All Hallows Evening Prayer for Wednesday Evening (April 27, 2022)

PROCLAMATION OF THE LIGHT

One or more candles may be lit.

Christ is risen!!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!!

EVENING HYMN

Open this link in a new tab to hear John L. Bell and Graham Maule’s “Jesus Calls Us Here to Meet Him.”

Jesus calls us here to meet him
as, through word and song and prayer,
we affirm God‘s promised presence
where his people live and care.
Praise the God who keeps his promise;
praise the Son who calls us friends;
praise the Spirit who, among us,
to our hopes and fears attends.

Jesus calls us to confess him
Word of Life and Lord of All,
sharer of our flesh and frailness
saving all who fail or fall.
Tell his holy human story;
tell his tales that all may hear;
tell the world that Christ in glory
came to earth to meet us here.

Jesus calls us to each other,
vastly different though we are;
creed and colour, class and gender
Neither limit nor debar.
Join the hand of friend and stranger;
join the hands of age and youth;
join the faithful and the doubter
in their common search for truth.

Jesus calls us to his table
rooted firm in time and space,
where the Church in earth and heaven
finds a common meeting place.
Share the bread and wine, his body;
share the love of which we sing;
share the feast for saints and sinners
hosted by our Lord and King.

PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING

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

We praise and thank you, O God our Father,
through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Through him you have enlightened us
by revealing the light that never fades,
for dark death has been destroyed
and radiant life is everywhere restored.
What was promised is fulfilled:
we have been joined to God,
through renewed life in the Spirit of the risen Lord.
Glory and praise to you, our Father,
through Jesus your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Spirit,
in the kingdom of light eternal,
for ever and ever. Amen.

HYMN OF THE DAY

Open this link in a new tab to hear Christopher Walker’s “Out of Darkness.”

Out of darkness, God has called us,
claimed by Christ as God’s own people.
Holy nation, royal priesthood,
walking in God’s marvelous light!

Let us take the words you give,
Strong and faithful words to live.
Words that in our hearts are sown;
Words that bind us as your own.

Out of darkness, God has called us,
claimed by Christ as God’s own people.
Holy nation, royal priesthood,
walking in God’s marvelous light!

Let us take the Christ you give,
Broken body Christ we live.
Christ the risen from the tomb;
Christ who calls us as your own.

Out of darkness, God has called us,
claimed by Christ as God’s own people.
Holy nation, royal priesthood,
walking in God’s marvelous light!

Let us take the love you give,
That the way of love we live.
Love to bring your people home;
Love to make us all your own.

Out of darkness, God has called us,
claimed by Christ as God’s own people.
Holy nation, royal priesthood,
walking in God’s marvelous light!
Amen!!

SCRIPTURE

1 Peter 2: 4- 12 Living Stones for God’s House

You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor.

And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God. As the Scriptures say,

“I am placing a cornerstone in Jerusalem,
chosen for great honor,
and anyone who trusts in him
will never be disgraced.”

Yes, you who trust him recognize the honor God has given him. But for those who reject him,

“The stone that the builders rejected
has now become the cornerstone.”

And,

“He is the stone that makes people stumble,
the rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they do not obey God’s word, and so they meet the fate that was planned for them.

But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

“Once you had no identity as a people;
now you are God’s people.
Once you received no mercy;
now you have received God’s mercy.”

Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world.

Silence is kept.

May your word live in us
and bear much fruit to your glory

HOMILY

A Temple of Living Stones, Priests to Serve God

Did you ever play with wooden building blocks when you were little, the kind that come in bright colors and in all shapes and sizes—cylinder, triangles, long rectangular blocks, blocks with a half circle cut out of them?

I loved to play with wooden building blocks when I was a kid. When my nieces were little, I would build all kinds of structures with wooden building blocks with them. I did the same thing with my oldest niece’s children. Wooden building blocks are a lot of fun. It is a challenge to see what you can build with them.

When you play with kids of the building block age, you do not actually play with them. You play alongside them. It is called parallel play. You open up a couple of tubs of blocks, pour them out on the floor, and each person begins building something. When kids grow older, you and they can build something together, but at that particular age everyone builds their own structure from the blocks.

In today’s reading, 1 Peter 2: 4-12, the apostle Peter tells the readers of his letter and those to whom they were reading the letter, that God is building a temple. This temple is not like the Temple that stood on the temple mount in Jerusalem. It not made from stone and wood. It is a temple that is made from people. The people from whom this temple is made are the people to whom he has written his letter. They are not only the living stones from which God is constructing the temple, its building blocks, but they are also God’s priests.

To the Jews a priest was one of the descendants of Aaron and his sons whose particular duties were to make offerings in the Temple at Jerusalem as prescribed in Old Testament. Only their descendants could serve in the Temple. Their priesthood was hereditary, passed from one generation to another. No one else could exercise their priesthood. It ceased with the destruction of the Temple during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius.

According to the Old Testament, God gave his Holy Spirit to his prophets and even to bands of wandering prophets. So, the idea of God giving the Holy Spirit to people was not entirely new to the Jews.

To the Romans the priests of their various gods and goddesses were civil officials. The exception was the priests and priestesses who served foreign gods and goddesses like the Egyptian goddess Isis. It was not unusual for Roman households to have household gods, the Lares and the Penates, who were guardians of the household and to whom the pater familias as head of the household poured libations and made other suitable offerings. The Greeks had priests and priestesses who served their gods and goddesses.

The idea of a whole people serving as priests to a god, and not a special class of people was something new to the people who lived at the time Peter wrote his letter. So was the idea that the same people were also a temple of their god.

The Romans and the Greeks, like the Egyptians and the other ancient people who lived around the Mediterranean Sea believed that their gods and goddesses briefly inhabited the images of them. On an occasion a god or goddess might “possess” a priest or priestess, take over the priest or priestess and speak through them, giving the people advice. But the idea of a god indwelling an entire people was new to them.

We sometimes hear a church building, particularly the sanctuary, referred to as a “House of God.” This, however, is an inaccurate description of the church building. It is a house of the church. God’s house are God’s people who occupy the building on Sunday and during the week.

They do not house God in his entirety. They are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the trinity of persons who together share the same substance and form one supreme being, the supreme being whom we call God. It is the Holy Spirit who links us to God and to each other.

God does not “possess” us like some evil spirit, taking full control of our faculties and forcing us to do its bidding. God’s presence in our innermost being is a gentle presence. The New Testament describes the Holy Spirit as coming along side of us as a helpful person might come to our assistance. The New Testament also describes the gift of his indwelling presence as God’s way of marking us as his own and the first installment of greater things to come.

As God’s priests we make two kinds of offerings to God. One is our offering of thanksgiving and praise for all the things that God has done for us. The other is what Peter refers to our “spiritual sacrifices” in today’s reading. This offering is the way that we live our lives, honoring and reverencing God in every thought, feeling, word, and action.

Jesus’ offering of himself on the cross for our sins, once and for all time, did away with the need to offer sacrifices to God in atonement for our sins, cancelling the Old Testament system of animal sacrifices. When we give thanks over the bread and cup at the Lord’s Supper and share them as God’s people, Jesus does not offer himself to God through whoever officiates at this meal. We do not in any way repeat or represent Jesus’ self-offering. The Lord’s Supper is a remembrance and proclamation of a sacrifice. It is not a sacrifice itself. Our offering of thanksgiving and praise and our “spiritual sacrifices” are made in response to the one sacrifice that the Lord’s Supper commemorates and makes known.

Don’t some Christians like the Anglicans, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Roman Catholics have a separate class of people whom they call “priests”?

Historically Anglicans have understood the word “priest” as used in The Book of Common Prayer to refer to a presbyter, or elder, of the church. “Priest” is a corruption of the word “prester,” which is a contraction of the Greek word “presbyter.” In English “presbyter” means “elder,” an officer of the local church described in the New Testament and used interchangeably with “episkopos,” “overseer” or “superintendent” to describe this officer.

In post-New Testament times the terms “presbyter” and “episkopos” would be used to describe two separate church officers, which evolved as one elder assumed a position of authority and pre-eminence over his fellow elders. Today we refer to this particular officer as a “bishop.” “Bishop” is a modern-day version of the Old English word “bisceop,” which deprived from the Latin word, “episcopus,” which has its origin in the Greek word, “episkopos.”

Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic notions of a separate priesthood in the Christ's Church is derived from Greek and Roman concept of a “sacerdos,” In its entry for “sacerdos, sacerdotium,” A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) states:

“A priest among the Greeks and Romans was a person whose duty was to perform on behalf of a state, or of some organic group within the state, a certain ritual, the object of which was to maintain the proper salutary relations between the state or group and the local gods.”

The origin of these notions can be traced to a misunderstanding of the nature of the Old Testament Aaronic priesthood and to pagan influence. It has no basis in the teaching of the New Testament. While this misconception may be held widely and has been held over a long period of time and an elaborate theology has been developed to rationalize it, it is nonetheless a wrong idea. The New Testament recognizes only the common priesthood that all followers of Jesus share and to which Peter refers in today’s reading.

When a pastor or someone who is authorized to officiate at the Lord’s Supper offers a prayer of thanksgiving over the bread and cup for that holy meal, they exercise the common priesthood of Jesus’ followers. One early Church father described the person in that role serving as the “tongue” of the assembly, the gathered people of God. They are not acting as intermediary between God’s people and God. Rather they are giving voice to the assembly’s prayer, which the assembly ratifies with a loud “Amen.”

The wooden building blocks with which we played as a child and with which we may play with our children or grandchildren are more than toys. They help a child to learn important intellectual, motor, and social skills. In building us into a temple of living stones and forming us as priests to serve him, God is teaching us how we should live with each other and our fellow human beings.

God has given us a tremendous responsibility. We are not only to represent our fellow human beings in interceding for them in prayer but also we are to represent God to them. We are his ambassadors to our neighborhood or community and to the larger world. We are called to speak and to act on his behalf. We share in God’s mission to show his love to humanity and to all creation. It is not a responsibility to take lightly.

Silence is kept.

SONG OF PRAISE

Open this link in a new tab to hear Rory Cooney’s adaptation of the Magnificat, “My Soul Cries Out with a Joyful Shout.”

1 My soul cries out with a joyful shout
that the God of my heart is great,
and my spirit sings of the wondrous things
that you bring to the ones who wait.
You fixed your sight on your servant’s plight,
and my weakness you did not spurn,
so from east to west shall my name be blest.
Could the world be about to turn?

My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
and the world is about to turn.

2 Though I am small, my God, my all,
you work great things in me,
and your mercy will last from the depths of the past
to the end of the age to be.
Your very name puts the proud to shame,
and to those who would for you yearn,
you will show your might, put the strong to flight,
for the world is about to turn.

My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
and the world is about to turn.

3 From the halls of pow’r to the fortress tow’r,
not a stone will be left on stone.
Let the king beware for your justice tears
ev’ry tyrant from his throne.
The hungry poor shall weep no more,
for the food they can never earn;
there are tables spread, ev’ry mouth be fed,
for the world is about to turn.

My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
and the world is about to turn.

4 Though the nations rage from age to age,
we remember who holds us fast:
God’s mercy must deliver us
from the conqueror’s crushing grasp.
This saving word that our forebears heard
is the promise which holds us bound,
till the spear and rod can be crushed by God,
who is turning the world around.

My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
and the world is about to turn.

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE

Periods of silence may be kept.

Heavenly Father,
you have promised to hear when we pray
in the name of your Son.
Therefore in confidence and trust
we pray for the Church:

(Particular intercessions/thanksgivings may be offered.)

Father, enliven the Church for its mission

that we may be salt of the earth and light to the world.

Breathe fresh life into your people.

Give us power to reveal Christ in word and action.

We pray for the world:

(Particular intercessions/thanksgivings may be offered.)

Creator of all,
lead us and every people into ways of justice and peace.

That we may respect one another in freedom and truth.

Awaken in us a sense of wonder for the earth and all that is in it.

Teach us to care creatively for its resources.

We pray for the community:

(Particular intercessions/thanksgivings may be offered.)

God of truth, inspire with your wisdom
those whose decisions affect the lives of others

that all may act with integrity and courage.

Give grace to all whose lives are linked with ours.

May we serve Christ in one another, and love as he loves us.

We pray for those in need:

(Particular intercessions/thanksgivings may be offered.)

God of hope, comfort and restore
all who suffer in body, mind or spirit.

May they know the power of your healing love.

Make us willing agents of your compassion.

Strengthen us as we share in making people whole.

We remember those who have died and those who mourn:

(Particular intercessions/thanksgivings may be offered.)

We remember with thanksgiving those who have died in the faith
of Christ, and those whose faith is known to you alone.

Father, into your hands we commend them.

Give comfort to those who mourn.

Bring them peace in their time of loss.

We praise you for (N and) all your saints
who have entered your eternal glory.

May their example inspire and encourage us.

We pray for ourselves and our ministries:

(Particular intercessions/thanksgivings may be offered and the prayers
conclude with the following.)

Lord, you have called us to serve you.

Grant that we may walk in your presence:
your love in our hearts,
your truth in our minds,
your strength in our wills;
until, at the end of our journey,
we know the joy of our homecoming
and the welcome of your embrace,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Collect

Almighty God,
by the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ
you have broken the power of death
and brought life and immortality to light;
grant that we who have been raised with him
may triumph over all temptation
and rejoice in the hope of eternal glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

RESPONSE

Open this link in a tab to hear Janet Sullivan Whitaker’s “As Christ Is for Us.”

In the bread we share with the hungry,
in the help we give to the poor,
in the kindness we show to the stranger
we find Christ the open door.

So we rise with him each morning,
and we work, as work we must,
to be Christ for others, as Christ is for us,
to be Christ for others,
as Christ is for us.

May the bread we share give us courage
to restore the earth in this time.
For the sake of our children’s descendants
let us honor God’s ancient design.

So we rise with him each morning,
and we work, as work we must,
to be Christ for others, as Christ is for us,
to be Christ for others,
as Christ is for us.

And as we care for each other
so must we care for our home:
air that we breathe,
waters that run
flowing with life
for the good of all.

May the bread we share keep us mindful
and the fruit of the vine makes one.
Let the whole human fam’ly together
heed the cry of our island home.

So we rise with him each morning,
and we work, as work we must,
to be Christ for others, as Christ is for us,
to be Christ for others,
as Christ is for us.

THE LORD’S PRAYER

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.

BLESSING

May Christ who out of defeat brings new hope and new alternatives, bring us new life
and the blessing of God our Creator, Redeemer and Giver of life be with us always. Amen