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Welcome to Westminster Abbey's Lent and Easter reflections.

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On Palm Sunday, we begin with the Gospel according to Mark,
chapter eleven, verses one to eleven. 

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When they were approaching Jerusalem,
at Bethphage and Bethany,

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near the Mount of Olives,

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he sent two of his disciples and said to them,

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‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately
as you enter it,

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you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden;
untie it and bring it.

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If anyone says to you, “Why are you doing this?”
just say this,

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“The Lord needs it and will send it back
here immediately.”

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They went away and found a colt tied near a door,
outside in the street.

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As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them,

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‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’

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They told them what Jesus had said;
and they allowed them to take it.

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Then they brought the colt to Jesus and
threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it.

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Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others
spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields.

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Then those who went ahead and those who
followed were shouting,

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‘Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the
name of the Lord!

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Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

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Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

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Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple;

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and when he had looked around at everything,
as it was already late,

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he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

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Palm Sunday is a day of noise and action.

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Several decades later, the Jewish historian Josephus
would estimate

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that over 2 million people were present in
Jerusalem for Passover.

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Even accounting for hyperbole, Jesus would have been
surrounded by a great company of people,

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for now celebrating Christ’s deeds of power.

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Ultimately he will be scorned,

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and those who follow him, will often be mocked
in the eyes of the world.

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Above Westminster Abbey’s Great West Door is a statue
of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

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a Lutheran pastor executed by the Nazis in 1945
for his resistance to Hitler.

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Bonhoeffer knew in his own context that in order
to accompany Christ,

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the Nazi ideology of death and annihilation
had to be challenged and exposed.

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The Body of Christ, he claimed, had to be a visible body,
or it was no body at all.

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It couldn’t exist in the abstract.

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“When Christ calls a man”, he wrote,
“he bids him come and die.”

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The Christian life is a Palm Sunday procession,

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acclaiming Christ and his Kingdom, witnessing to a new world.

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Bonhoeffer writes, “Having taken their life from them,

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[Jesus] sought to confer on them a new life,

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a life so perfect and complete that he gave
them the gift of his cross.”

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That is the mystery of love which we encounter
this Holy Week.

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O Lord Jesus Christ,

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who on this day didst enter the holy and rebellious city
where thou wast to die:

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enter into our hearts, we beseech thee, and subdue
them wholly to thyself.

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And as thy faithful disciples blessed thy coming,
and spread their garments in the way,

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covering it with palm branches,

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make us ready to lay at thy feet all we have and are,

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and to bless thee, who comest in the name of the Lord,

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and art our God now and always, and unto the ages of ages.

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Amen.