All Hallows Evening Prayer for Friday Evening (July 17, 2020)



Evening Prayer

The Service of Light

Jesus Christ is the light of the world.
A light no darkness can extinguish.


Joyous light of glory of the immortal Father,
Heavenly, holy, blessed Jesus Christ,
We have come to the setting of the Sun
And we look to the evening light.
We sing to God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
You are worthy of being praised with pure voices forever.
O Son of God, O Giver of life,
The universe proclaims your glory.

Thanksgiving

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.

We praise you, O Lord our God, Ruler of the universe!
Your word brings on the dusk of evening,
your wisdom creates both night and day.
You determine the cycles of time,
arrange the succession of the seasons,
and establish the stars in their heavenly courses.
Lord of the starry hosts is your name.
Living and eternal God,
rule over us always.
Blessed be the Lord,
whose word makes evening fall.
Amen.

Psalm 141 is sung and incense may be burned.


Like burning incense, O Lord,
let my rise to you.
Like burning incense, O Lord,
let my prayer rise to you.

1 I call out to you,
Come quickly to my aid.
My song cries out to you,
O listen to me now.
I raise my hands in off’ring to you.

Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)

2 Let me speak your truth;
watch over all I say.
Keep my thoughts on you;
let goodness rule my heart.
Keep me far from those who do harm.

Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
  
3 Never let me dine
with those who seek to harm.
Keep your holy ones
always at my side.
Plant your wisdom deep in my soul.

Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)

4 I look to you for help;
I seek your loving eyes.
Guard my life for you;
Spare me from all wrong.
Keep all evil far from my heart.

Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)

5 Glory be to God
and to God’s only Son,
glory to the Spirit,
three in one,
now and for ever. Amen.

Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)
Like burning incense, O Lord,
(Like burning incense, O Lord,)
let my prayer rise to you.
(let my prayer rise to you.)

Silence is kept.

Let the incense of our repentant prayer ascend before you, O Lord, and let your loving kindness descend upon us, that with purified minds we may sing your praises with the Church on earth and the whole heavenly host, and may glorify you forever and ever. Amen.

The Psalms

  
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
All you nations.
Extol him! Extol him!
All you peoples.
For great is his love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the Lord
endures forever.

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!
All you nations.
Extol him! Extol him!
All you peoples.
For great is his love toward us,
and the faithfulness of the Lord
endures forever.

Silence is kept.

Gracious God,
we praise you for your faithfulness
and pray that every nation may find your blessing
in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

The Proclamation of the Word

The Reading

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Luke
Glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

The Gospel of Christ
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

Homily

Love Is from God

Sounds easy, right? All we have to do to live our faith is to love God and to love our neighbour. The problem is that loving God and loving our neighbour do not come naturally. We cannot on our own love God, much less love our neighbour. If we could, the world would a whole lot better place than it is.

However, our natural inclination is not to love God or to love our neighbour. We are apt to pay God no mind, to act as if he doesn’t exist.

As for our neighbour, that may be a stretch. We may envy him—his house, his car, his wife. We may despise him, wish something unpleasant would happen to him. But love him. You’ve gotta be kidding. Love that loudmouth bigot, that snowflake.

No, loving God and loving our neighbour do not come naturally. But here Jesus is saying on loving God and loving our neighbour “hang all the law and the prophets”—in other words, everything that God requires from us as revealed in his word.

Luke records another conversation Jesus had with an expert in the law who was testing Jesus.  In this conversation Jesus identifies who is our neighbour. It was not just a fellow Jew. It was not just the guy next door who blows the clippings from his lawn into our driveway. It was a Samaritan whom the Jews despised. The feeling was mutual.

There had been bad blood between the Jews and Samaritans since the northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians and the Assyrians as was their custom after they defeated a kingdom moved most of the conquered population to another part of their empire, resettling the defeated kingdom with people from one of its other provinces. These people intermarried with the remaining Jewish population of the northern kingdom and adopted their religion.

This must have been mind-blowing to the expert in the law and to anyone else who was a present. A Samaritan? You got to be kidding? Did I hear you right, Jesus?

That is still pretty well our own response. You mean we’ve got to love them?!

We hear a lot about the tribalization of America these days. But that is not new. People have formed into tribes since a time in the past that was so long ago that we have no memory of it. Tribes have fought with each other, killed each other, and stolen each other’s women, livestock, and land. A lot of that still goes on in parts of the world today.

But Jesus is saying, we are not just to love those in our tribe. We must love those in other tribes too. We must love everybody!

As they say here in the South, “that’s a hard row to hoe!” At one time people used hoes to remove the weeds from their fields. Some rows between the young plants had more weeds than others. The weeds were harder to root up.

If loving God and loving our neighbour does not come naturally, how in the world are we going to do what Jesus is telling us to do?

God knows our weaknesses. He knows that we cannot love him or our neighbour on our own. He gives us power to help us do what we cannot do on our own.  He works within us to will and do what is pleasing to him. That power is grace.

When my oldest grandnephew was little, he had one of those plastic cars that toddlers can sit in and push around with their feet. He didn’t get very far on his own so much to his delight I would push him around the house.

Unlike my grandnephew we don’t even have the strength to budge the car on our own. We need God’s strength to move even a fraction of an inch. That’s how much we are dependent upon God’s grace. It not only gets us rolling but also keeps us rolling.

We can’t do anything to deserve the help God gives us. Nothing at all! God gives us help because he is a loving God. It is his nature.

I could have ignored my grandnephew, left him to struggle on his own, stuck in a corner, unable to go forward or backward, one way or another. Some folks might even argue that was the right thing to do.

But my grandnephew would not have learned about kindness, about love. He would not have learned that others cared for him. He would not have learned that there is a loving God who cares for him.

God sent Jesus into our world to show us that he is a loving God and cares for us. Jesus showed us not only by his miracles, his teaching, and example but also by his suffering and death on the cross.

I was reading last night about a young boy who threw himself between his four-year old sister and a dog that was about to attack her. He was brutally mauled by the dog but survived the attack. When asked why he had done what he did, his answer was, “I thought that it was better for me to die.” He chose to die in her place.

His brave act captures something of what motivated Jesus. He chose to die in our place for the sins of the whole world when rightfully the death should have been our own. He suffered a brutal death that the divide that separated us from God might be closed for ever. I don’t think that we grasp the magnitude of what he did or how important it is to our salvation.  

It shows how far God was willing to go for us, how much he loves us. He put himself in the person of his Son between his righteous anger and ourselves. He who is holiness itself turned his own wrath away from that which is unholy.

This knowledge, the knowledge that he cares deeply for us, and the knowledge that he gives us his help to do what is pleasing to him should spur us on to love him with our whole being and to love others with a sacrificial love like Jesus’. Loving God and love our neighbor does not come naturally. But what may be impossible for humans is not impossible for God. As John reminds us, “love is from God.”

Silence is kept.

The Gospel Canticle

  
My soul proclaims the Lord my God.
My spirit sings God’s praise,
Who looks on me, and lifts me up,
That gladness fills my days.

All nations now will share my joy;
For gifts God has outpoured.
This lowly one has been made great.
I magnify the Lord.

For those who fear the Holy One,
God’s mercy will not die.
Whose strong right arm puts down the proud,
And lifts the lowly high.

God fills the hungry with good things,
And sends the rich away;
The promise made to Abraham
Is filled to endless day.

Then let all nations praise our God,
The Father and the Son,
The Spirit blest, who lives in us,
While endless ages run.

Intercessions

Let us complete our evening prayer to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For peace from on high and for our salvation, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the welfare of all churches and for the unity of the human family, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For (name), our bishop, and (name), our pastor, and for all ministers of the Gospel, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For our nation, its government, and for all who serve and protect us, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For this city (town, university, monastery…). For every city and community, and for all those living in them, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the good earth which God has given us and for the wisdom and will to conserve it, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the safety of travelers, the recovery of the sick, the care of the destitute and the release of prisoners, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For an angel of peace to guide and protect us, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For a peaceful evening and a night free from sin, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For a Christian end to our lives and for all who have fallen asleep in Christ, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
In the communion of the Holy Spirit (and of all the saints), let us commend ourselves and one another to the living God through Christ our Lord.
To you, O Lord.

Free Prayer

In silent or spontaneous prayer all bring before God the concerns of the day.

The Collect

Lighten our darkness,
Lord, we pray,
and in your great mercy
defend us from all perils and dangers of this night,
for the love of your only Son,
our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer is said

And now, as our Saviour has taught us,
we are bold to say,

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 from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory
for ever and ever.
Amen.

Dismissal


Now it is evening:
lights of the city
bid us remember
       Christ is our Light.
Many are lonely,
who will be neighbor?
Where there is caring,
       Christ is our Light.

Now it is evening:
little ones sleeping
bid us remember
       Christ is our Peace.
Some are neglected,
who will be neighbor?
Where there is caring,
       Christ is our Peace.

Now it is evening:
food on the table
bids us remember
       Christ is our Life.
Many are hungry,
who will be neighbor?
Where there is sharing,
       Christ is our Life.

Now it is evening:
here in our meeting
may we remember
       Christ is our Friend.
Some may be strangers,
who will be neighbor?
Where there's a welcome,
       Christ is our Friend.

Let us bless the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

The Lord bless us and keep us.
The Lord make his face to shine upon us
and be gracious to us.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon us
and give us peace. Amen

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