Sung Eucharist - The First Sunday of Lent, 6th March 2022 | Canterbury Cathedral

[Music] [Music] [Music] good morning and a very warm welcome to all of you joining us for the cathedral eucharist this morning on this first sunday of lent because we've now begun our lenten journey i point you to your pure sheet here because so many of the events of lent are set out for you there and i don't need to read them to you make sure you take that home and later from about midland sunday onwards there will be a full colored leaflet setting out what will also be happening during holy week and into easter but that's yet to come welcome to to all of you who are joining us online from across the world and welcome to any visitors or guests who are here worshipping with us for the first time or perhaps just here for this weekend afterwards we are able to have coffee or tea together over in the lodge and we do encourage you to come along and join us so that you can make yourself known and we can get to know you and send our prayers back to the congregations and communities that you've come from obviously our hearts are full of both grief and affection and urgency of prayer and our bodies are wanting to do something for the people of ukraine and we've been in in touch uh throughout the last few days with many of the agencies which are helping actually at the places where so many of the ukrainians are crossing into safety having left members of their family and their homes behind all so suddenly and also are helping within ukraine itself at cities in the western part of ukraine lev and at the same time are helping with the great traffic jams of some 30 kilometers long of people trying to get out they of course in that static and terrifying position are needing help and basic human resources and the aid agencies are giving that too now we can't show you here all that we have discovered but what you can do later in the day is tune in to our morning prayer from the dna garden online and many of those things will become apparent visually to you as well together with the way in which you might begin to help what we're told by the aid agencies is that really the essential thing is money because goods and things can't be transported across europe in this this way and so contributions however small and you'll see which aid agencies are are being referenced in in in that and on the back even of the pew sheet there's a way to make a contribution but if you tune in you'll see all of that and that means that you yourselves can feel that you're doing something for these people of course we're doing a wonderful thing right across the world by praying for them in in mind and spirit we're thinking but at the same time this gives us a way of of giving our own resources sacrificially and that becomes apparent in that way so we can do something else this morning we will begin the service and we'll sing our first hymn and then at that point i shall ask you to remain standing for uh about a minute of silence and at the end of that uh our choir will sing the ukrainian national anthem remain standing and at the end of that we'll join in with applause which will go out across the world as a sign of our solidarity to all those russia and ukraine who are suffering so much danger in that part of our continent and also we shall in heart and mind be praying for the peace of the world so it's already a very serious announcement to begin with um let me say in a more cheerful way the the normal amount of of fresh eggs and and jellies and chutneys are at the dinery gate and we are still retaining that collection for our own charities of the homeless in porch light and also those who are being cared for in the pilgrims hospice so let's just keep a moment of silence now this isn't the silence for ukraine this is just preparing ourselves to receive this blessed sacrament and then we shall start uh by singing the lenten hymn 40 days and 40 nights thou wast fasting in the wild so [Music] oh foreign is falsely foreign foreign just so we remain standing and we keep the ukrainian people in our hearts and minds and prayers as we keep silence for a minute he [Music] please [Music] is [Music] is [Music] yes [Applause] please [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign so in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit grace mercy and peace from god our father and the lord jesus christ be with you almighty god to whom all hearts are open all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your holy spirit that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through christ our lord amen our lord jesus christ said the first commandment is this hear o israel the lord our god is the only lord you shall love the lord your god with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind and with all your strengths the second is this love your neighbor as yourself there is no other commandment greater than these on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets amen lord have mercy the sacrifice of god is a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart god will not despise so let us come to the lord who is full of compassion and acknowledge our transgressions in penitence and faith most merciful god father of our lord jesus christ we confess that we have sinned in thought word and deed we have not loved you with our whole heart we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves in your mercy forgive what we have been help us to amend what we are and direct what we shall be that we may do justly love mercy and walk humbly with you our god amen [Music] yes [Music] hey [Music] so [Applause] yes [Music] foreign [Music] almighty god who forgives all who truly repent have mercy upon you pardon and deliver you from all your sins confirm and strengthen you in all goodness and keep you in life eternal through jesus christ our lord let us pray almighty god whose son jesus christ fasted 40 days in the wilderness and was tempted as we are yet without sin give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your spirit and as you know our weakness so may we know your power to save through jesus christ your son our lord who is alive and reigns with you in the unity of the holy spirit one god now and forever amen a reading from the book of deuteronomy moses spoke to the people saying when you have come into the land that the lord your god is giving you as an inheritance to possess and you possess it and settle in it you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you harvest from the land that the lord your god is giving you and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the lord your god would choose as a dwelling for his name you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time and say to him today i declared the lord your god that i have come into the land that the lord swore to you our ancestors to give us when the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the lord your god you shall make this response before the lord your god a wandering aramaian was my ascent ancestor he went down into egypt and lived there as an alien few in number and there he became a great nation mighty and popless when the egyptian treated us harshly and afflicted us by opposing hard labor on us we cried to the lord the god of our ancestors and the lord heard our voice and saw our affliction our toil and our oppression the lord brought us out of egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm with a terrifying display of power and with signs and wonders and he brought us into this place and gave us this land a land flowing of milk and honey so now i bring the first of the fruit of the grand that you o lord have given me you shall set it down before the lord your god and bow down before the lord your god then you together with the levites and the aliens who reside among you shall celebrate with all the bounty that the lord your god has given to you and to your house this is the word of the lord thanks be to god oh [Music] i will say [Music] my daughters [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] my lord is [Music] hear the gospel of our lord jesus christ according to saint luke glory to you o lord jesus full of the holy spirit returned from the jordan and was led by the spirit in the wilderness where for forty days he was tempted by the devil he ate nothing at all during those days and when they were over he was famished the devil said to him if you are the son of god command this stone to become a loaf of bread jesus answered him it is written one does not live by bread alone then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and the devil said to him to you i will give their glory and all this authority for it has been given over to me and i give it to anyone i please if you then will worship me it will all be yours jesus answered him it is written worship the lord your god and serve only him then the devil took him to jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple saying to him if you are the son of god throw yourself down from here for it is written he will command his angels concerning you to protect you and on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against the stone jesus answered him it is said do not put the lord your god to the test when the devil had finished every test he departed from him until an opportune time this is the gospel of the lord you in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen please be seated a wandering ukrainian was my grandfather aged just two years old his parents took the huge decision to leave behind their life in odessa to escape the chaos and violence of the 1918 russian revolution and the pogroms discovering by a lucky accident that the people smugglers they had planned to use simply took your money let you out of the city and shot you they decided to resort to their own initiative my baby grandfather and his mother crossed the river in a boat and the father waited for the cold winter to come and at night walked towards freedom across the frozen niesta to be reunited with his family [Music] from there they built a life again in danzig then a german-speaking free city they got the business going they bought a house and they found some precious stability security and peace only a mere 20 years later to have to do the same thing all over again my grandfather came to study law in the uk in 1933 as the nazis began to make it difficult for jews to attend university and his parents escaped in 1939 as the dancing jewish community sold its synagogue and all the property it had to allow its members to flee and in the united kingdom they started once again from nothing i was lucky enough as a little boy only to experience the happy ending of this long and arduous story visiting my swiss grandmother surrounded by the warm bubble of heavily accented english and the odd bit of european languages as she spoke with friends who had made similar journeys and had found a new life in london safe at last but while this story is genealogically so close to me we are after all only talking about my grandfather it has always also seemed so remote from my own experience as someone who is so at home here so secure so well provided for and yet as the last couple of weeks have shown only too starkly it is not at all a distant legend for today once again that very same part of the world finds itself convulsed by violence as countless thousands experience in our own time the oppression the sheer terror of approaching war and the heartbreaking decisions about whether to stay or to go that my own family knew 100 years ago war in ukraine has reacquainted all of us with the fragility of the lives that we enjoy and it is for that reason that the first reading we heard today taken from the book of deuteronomy seems so apt to me the occasion is the celebration of the firstfruits one of the happiest times of the year full of the promise of food and plenty and more to come not a very lenten reading you might say but what is interesting is the affirmation every israelite is commanded to proclaim right in the midst of the joy of all their celebrations they are to say a wandering aramian was my ancestor he went down into egypt and lived there as an alien few in number and there he became a great nation mighty and populous when the egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us by imposing hard labor on us we cried to the lord the god of our ancestors the lord heard our voice and saw our affliction our toil and our oppression the lord brought us out of egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm with a terrifying display of power and with signs and wonders and he brought us into this place and gave us this land a land flowing with milk and honey the israelites are called upon in the midst of all the plenty of firstfruits to tell a story of suffering a story of escape a story that reminds them that this could all have been so very different and for me this peculiar combination that god commands a celebration which is also a recollection of suffering teaches us much about human life and also much about the keeping of lent and first you see the joy of celebration and the fragility of life might seem like diametrically opposed surely the possibility of suffering can only cloud any joy that we might be able to experience but this festival in deuteronomy i think seems to suggest that in a sense the two belong together contemplating the horror of war in ukraine today or the terrors that my own ancestors must have faced twice over reminds me of the sheer triviality of so much that i spend my time worrying about the petty disappointments the jealousies the gaps in my life all of these exist and we need to admit their reality but somehow amidst all that we need to uncover the greater gratitude for simply being here at all like that ancient israelite offering a basket of first fruits and giving thanks for this day's peace and stability and enough to eat knowing the fragility of our life can actually increase our joy for what we have on the other hand rejoicing in what we have without an awareness of human fragility turns joy which is a good thing into complacency and carelessness we become self-absorbed putting our own priorities first irrespective of the cost to others we are happy to enjoy cheap gas from russia and overlook the corruption of the regime or cheap clothes from china while overlooking the human rights abuses visited on those who stitch them for us unsatisfying joy is replaced by a shallow greed always hungry for more when simon sharma wrote and presented his monumental history of the jewish people he said he was determined not to tell the story as just a string of tragedies and though it could justifiably be told that way but he wanted to pick up the joy the humor and the endurance that had kept his community alive over three thousand years of various forms of invasion persecution murder and oppression and this distinctive approach to life itself shaped by festivals like we heard of in deuteronomy an approach which is shot through with both joy and fragility has much to teach us as we attempt to understand the spirit of lent are many ways of looking at the three temptations in the desert that the devil offers to jesus but one of them is this each temptation presents jesus with an opportunity to pursue joy by opting out of the struggle of human existence you don't have to worry about food anymore you can just magic it up from the stones you don't have to worry about being controlled by others anymore i'll make you king of the world you don't have to worry about suffering anymore you can even defy the laws of gravity and which one of us hasn't thought one day if only i won the lottery i would do this or if only i was in charge of things i would do that or if only i wasn't limited by my mind or my body or my illness or whatever it is i would do the other we all enjoy playing with those ideas yet in the wilderness jesus rejects them for the fantasies that they are a life without needs a life without obligations a life without constraints is just no form of human life at all in today's gospel it's the devil who offers the answer to all your problems in some kind of delusional fantasy land where nothing really matters but it's jesus who chooses to stay in the wilderness to embody in that place of emptiness and lack and struggle goodness confidence hope endurance and even in his barbed responses a certain kind of humor and dry wit it's just too easy i'm afraid to think of lent as a season of self-inflicted misery a season of performative weeping and wailing and beating ourselves up but this year all that stuff given the all-too-real sufferings of so many people today feels to me like a bit of a self-indulgence spending too much of our energy wallowing in our own personal unworthiness while others are crouching in bomb shelters seems almost obscene rather i wonder if the call on us this lent is to just to be more honest about this sour sweet life that we live to allow our lent disciplines not to become obsessional or a vehicle for our own sense of achievement but simply to allow us to pair back our life a bit to reveal our joy for what we have and our care for those in this fragile world who today are having that joy ripped from their lives in a row of gravestones covered in hebrew abbreviations in bushy cemetery stands that of my grandfather michael kramer llb it says proud of the degree he qualified for after only three months on an intense english course it was a short life in the end of only 44 years two in odessa 15 in danzig 27 in london a refugee twice over found in this country peace at last it's impossible to say what he would have felt or wanted if he could see the news today but i like to imagine that he would have picked up that great hebrew bible theme that we have been exploring this morning remember that you were a slave in the land of egypt be grateful for the precious gift of life that you have and care for all those from whom it is being stolen today there is a retiring collection today for the disasters emergency committee appeal for ukraine there is information in the pew sheet about how to give online please give anything you can in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen yes we believe in one god the father the almighty maker of heaven and earth of all that is seen and unseen we believe in one lord jesus christ the only son of god eternally begotten of the father god from god light from light true god from true god begotten not made of one being with the father through him all things were made for us and for our salvation he came down from heaven was incarnate from the holy spirit and the virgin mary and was made man for our sake he was crucified under pontius pilate he suffered death and was buried on the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the father he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end we believe in the holy spirit the lord the giver of life who proceeds from the father and the son who with the father and the son is worshiped and glorified who has spoken through the prophets we believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come amen let us pray lord as we walk with your son in the wilderness bless your church in the service of the world strengthen justin our archbishop and the whole anglican communion and especially today the anglican church of korea that we may bring the good news of your son to all nations lord in your mercy hear our prayer lord deepen the spirit of prayer in the diocese of canterbury bless rose bishop of dover and emma bishop at lambeth give us a love which calls us knows us and sends us to love the world with openness and generosity lord in your mercy hear our prayer lord in this time of war in ukraine guide the leaders of the nations in the ways of freedom justice and truth teach those who bear arms on behalf of their nation that they may have discipline and discernment courage and compassion give to the wounded and the captive the grieving and the homeless the knowledge of your love lord in your mercy hear our prayer lord deepen the spirit of service in our communities that through offering of our time and love to one another nobody may feel abandoned or marginalized lord in your mercy hear our prayer lord we pray for your healing in this our suffering world that all peoples may find health and wholeness in you lord in your mercy hear our prayer lord we remember before you all those who have died that they may know rest and joy in your presence forever lord in your mercy hear our prayer in a moment of silence let us offer our own prayers to the lord merciful father accept these prayers for the sake of your son our savior jesus christ amen [Music] foreign [Music] is [Music] is [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] you see [Music] is [Music] oh is [Music] since we are justified by faith we have peace with god through our lord jesus christ who has given us access to his grace the peace of the lord be always with you offer each other by gesture a sign of peace [Music] is [Music] see [Music] so so so so so so [Music] god of mercy and compassion your word calls us home to faith and love accept all we offer you this day in the name of jesus christ the lord amen the lord be with you lift up your hearts let us give thanks to the lord our god it is indeed right and good to give you thanks and praise almighty god and everlasting father through jesus christ your son for in these forty days you lead us into the desert of repentance that through a pilgrimage of prayer and discipline we may grow in grace and learn to be your people once again through fasting prayer and acts of service you bring us back to your generous heart through study of your holy word you open our eyes to your presence in the world and free our hands to welcome others into the radiant splendor of your love as we prepare to celebrate the easter feast with joyful hearts and minds we bless you for your mercy and join with saints and angels forever praising you and singing [Music] so [Music] sorry [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] is [Music] next is [Applause] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] we praise and bless you loving father through jesus christ our lord and as we obey his command send your holy spirit that broken bread and wine out poured may be for us the body and blood of your dear son on the night before he died he had supper with his friends and taking bread he praised you he broke the bread gave it to them and said take eat this is my body which is given for you do this in remembrance of me when the supper was ended he took the cup of wine again he praised you gave it to them and said drink this all of you this is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me so father we remember all that jesus did in him we plead with confidence his sacrifice made once for all upon the cross bringing before you the bread of life and cup of salvation we proclaim his death and resurrection until he comes in glory praise to you lord jesus died help us to work together for that day when your kingdom comes and justice and mercy will be seen in all the earth look with favor on your people gather us in your loving arms and bring us with the blessed virgin mary and all the saints to feast at your table in heaven through christ and with christ and in christ in the unity of the holy spirit all honor and glory are yours so loving father forever and ever are men as we join our prayers with the church universal say we say each in our own language the prayer that jesus taught us 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 for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever amen every time we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim the lord's death until he comes jesus is the lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world blessed are those who are called to his supper lord i am not worthy to receive you but only say the word and i shall be healed um [Music] is [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] is [Music] is [Music] jesus [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] foreign [Music] is [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] one [Music] [Music] let's spray lord god you have renewed us with the living bread from heaven by it you nourish our faith increase our hope and strengthen our love teach us always to hunger for him who is the true and living bread and enable us to live by every word that proceeds from out of your mice through jesus christ our lord amen almighty god we thank you for feeding us with the body and blood of your son jesus christ through him we offer you our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice send us out to the power of your spirit to live and work to your praise and glory amen [Music] foreign [Music] foreign foreign foreign [Music] foreign foreign [Music] christ give you grace to grow in holiness to deny yourselves take up your cross and follow him and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be among you and remain with you always amen go in the peace of christ [Music] so [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Canterbury Cathedral

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Keywords: Worship, faith, pray, prayer, church, holy, eucharist, Christian, Anglican, Episcopal, cathedral, Canterbury, England, mother, communion, archbishop, saint, service, online, leo, cat, cats, black prince, becket, tiger, st paul, durham, Lincoln, notre dame

Id: y3_Is6xDdUk

Length: 78min 37sec (4717 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 06 2022