Cross in the Marketplace

Dave Broom

Description

A series of resources & complete liturgies for the major services of Holy Week, by a former Sacristan of Iona Abbey. What would it have been like to be a pilgrim on the crowded streets of Jerusalem for that fateful Passover? What can we learn from the man with the water jug, or the Roman centurion? What can the woman with the alabaster jar tell us, or the young man who ran away naked as Roman soldiers tried to seize him? How did that first Easter change their lives? This book began life in community on Iona, & includes an Easter pilgrimage.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian worship
• Christian mysticism

Informations

• Publié par: Wild Goose Publications
• Date de parution: 14 mars 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849522977
• Langue: English

Extrait

There was something in the air .
There were rumours circulating, graffiti on the walls,
strange tales of what had been happening .
Messengers shouting in the street …
What would it have been like to be a pilgrim on the crowded streets of Jerusalem for that fateful Passover? A week that ended with a King – a convicted enemy of the state – dying on a cross on the town garbage heap.
Can we see through the eyes of those who were there, the people who witnessed the events? What can we learn from the man with the water jug, or the Roman centurion? What can the woman with the alabaster jar tell us, or the young man who ran away naked as Roman soldiers tried to seize him? What is their story? What did it all mean to them? How did that first Easter change their lives?
The Cross in the Marketplace is a series of resources and complete liturgies for the major services of Holy Week. The book began life in community on Iona, and includes an Easter pilgrimage. You can use the book in your church or house group or read it on your own, to deepen your experience of Easter – and inspire action.

Dave Broom is a teacher and a former member of the Iona Community’s Resident Group on Iona, where he worked as Sacristan in Iona Abbey.
www.ionabooks.com
THE CROSS IN THE MARKETPLACE
An Easter resource book from Iona

Dave Broom

www.ionabooks.com
Copyright © 2014 Dave Broom
First published 2014
Wild Goose Publications
4th Floor, Savoy House, 140 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3DH, UK
www.ionabooks.com
Wild Goose Publications is the publishing division of the Iona Community.
Scottish Charity No. SC003794. Limited Company Reg. No. SC096243.
ePub: ISBN 978-1-84952-297-7
Mobipocket: ISBN 978-1-84952-296-0
PDF: ISBN 978-1-84952-295-3
Cover image adapted from photo © Warren Goldswain
All rights reserved. Apart from reasonable personal use on the purchaser’s own system and related devices, no part of this document or file(s) may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Non-commercial use: The material in this book may be used non-commercially for worship and group work without written permission from the publisher. Small sections of the book may be printed out and in such cases please make full acknowledgement of the source, and report usage to the CCLI or other copyright organisation.
For any commercial use, permission in writing must be obtained in advance from the publisher.
Dave Broom has asserted his right in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
General contents
Introduction
The shape of the book and some suggestions on how to use it
An Easter pilgrimage
Palm Sunday: a service of commitment
Maundy Thursday: a ceremony of foot-washing, Agape or Communion, the stripping of the church, and a vigil for ‘the disappeared’ and for prisoners of conscience
The stations of the Cross
Seven meditations for Good Friday: people on the margins
Good Friday dispersed worship: a service of lamentation
Holy Saturday: a service of waiting and hope
Easter Sunday: a dawn service (‘He is not here’)
Sources and acknowledgements
Contents in detail
Introduction
The shape of the book and some suggestions on how to use it
PART I: AN EASTER PILGRIMAGE
An Easter pilgrimage:
Introduction
Every year they went to Jerusalem
Stop 1: The voices of experienced pilgrims (the MacLeod Centre)
Stop 2: The voices of young people (Iona Village Hall)
Stop 3: The voice of Zebedee (Martyrs’ Bay)
Stop 4: The voices of Roman soldiers (the Crossroads)
Stop 5: The voices of different generations (the Machair)
Stop 6: Voices for justice and peace (Port Ban)
Stop 7: The voices of farmers (the road through Maol farm)
Stop 8: Caesarea Philippi and the voices of questioners (the bench overlooking the Nunnery and the Sound of Iona)
Stop 9: The voices of women (the Nunnery)
Stop 10: The woman at the well (the well outside the Abbey)
Stop 11: The voices of pilgrims (the Cloisters)
PART II: HOLY WEEK
Palm Sunday: a service of commitment
Maundy Thursday: a ceremony of foot-washing, Agape or Communion, the stripping of the church, and a vigil for ‘the disappeared’ and for prisoners of conscience
The stations of the Cross:
Introduction
Jesus is condemned to death (the voice of the woman with the alabaster jar)
Jesus carries his cross (the voice of the man with the water jar)
Jesus falls the first time (the voice of the High Priest’s servant)
Jesus meets his mother (the voice of the landlord)
Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry the cross (the voice of Simon of Cyrene)
Veronica wipes the face of Jesus (the voice of Veronica)
Jesus falls for the second time (the voice of Judas Iscariot)
Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem (the voice of the woman caught in adultery)
Jesus falls for the third time (the voice of John Mark)
Jesus is stripped of his garments (the voice of the High Priest’s servant-girl)
Jesus is nailed to the cross (the voice of Barabbas)
Jesus dies on the cross (the voices of the Roman Centurion and the Roman Sergeant)
Jesus is taken down from the cross (the voice of Martha)
Jesus is laid in the tomb (the voice of Joseph of Arimathea)
Seven meditations for Good Friday: people on the margins:
Introduction
Where soldiers curse
Reflection
Netball in Ghana
Reflection
The margin and the centre
Reflection
Breaking the mould
Reflection
Building boats
Reflection
Love at the end of life
Reflection
Rebuilding hope in a garden
Reflection
Good Friday dispersed worship: a service of lamentation
Holy Saturday: a service of waiting and hope
Easter Sunday: a dawn service (‘He is not here’)
Sources and acknowledgements
To all those who have companioned me on the Iona journey over the years, particularly those staff, volunteers, guests and day-trippers who shared the 2012 season

I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the centre of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap; at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek (or shall we say in English, in Bantu and in Afrikaans?) at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble.
Because that is where He died. And that is what He died about, and that is where Christ’s people ought to be …
George MacLeod, Founder of the Iona Community
Introduction
I became aware of politics early in the 1980s. President Reagan’s decision to site cruise missiles at Greenham Common and Margaret Thatcher’s resolution to close the coal mines galvanised my political consciousness and that of many of the people around me – at school we talked of little else. The Cold War was looking hotter, The Sun newspaper pronounced ‘Gotcha’ as the Royal Navy sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano with a loss of 323 lives, and whole swathes of traditional working-class communities were facing the future with fear.
I’d listened to a lot of punk records, been on a few demos and worked voluntarily for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. But I was wrestling with a question: how does all this relate to my experience of the Church? I’d experienced a lot of Christianity that seemed completely unrelated to the real world of poverty, unemployment, racism, war, exploitation and nuclear weapons, and a lot of punk bands and activists who seemed very engaged. I’d been seeking authenticity from the Church and I couldn’t find it. But there was a great authenticity in those 1980s’ punk bands who exhorted you to ‘Pay no more than £2.99 for this record!’. Punk famously had a do-it-yourself attitude: organise your own gigs, fly-post the details, press your own records, bypass the music industry and its exploitation (and links to the arms trade). It seemed to me that this was where Christianity should be at! Why was the religion of Jesus – the wandering mendicant, the radical firebrand, the thorn in the flesh of the authorities and powers of his time – so tied up with moneyed, right-wing big business?
Two things happened to me: I spent a few weeks working in a Franciscan community, where I read Jim Wallis’ autobiography The New Radical, and I came across the Iona Community at Greenbelt Festival.
I first worked on Iona in 1989. It was the first full season of the newly built MacLeod Centre and I actually met George MacLeod when he came up for Community Week (I was very young and a bit overawed!). I liked what the Iona Community was saying and what it stood for. I remember John Harvey was Leader at the time. The week he came up we had a meeting about what we should do to resist the poll tax, meanwhile justice and peace worker Helen Steven was busy trying to take the UK government to court over introducing the tax to Scotland before it came into force in England – contrary to the Act of Union. The Community had an unashamed commitment to CND, among other grassroots campaigns. Finally I had found a place where people were not prepared to disconnect their spirituality and their politics, their work and their worship.
The gospels when I read them at the time – really read them – seemed to me to have the same vibrancy and authenticity that I had found in the protest movements and punk. I could imagine St Mark in an army surplus combat jacket telling you to ‘Pay no more than 3 shekels for this story of Jesus!’ The gospels are about real people trying to understand who Jesus is. They are about a God who shows his option for the poor: who spends his time with the outcasts of society and those on the margins. A God completely connected to human life in all its rawness and pain. A God who comes to us in Jesus, born in a stable, cared for by a