麻豆约拍

HEADMASTER:

Welcome to Rugby School, and to our school chapel.聽 For the past fifteen months, this big, beautiful, beloved building has been unable to serve its fullest purpose.聽 The 850 boys and girls whose custom is to start the day here in reflection and worship have been participating instead in online services.聽 The uplifting music of our wonderful choir has been mediated to us by way of TV screens.聽聽 Our Chaplain has been preaching to a video camera.聽 Yes, we鈥檝e kept in touch 鈥� not just with our immediate community, but with a wider group of friends and family all around the world.聽

But many, many people have had a really tough time.聽 The whole world has been through a season of turmoil; many nations are still struggling, and even in our own land the horizon of freedom which we hoped by now to have crossed, has receded again.聽 We all look ahead with excitement - but also with apprehension and uncertainty.聽 The future is filled with hope, but as we look back, we see a road that wound a tortuous way through fear, loss and grief.

Our service this morning will reflect that experience.聽 Our prayers, words and music will follow a clear trajectory, beginning in solemnity, mourning and sorrow; moving through determination and resolution, to end with hope and commission.聽 Our theme is one which fills the pages of the Bible and which has been part of the experience of God鈥檚 people throughout their long history 鈥� the theme of Exile and Return.

HYMN: O God our help in ages past

READER 1:

We have gathered in the sight of God
To remember times of loss and sorrow,
to give thanks for renewed hope
and to seek his strength for the road ahead.
We have come to share memory and love,
weakness and strength.

Together let us seek his presence.

READER 2:

Come among us, creator God,
you who cast the planets into space
and cradle the sparrow in her nest;

READER 1:

Come among us, loving God,
you who bless the poor and the broken,
you who stand beside the sad and the strong;

READER 2:

Come among us, God of light,
you who speak in the silence
and shine in the darkness;

READER 1:

Blessed are you, Lord our God, redeemer and King of all.聽 From the waters of chaos you drew forth the world, and in your great love fashioned us in your image.聽 Through the resurrection of your Son from death you gave new life to your people.聽 May we rejoice in this new day that you have made, and may the light of Christ ever dawn on our hearts, as we offer our sacrifice of thanks and praise.聽 To you be glory and praise for ever.聽

ALL: Amen.

CHAPLAIN:

In the Spring of 2020, our life was turned upside down.聽 Across the country 鈥� and across the world 鈥� life changed overnight.聽 Here in our school, with six hours鈥� notice, we scattered to our homes for what, with hindsight, we now call 鈥渢he first lockdown鈥�.聽 That evening I took up my video camera and, through a silent and abandoned school campus, walked here to chapel to record the following day鈥檚 service.聽 Past empty classrooms I walked, where empty chairs faced empty whiteboards; past boarding houses silent and dark, sports pitches barren, and even the 鈥淪todge鈥� 鈥� which is what we call the school tuck shop 鈥� bereft of all human presence.聽 How deserted lay this little city of ours, once so full of people. A scene repeated a thousand times in every village, town and city in our land.

But this morning I want to take you back even further.聽 Back in time, in fact, by 2,600 years.聽 Back to the sixth century BC, and to the magnificent empire of Babylon, which covered a vast area of what we now call the Middle East.聽 Under their leader, Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian warriors had conquered many of the smaller nations around them, among them the tiny nation of Judah.聽 From the name of their land, Judah, its people got their name 鈥� the Jews.聽 Neither the land nor the people were ever far from suffering.聽 In bitter, broken sentences, the Bible records the events of the year 605BC:

READER 3:

Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon marched against Jerusalem with his whole army. He encamped outside the city and built siege works all around it.聽聽 By the ninth day of the fourth month the famine in the city had become so severe that there was no food for the people to eat.聽 Then the city wall was broken through, and the whole army fled at night, though the Babylonians were surrounding the city.聽 The Babylonian army pursued the king and overtook him in the plains of Jericho. All his soldiers were separated from him and scattered, and he was captured.

The commander of the guard carried into exile the people who remained in the city, along with the rest of the populace.聽

So Judah went into captivity, away from her land.

鈥�
CHAPLAIN:

Babylon didn鈥檛 just conquer the people of Judah, they enslaved them.聽 Dragged from their homes, the Jews were taken to Babylon, as slaves, as exiles.聽 It was a lockdown 鈥� a lockdown of the harshest and cruellest kind.聽 Meanwhile, Jerusalem, their holy and beloved city, seat of the temple of Solomon, representing the presence of God in their midst 鈥� Jerusalem lay silent, deserted, forlorn. No wonder they wrote some of the saddest songs ever written:

ANTHEM: Rivers of Babylon (arr. Ken Burton)

CHAPLAIN:

It would have been easy for the Jewish exiles, as they wept beside the Babylonian rivers, to give up hope.聽 But they came to realise that if they were to get through their period of lockdown, they must do it together.聽 They had to depend upon each other; they had to find new ways of being a community.聽 If they lost their sense of identity and belonging, they would be lost indeed.聽 If each person turned inward and sought only his or her own comfort and wellbeing, the community would be doomed.聽

God gave them clear instructions to this effect, through the prophet Jeremiah, who wrote a letter for all the exiles to read.聽聽 We can read the text of his letter today 鈥� it鈥檚 recorded in the Bible:

鈥�
READER 4:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:聽 鈥淏uild houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.聽 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.聽 And seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.鈥澛� This is what the Lord says: 鈥淲hen seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfil my good promise to bring you back.聽 For I know the plans I have for you,鈥� declares the Lord, 鈥減lans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.鈥�

CHAPLAIN:

The Jewish exiles obeyed God鈥檚 command.聽 They committed themselves to one another, and even while they mourned the loss of many of their number, they stayed strong.聽 Their focus on getting through the challenges of the present was powered by their hope of a better future.聽 They didn鈥檛 yield to despair.

As we reflect on the last fifteen months, we have to acknowledge that it鈥檚 been a rather different experience from the Jews鈥� seventy-year captivity in Babylon 鈥� but we can see some of the same principles at work.聽 Neighbours drawing together, acts of kindness and service, sacrificial caring and quiet heroism.聽 A new way of being a community has emerged.聽

Our fifteen months鈥� journey 鈥� now, please God, entering its last few weeks 鈥� has given us a window of understanding into the experience of exile, suffused as it has been with a longing for return.聽 We have vowed to give of our best to the country through which we鈥檝e travelled, while always holding the lamp of hope for the country that will be the home we long for.

HYMN: I vow to thee my country

CHAPLAIN:

The image at the heart of that much-loved hymn is an idea which fills the pages of the Bible, and which has provided hope and comfort to God鈥檚 people for centuries 鈥� that we live as sojourners in a land not our own, aliens and strangers on the earth, having here no enduring city but awaiting the city that is to come, the shining city on a hill in the new heaven, on the new earth.聽

鈥�
So the Jewish exiles of old had to make the commitment to serve and support one another; and then came the promise of a way back to their old life 鈥� to normality.聽 Sometimes it must have seemed that that future would never come; that the goalposts kept moving and the horizon receding.聽 But they were able to trust the promise made by their leader.聽 The promise of a future and a hope.聽 A road map, perhaps.聽 Certainly, a road home:

ANTHEM: The Road 麻豆约拍 (Stephen Paulus)

READER 5:

Let us pray.

Hear our prayer, Almighty God, and mercifully grant that our life on earth may truly be a road that leads us home.聽 May we never be so busy with material things and values that we lose sight of the life of the spirit.聽

READER 6:

Give hope, we pray, to those who live in the shadow of war; may the leaders of the nations be willing to listen to one another and work for an end to conflict; have mercy upon them, and give them the blessing of peace.

READER 5:

Hear our prayer, Almighty God, for this school and for all places of learning.聽 May they be places of discovery and growth, preparing young people for lives of fulfilment, achievement and service.聽 May those whose education has been disrupted find the help they need.聽

READER 6:

Hear our prayer for all who have suffered, and those who suffer still.聽 We call to mind those known to us who are suffering in body, mind or heart, and we ask that you strengthen and encourage those who care for them.聽 Open your arms, loving God, to greet those whose road has led through sorrow, and with your gentle voice call those who have wandered from their way home.

READER 5:

As we journey on together, through this world, toward our eternal home, may we see your plans unfolding around us and within; your plan to give us a future and a hope.聽 So may we learn, with joy, to sing the Lord鈥檚 song in this strange land, until our long exile shall end and we return with joyful celebration, in the presence of our loved ones gone before, to the eternal city and our everlasting home.聽

ALL:
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 them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil,
For thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory,
For ever and ever
Amen.

CHAPLAIN:

The Jews in exile had been promised that after 70 years their captivity would come to an end.聽 Sure enough, the falling and rising of world superpowers happened in those days just as it does today, and in the year 539BC, the Emperor Cyrus the Great of Persia led his armies victorious into Babylon.聽 Cyrus was a leader of more liberal principles than his Babylonian forerunners, and proved himself sympathetic to the plight of the captives.聽 It鈥檚 a long and complex story, of course, but this reading from the Bible, from the book of Ezra, shows how Cyrus not only permitted but positively encouraged the exiles to return:

READER 7:

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfil the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of the king to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing:
鈥淭his is what Cyrus king of Persia says:
鈥溾�楾he Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah.聽 Any of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, and may their God be with them.聽 And in any place where exiles may now be living, the people are to provide them with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.鈥欌��

CHAPLAIN:

When the captivity of God鈥檚 people was turned to freedom, they were, the Bible tells us, like dreamers.聽 They couldn鈥檛 believe it.聽 Their voices were raised in laughter and song.聽 鈥淭he Lord has done great things for us,鈥� they sang, 鈥淥f which we are glad鈥�.

A former pupil of our school, Richard Lloyd, was a musician and composer who has recently died after a long, rich, creative and full life.聽 In his memory, and also to reflect the spirit of joyful celebration which the end of exile 鈥� and the end of lockdown 鈥� bring, the choir will sing his setting of the canticle 鈥淛ubilate鈥�.聽 Be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands:

ANTHEM: Jubilate (Richard Lloyd)

CHAPLAIN:

So the liberated exiles returned, bit by bit, a few at a time, in a gradual easing of lockdown measures, cautiously but irreversibly returning to Jerusalem, their ancient capital.聽 But it wasn鈥檛 a question of just walking in and picking up where they鈥檇 left off.聽 There was work to be done 鈥� serious work.聽 Jerusalem had been besieged and destroyed, its wooden buildings burned and its stone ones demolished.聽 And then it had been left deserted for 60 years.聽 There was much rebuilding to be done.

Through sheer hard work the walls began to rise again from the ground.聽 And the wonderful thing began to happen 鈥� as the community built the walls, so the walls built the community.聽 This group of people, beaten down and oppressed, with few resources and nothing but hope in their hearts, got together in the common task of rebuilding, setting aside their differences, embracing a common cause and the common good, and emerging not just with strong buildings, but with stronger relationships, stronger hearts, and an infinitely stronger future than they ever could have imagined.聽 Without a doubt, they built back better.

We too face a bright and hope-filled future, though we will never forget that the last 15 months have held sadness and loss for so many.聽 Let鈥檚 hear a few lines from the Bible describing the rededication of the foundations of the temple in Jerusalem, in the year 537BC:

READER 2:

鈥淲hen the builders had completed the foundations, the priests and musicians took their places and sang, 鈥淧raise to the Lord for he is good; his love endures for ever!鈥澛� And all the people gave a great shout of praise, and the sound was heard from far away.聽

But the elders wept, for they remembered what was lost.

CHAPLAIN:

They rejoiced that day, in their ancient, beloved and symbolic capital - Jerusalem.聽 As we come to the end of our act of worship today, there鈥檚 only one hymn we could possibly sing to finish.聽 When we planned this service, we thought this would be the first Sunday after the lifting of lockdown restrictions, and that we鈥檇 have a chapel full of young people belting out one of their favourite hymns at the tops of their voices.聽 Sadly, that wasn鈥檛 to be.聽 So Rugby School鈥檚 Chapel choir will sing this hymn that speaks of the one whose coming brings all exile to an end; by whose Spirit we build and in whom we are rebuilt; the one who promises to make our hearts his home.

HYMN: Jerusalem

CHAPLAIN:

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through; may your spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.聽 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

May the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, be upon you this day and for ever more.
ALL: Amen

ORGAN: VOLUNTARY:聽 Chorale Fantasia on The Old Hundreth聽 (Parry)