Spillbeans

Family Worship for Palm Sunday 2020

Today we begin our journey through Holy week towards Easter. You are encouraged to go through this service with your family in your house or perhaps on the phone or computer screen.

Rev Gayle Taylor at Newbattle has been working with us in the Spill the Beans team and with Fischy Music to provide a daily resource for families throughout Holy Week from today through to Easter Sunday.

Worshipping at home we join with the whole church family of all ages and in all places at this key time in the Christian calendar.

Welcome, let us worship God.

Call to Worship

Say together:

We come to worship.
We follow the crowd,
shouting Hosanna!
Praise God!
We join in the triumph of today,
ready to sing,
to shout,
to act!

Praise

A traditional hymn for Palm Sunday: 

 

Bible Reading

Read together Matthew chapter 21, verses 1-11 either from your own Bible or you can find the text here.

Reflection

Gayle-reflection

Dramatised Reading

Gayle-drama

All-Age Prayer

Dear God,
we are here to say hello,
we are here to tell you
that we love you,
we are here to say thank you
for the world.

We thank you
for rainbows,
for shooting stars,
for palm trees,
for colts,
for colourful clothing
for people.

We thank you
for all the people
who love us
and for all the people who
make time to be with us.

We thank you for Jesus,
for sending him to teach us
how to live.

We thank you for the
sunshine and the rain
we thank you for holidays from our normal routine.

We are sorry for those times
when we fail you,
we are glad
that you promise to forgive us
when we say sorry.

Help us, Lord, to learn from Jesus
and to try to love people as he did.
Amen.

Fischy Song and Activity

Hosanna

You will need: paper or plastic cups (two per child, green would be good), dried beans or rice, sticky tape, paper to wrap round the cups if plastic, crayons or felt pens, ribbons, self-stick stickers anything you like to decorate it with.

Give the children two of the paper cups and some of the beans or rice and get them to put them into one of the cups and then place the other cup on top, rim to rim. Help the children to tape the two cups securely together around the rims to create a shaker type instrument. Then cover the sticky tape with paper (if using plastic cups) to conceal.

Let the children then decorate their instrument with the stickers and pens. Further decoration can be added by giving the children strips of green ribbon which they could attach to their shaker with double sided tape and let dangle from each end of their shaker.

Talk about the story and the crowds who gathered to welcome Jesus. Discuss the different ways they welcomed Jesus (with palms and cloaks and by shouting Hosanna and so on). Tell the story once more and let the children accompany the parts about the crowd with their shakers.

Then talk with them about the different ways Jesus welcomed people and discuss how we might welcome people today just as Jesus did.

Sending

Jesus rode into the city
to cries of joy and exaltation.
We too cry hosanna!
We too race alongside the Son of David.
As we leave this time today,
God goes with us,
from triumphant chorus,
to the agony of the cross,
God goes with us,
every step of the way.
Amen.

Opening Salvo (30th June)

The whole mantle thing is interesting. We use it like a symbol because it is a symbol of course. When we pick up the mantle of someone before us, be it Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Nelson Mandela etc we talk as if we take on some of them, we want to be versions of them and do a version of what they did. Little mirror images.

Hmmmmm…

Elisha was always meant to be his own person. He wasn’t ever meant to be Elijah. Continue the story, the vision, the calling, but not be him. Elisha wasn’t to be a version of Elijah. he was to be himself because the story had been passed to him, the Spirit, the word: he was to tell it, speak it, be it. It was a new era.

The mantle was a symbol, not of the person, but the Spirit of God (for mantle can be translated as spirit): the energy of God has been reborn in a new person. No clones here. And a double share? Well, yes! The echo and memory of the old invested in the anxiety and enthusiasm of the new. That is one heck of a lot of power: memory and enthusiasm. You can do a lot with that.

Hymns and songs that might inform this passage? Incidental music? How would you read the passage to make it more of an encounter with God?

Lectionary Limbo

Just to let you know/remind/cause you hassle the lectionary readings through June have been swapped about a little in order to keep the OT story (which is the controlling story for us this time round) in chronological order. It means we've swapped this week with next week and then week three with week four. All the passages are there so if you wish to be strict with the lectionary just use the following week this sunday and use this week next week. (I've always been so clear in explaining things!)

The lectionary uses the OT passages in this season to support the others. We've chosen to let the other passages support the OT. It is such a good arc of stories you don't want to jump around too much. Sorry it is confuses but it keeps thing interesting. Perhaps no one has noticed of course...

Christmas Eve Words

Mary and the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-56)

Voice 1:
This is the hour
when God’s ‘Yes!’
to becoming human
is made real

This is the hour
when Mary’s ‘Yes!’
to be love’s handmaid
blesses the world

This is the hour
when our ‘Yes!’
to wait on God
let’s the light in

Voice 2:
“My heart praises the Lord;
my soul is glad because of God my Saviour,
for he has remembered me, his lowly servant!
From now on all people will call me happy,
because of the great things the Mighty God has done for me.
I say ‘Yes!’

Voice 1:
He will stretched out his mighty arm
and scattered the proud with all their plans.

Voice 2:
I say ‘Yes!’

Voice 1:
He will bring down mighty kings from their thrones,
and lift up the lowly.

Voice 2:
I say ‘Yes!’

Voice 1:
He will fill the hungry with good things,
and send the rich away with empty hands.

Voice 2:
I say ‘Yes!’

Voice 1:
Tonight is the hour
of God’s ‘Yes!’
to be born among us
to unbind the world and set it free
to become one of us

This is the hour
of incarnation
let us wait together
for God to put on skin

Refine to Re-Find

Here's another version of the reading offered in the material for tomorrow (you'll all have prepared for tomorrow by now, of course. I've just finished. Thanks Spill forthe idea. This is the developed verion for our own congregation's cuture and setting and liturgy. Its one of the crucial principles of Spill to edit material to suit your own culture and setting. This example is for new Kilpatrick in Bearsden.

We might also have a candle (the advent candle?) hidden under plasticene and a strip peeled away after each stanza. Still to work that one out.

Why this passage in the middle of Advent, why these words for a time of expectation, why these verses in a time when we are getting ready. Well maybe if we refine these words we will re-find what it is we do in advent.

Refine to re-find Advent:
I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me. The One is on the way
Prepare

Refine to re-find Advent:
Suddenly, out of the blue, the leader you’ve been looking for, the Lord whom you seek
Seek

Refine to re-find Advent:
Who can endure the day of his coming, who will be able to stand up to that coming, who can survive his appearance
Persevere

Refine to re-find Advent:
For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He’ll be like white-hot fire from the smelter’s furnace. He’ll be like the strongest soap at the laundry.
Renew

Refine to re-find Advent:
He’ll take his place as a refiner of silver, as a cleanser of dirty clothes and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver
Cleanse

Refine to re-find Advent:
He’ll scrub the Levite priests clean, refine them like gold and silver, until they’re fit for God, fit to present offerings to the Lord in righteousness
Purify

Refine to re-find Advent:
Prepare
Seek
Persevere
Renew
Cleanse
Purify

This is the prophet’s Advent invitation, how we fill our days of waiting in this advent time, getting ready for the truth of Jesus among us: refine to re-find the way of Emmanuel.

The Greatest

A: Who is the greatest?

B: Andy Murray
C: Jonnie Peacock
D: Jessica Ennis
B: Oscar Pistorius
C: Mo Farah
D: Tom Daley

A: Who is the greatest?

B: Josh Hutcherson
C: Florence Welsh
D: David Tennant
B: Daniel Radcliffe
C: Dan Flint
D: Dr Who

A: Who is the greatest?

B: Joseph
C: Moses
D: Noah
B: Mary
C: Gabriel
All: Jesus

The greatest
who became the least
and asked us to follow

A Call to worship

In the name of the Lord Jesus
the bread breaker
the light gatherer
cross carrier
welcome

May the peace of the Lord Jesus
the peace maker
and the temple disturber
friend of the sinner
and companion on the road
be with us all

Let us draw close to the Lord Jesus
the saviour
the healer
the teacher
and worship him

and ask ourselves
who do we say he is?

First Thoughts on Sunday

Feel free to comment and discuss here this Sunday's lectionary. A place for ideas and developing what is already in Spill the Beans. Here's a wee first thought to get the juices flowing...

In the echo of Jubilee
a strange thing happens
for those who shaped our lectionary
that pattern of texts we read each week
give us the beginning of a sacred monarchy
that rose up the greatest king Israel ever knew

Yet the story does not begin like that
It begins with a God who does not want the people to chose a monarchy
“It will not be good for you,” says God
“But if that is what you want, go ahead,
but don’t say I didn’t tell you so!”

In the echo of Jubilee
God goes into a huff

Complete Season One

The complete version of material from September to November has just been completed and will be posted here in the next wee while. we're just getting our paypal buttons sorted so you can make a donation and the material will be sent to an intray of your choice straigh away. So exciting.

Watch this space and as the mateirla begins to be used, feel free to make comment on what works and doesn't work so we can learn and improve and evolve and become the material that speaks into and tells the story of our own faith communities.