not my will but your will be done. Let's remind ourselves now of that moment, recorded in Luke's Gospel, chapter 22:

Reading:

Jesus came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives; and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he said to them,

‘Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.’ Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.’ Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground. When he got up from prayer, he came to the disciples and found them sleeping because of grief, and he said to them, ‘Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not come into the time of trial.’

(Luke 22: 39-46)

Hymn: When you prayed beneath the trees

RHW: When Jesus prayed beneath the trees he faced the terrible fear of rejection. Not simply the fear of rejection by his friends - a rejection that began as they deserted him while he prayed - but the ultimate fear of rejection that was made real the next day on the cross when, sensing that everything was lost, he cried out, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" It's perhaps this twin fear of rejection that's the hardest to deal with as a human being.

Like most priests, throughout my ministry I

’ve always made every effort to visit the elderly of the parish - those who are no longer able to attend church, for example, because they’ve grown frail. One particular couple I remember were now apart from each other because one of them had needs that couldn’t be met at home. Then one day I was told that one of them had died. I remember being surprised that no one had contacted me about the death. So I took the initiative and visited the surviving spouse. "Yes" he said, " she’s died." He was clearly at a loss, I held his hands, "Why didn’t you let me know?" I enquired. "What about the arrangements for the funeral?" He told me that his children were organising it and that they had told him I couldn't do the funeral. Allegedly the Funeral Directors had said the deceased didn't live in the parish so I couldn't do it. Troubled by this, because I had been giving pastoral care to them both, the next morning I went to see the funeral directors. They told me, off the record, that the family didn't want me to officiate. This would not be the last time I would hear such words of rejection.

Each time this happens it forces me to look at myself, to ask what is wrong with me; the hurt and the pain that one feels is difficult to get through. But in the silence of prayer, I'm reminded that I am created in the image of God. This gives me renewed courage to face the world, and to realise that I do not need to be ashamed, I do not need to lock myself away, I do not need to be fearful of the world around me. I am an heir of the King of love. The pain of fear need not be embraced because this is their story not mine. Their rejection of me is about them not me.

In recent years, I was again to find myself going through a challenging period of my life; wrestling once more with rejection, only this time in a very public way. As I struggled with this, I received a letter from the head of the Church Army, and in that letter there was a quote. But it was no ordinary quote. It leapt at me from the page and spoke to me.

"An eagle is not disturbed by the traffic, it rises above it, a whale is not disturbed by the hurricane, it dives deeper." I cannot tell you anything else that was said in that letter, because that just spoke to me so immediately.

This was a seminal moment for me. God had spoken to me. I was going to rise above and dive deeper. I would no longer be paralysed by fear. God had given me wings to fly and courage to dive deeper (even for a non-swimmer like me)!

And that metaphor of diving reminds me of the service of baptism, the initiation rite into the Christian Church. There we speak of being buried with Christ and rising to new life with him. Our fears find echo in the story of the Passion of our Lord

– on which we focus special attention in these coming weeks. What a difference it would make if we all could recognise that, in our experience of fear, we’re in effect being buried with Christ in his baptism and ultimately in his death. This was indeed the Psalmist's experience : ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of death.’ In the depths of fear, we’re often left feeling incapacitated, helpless and sometimes without hope. The Psalmist recognised however, that fear need not be the only story. ‘As long as you are with me, Lord’, the Psalmist continues, ‘I will not be afraid.’ So we dive deeper into the unknown with our hands firmly clasping the hand of God, trusting that all will be well. Christ in his death conquers all our fears and fills us with hope. And it’s in that hope that we rise above those deep fears, exposing them, and thus preventing them from keeping us bound.

CC:

There's a glorious moment in the liturgy of Easter when the base of the lit paschal candle is plunged into the waters of baptism in the font. And then that single flickering flame that has given light to the candles of all the worshippers gathered to hear the story of human salvation rises high above everyone. In baptism we dive deep into those waters of Christ's death with all our fears and failings so as to rise with him in his risen life. If only we were to immerse ourselves more deeply in this passion story, this experience, this deepest and highest truth of all then we may realise that no fear can ever shackle us or hold us back? For fear in this story of horror and hope, betrayal and love, death and new life always leads to freedom. Freedom to be that which we are created for

– a people released to be fully human. So be strong and courageous for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Anthem: Be strong and courageous

CC:

Be strong and courageous, a setting by John Barnard of words from the book of Joshua and from psalm 121, and leading us into our prayers.

Voice 1:

Let us pray for all who live in fear. Fear of abuse: physical, psychological or sexual. Fear of contempt: on the basis of ethnicity, culture, gender or sexuality. Fear of suffering: in contexts of war, natural disaster or pain.

Voice 2:

Let us remember all whose fear is of themselves: of the dishonourable thoughts they think, the actions that come from malice or jealousy, the hurt that is inflicted on loved ones as well as strangers.

RHW:

In our moments of fear, Lord:

ALL: Give us your courage and love.

Voice 1:

Let us pray for all who project their fears onto others, who resent in their neighbours what they most fear in themselves.

Voice 2:

Let us remember all at this time whose fear is real and raw in places of complexity and suffering in our world - in Syria, Crimea, and the Ukraine, in our own community amongst the homeless who shelter in this church, the unemployed who cluster around the local job centre, the hungry who use the nearby food bank.

CC:

In our moments of fear, Lord:

ALL: Give us your courage and love.

Voice 1:

As we find echoes of our own fear in the Passiontide journey of the one who says I am, be not afraid, let us pray for all who face fear alone, that they may know that weakness is their ultimate strength, and that from vulnerability courage and resurrection flow:

Voice 2:

An ancient German prayer

O Jesus, in your great loneliness on the Mount of Olives, and in your agony, you prayed to the Heavenly Father for comfort. You know that there are souls on earth who are without support and without comforters. Send them an angel to give them joy. Amen.

Choir: Were you there when they crucified my Lord.

CC:

As we seek the presence of God to transform our own fears, so Jesus seeks our presence at the foot of his cross, sharing with him the prayer of perfect love which casts out all fear, the prayer that helps us to bring in the fulness of his kingdom, when we say together:

ALL: Our Father, who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name Thy kingdom come, thy will be done On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, For ever and ever. Amen.

CC:

A prayer of Thomas Traherne:

O Christ, I see your crown of thorns in every eye, your bleeding, naked, wounded body in every soul; your death lives in every memory; your crucified person is embalmed in every affection; your pierced feet are bathed in everyone's tears; make it my privilege to enter with you the need of every soul.

ALL: Amen.

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RHW:

Entering more fully the mystery of Passiontide as those called to be God's fearful saints we pray that we will take fresh courage from the divine story of our salvation and that the clouds we so much dread will prove great with mercy and break in blessings on our head. God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.

Hymn:God moves in a mysterious way

CC:

Jesus taught his followers, "Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid."

Lord Jesus Christ, constant companion and gracious guide,

Go before us to lead us, travel behind us to guard us and be above us to bless us on our journey, now and always.

ALL: Amen.

Voluntary: Herzliebster Jesu (Brahms)

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