Description
SYMBOLS OF THE PASSION (by Mike Claridge)
Five Meditations for Holy Week
http://www.mjclaridge.co.uk
Author’s Notes
I’ve used Symbols of the Passion on several occasions in Holy Week. It’s ideal to use, interspersed with hymns and prayers, as The last Hour Devotion on Good Friday. It can also be used as a reflective service on Palm Sunday or even passion Sunday.
Symbols of the Passion can be enhanced by using visual props. If you have a projection system a simple search on twelvebaskets by provide suitable mages for each of the meditations. Alternatively use real objects, placed on a centrally placed table, in silence, prior to each reflection.
If you use this let me know how it went.
mjclaridge@me.com
Revd Mike Claridge
St Andrew’s Vicarage
Oakwood Street
West Bromwich
B70 9SN
SYMBOLS OF THE PASSION (by Mike Claridge)
1. The Meal
Just an ordinary meal. In an ordinary room. With ordinary friends.
You did what every Jew was called to do that night – and that night in every year.
With family or with friends.
With actions and words as old as faith itself.
With lamb and herbs, with bread and wine, you celebrated the Passover feast.
It’s meaning clear despite the mists of time.
It’s message always new despite the passing years.
Continues...
2. The Whip
The humiliation.
Bound helpless to the stone cold pillar of the guardhouse.
Naked before your torturers.
A whip does its cruellest work.
A whip used for the dogs detested by Romans.
Now used to humiliate a detested man, but a man they hardly know.
How the night had changed.
Arrested as night fell by the hired thugs of the regime.
Continues...
3. The Crown
Who had called you King?
The expectation of a nation had focussed on you, not of your choice, at least not at first.
Everyone expected a leader, expected their leader.
Someone to push their agenda,
someone to support their ideals,
someone to underwrite their greed.
They had looked for a King – you would do, you would do.
Politicians wanted a figurehead.
Continues...
4. The Cross
Stark wood.
Stripped of foliage.
Twisted and gnarled.
Useless for a carpenter’s trade.
Useful for a carpenter’s death.
Harvests of olives had been taken from its boughs.
It had borne the fruit of new life, the oil of gladness, the black gold of the day.
Now it’s fruitful days had gone.
Continues...
5. Nails
From childhood you knew about nails.
They were always around in the carpenters workshop.
Daggers of iron;
glistening when new,
the colour of earth when old.
Instruments of building.
Instuments to bring together pieces of timber.
Instruments to fashion usefulness from raw materials.
Continues...
Five Meditations for Holy Week
http://www.mjclaridge.co.uk
Author’s Notes
I’ve used Symbols of the Passion on several occasions in Holy Week. It’s ideal to use, interspersed with hymns and prayers, as The last Hour Devotion on Good Friday. It can also be used as a reflective service on Palm Sunday or even passion Sunday.
Symbols of the Passion can be enhanced by using visual props. If you have a projection system a simple search on twelvebaskets by provide suitable mages for each of the meditations. Alternatively use real objects, placed on a centrally placed table, in silence, prior to each reflection.
If you use this let me know how it went.
mjclaridge@me.com
Revd Mike Claridge
St Andrew’s Vicarage
Oakwood Street
West Bromwich
B70 9SN
SYMBOLS OF THE PASSION (by Mike Claridge)
1. The Meal
Just an ordinary meal. In an ordinary room. With ordinary friends.
You did what every Jew was called to do that night – and that night in every year.
With family or with friends.
With actions and words as old as faith itself.
With lamb and herbs, with bread and wine, you celebrated the Passover feast.
It’s meaning clear despite the mists of time.
It’s message always new despite the passing years.
Continues...
2. The Whip
The humiliation.
Bound helpless to the stone cold pillar of the guardhouse.
Naked before your torturers.
A whip does its cruellest work.
A whip used for the dogs detested by Romans.
Now used to humiliate a detested man, but a man they hardly know.
How the night had changed.
Arrested as night fell by the hired thugs of the regime.
Continues...
3. The Crown
Who had called you King?
The expectation of a nation had focussed on you, not of your choice, at least not at first.
Everyone expected a leader, expected their leader.
Someone to push their agenda,
someone to support their ideals,
someone to underwrite their greed.
They had looked for a King – you would do, you would do.
Politicians wanted a figurehead.
Continues...
4. The Cross
Stark wood.
Stripped of foliage.
Twisted and gnarled.
Useless for a carpenter’s trade.
Useful for a carpenter’s death.
Harvests of olives had been taken from its boughs.
It had borne the fruit of new life, the oil of gladness, the black gold of the day.
Now it’s fruitful days had gone.
Continues...
5. Nails
From childhood you knew about nails.
They were always around in the carpenters workshop.
Daggers of iron;
glistening when new,
the colour of earth when old.
Instruments of building.
Instuments to bring together pieces of timber.
Instruments to fashion usefulness from raw materials.
Continues...
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