All Hallows Evening Prayer for Saturday Evening (May 14, 2022)


PROCLAMATION OF THE LIGHT

One or more candles may be lit.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. John 4: 16b

EVENING HYMN

Open this link in a new tab to hear Tim Hughes’ “Here I Am to Worship.”

Light of the world, You step down into darkness
Open my eyes let me see
Beauty that made this heart adore you
Hope of a life spent with you

Here I am to worship
Here I am to bow down
Here I am to say that you're my God
You're altogether lovely
Altogether worthy
Altogether wonderful to me, my love

King of all days
So highly exalted
Glorious in heaven above
Humbly you came to the earth you created
All for love's sake became poor

Here I am to worship
Here I am to bow down
Here I am to say that you're my God
You're altogether lovely
Altogether worthy
Altogether wonderful to me

Here I am to worship
Here I am to bow down
Here I am to say that you're my God
You're altogether lovely
Altogether worthy
Altogether wonderful to me


I'll never know how much it cost
To see my sin upon that cross
I'll never know how much it cost
To see my sin upon that cross

Here I am to worship
Here I am to bow down
Here I am to say that you're my God
You're altogether lovely
Altogether worthy
Altogether wonderful to me

Here I am to worship
Here I am to bow down
Here I am to say that you're my God
You're altogether lovely
Altogether worthy
Altogether wonderful to me


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 Keity Getty and Stuart Townend’s “Speak O Lord.”

Speak, O Lord, as we come to You
To receive the food of your holy word.
Take Your truth, plant it deep in us;
Shape and fashion us in Your likeness,
That the light of Christ might be seen today
In our acts of love and our deeds of faith.
Speak, O Lord, and fulfil in us
All Your purposes, for Your glory.

Teach us Lord full obedience,
Holy reverence, true humility.
Test our thoughts and our attitudes
In the radiance of Your purity.
Cause our faith to rise
Cause our eyes to see,
Your majestic love and authority.
Words of power that can never fail;
Let their truth prevail over unbelief.

Speak, O Lord, and renew our minds;
Help us grasp the heights of Your plans for us.
Truths unchanged from the dawn of time,
That will echo down through eternity.
And by grace we’ll stand on Your promises;
And by faith we’ll walk as You walk with us.
Speak, O Lord, ’til your church is built
And the earth is filled with Your glory.


SCRIPTURE

Acts 11: 1-18 Peter Explains His Actions

Soon the news reached the apostles and other believers in Judea that the Gentiles had received the word of God. But when Peter arrived back in Jerusalem, the Jewish believers criticized him. “You entered the home of Gentiles and even ate with them!” they said.

Then Peter told them exactly what had happened. “I was in the town of Joppa,” he said, “and while I was praying, I went into a trance and saw a vision. Something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners from the sky. And it came right down to me. When I looked inside the sheet, I saw all sorts of tame and wild animals, reptiles, and birds. And I heard a voice say, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat them.’

“‘No, Lord,’ I replied. ‘I have never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure or unclean.’

“But the voice from heaven spoke again: ‘Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.’ This happened three times before the sheet and all it contained was pulled back up to heaven.

“Just then three men who had been sent from Caesarea arrived at the house where we were staying. The Holy Spirit told me to go with them and not to worry that they were Gentiles. These six brothers here accompanied me, and we soon entered the home of the man who had sent for us. He told us how an angel had appeared to him in his home and had told him, ‘Send messengers to Joppa, and summon a man named Simon Peter. He will tell you how you and everyone in your household can be saved!’

“As I began to speak,” Peter continued, “the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as he fell on us at the beginning. Then I thought of the Lord’s words when he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ And since God gave these Gentiles the same gift he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to stand in God’s way?”

When the others heard this, they stopped objecting and began praising God. They said, “We can see that God has also given the Gentiles the privilege of repenting of their sins and receiving eternal life.”

Silence is kept.

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

HOMILY

Good News for All!

During New Testament times the Jews believed that they were God’s chosen people, and the promised Messiah would be sent them to them, and not to anyone else. It was only natural for the Jews who came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah to conclude that God had sent him solely to them.

The Jews had a long-held prejudice against Gentiles, non-Jews. The Gentiles had no part in the covenant that God made with the people of Israel after delivering them from captivity in Egypt. Indeed, it was Gentiles who had enslaved them and kept them in captivity.

During their history the people of Israel were often at war with Gentile nations. These nations included the Canaanites and Philistines who occupied towns and cities within the land which God had promised them.

The Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom, one of two kingdoms into which Israel had been divided upon the death of King Solomon who built the first Temple in Jerusalem and dedicated it to the worship of God.

The Babylonians conquered the Jerusalem and the southern kingdom and took its inhabitants into captivity in Babylon. The Babylonians also pillaged and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem.

After King Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild its walls and to build a new Temple, the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem and the southern kingdom was followed by the Greek and Roman conquests of the same territory. The Jews drove out the Greeks but the Romans eventually razed Jerusalem and pillaged and destroyed the Temple. The Romans prohibited the Jews from even approaching the site of Jerusalem and built a Roman city on that site.

As well as feeling enmity to the Gentiles as invaders and conquerors, the Jews regarded the Gentiles as unclean, impure and morally bad, and beyond redemption. The lifestyle of the Gentiles fell far short of the standards by which their own religion taught that they should live. To associate with Gentiles, they believed, would defile them. To enter the homes of Gentiles and eat with them was just too much!!

It took a vision, repeated three times, we learn from today’s reading, Acts 11: 1-18. and a momentous outpouring of the Holy Spirit to convince Simon Peter that the attitude of the Jewish believers toward the Gentiles was wrong. God had not solely sent Jesus to the Jews. God had sent Jesus to all people. What is even more amazing is that Simon Peter’s account of what happened convinced the Jewish believers who had criticized him. While Luke does not tell us in his narrative, I believe that it is safe to say that it was God’s doing.

In Acts of the Apostles Luke records several events that, like this one, served as turning points in the attitude of Jewish believers to the Gentiles. These events did not convince all Jewish believers as we learn from Paul’s letters. Paul had to contend with the Judaizers who insisted Gentiles had to become Jews in order to receive the salvation that God offered through Jesus. They first had to change their ways before God would extend his salvation to them.

In his narrative Luke does not describe how the Holy Spirit manifest himself in the Gentiles to whom Simon Peter preached. It impressed Simon Peter who equated it with his own experience in the upper room when he and his fellow apostles and the others who were present received the Holy Spirit.

It is tempting to conclude from this passage that the Gentiles must have spoken in tongues as did those gathered in the upper room when the Holy Spirit fell on them, but we may be reading too much into the passage with that conclusion.

In the other passages in Acts in which Holy Spirit manifests himself in various groups to show God’s acceptance of these groups, Luke does not describe how the Holy Spirit chose to manifest himself. The importance of these passages is not the way that the Holy Spirit manifested himself but God’s acceptance of the group in which the Holy Spirit manifested himself.

For Gentiles, for non-Jews, what we read in this passage of the New Testament is good news in two ways.

First, as the Jewish believers acknowledged, “…God has also given the Gentiles the privilege of repenting of their sins and receiving eternal life.” God has extended his salvation to not just to the Jews but to all people groups—to the goyim, the “nations,” the Hebrew word from which the word “Gentiles” is derived.

Second, God meets us where we are. We do not have to adopt a different way of life to be saved. But we do have to repent of our sins and believe in Jesus in order to be put right with God.

God, however, does not leave us where we are. Having enabled us to take the first step of being reconciled to him through repentance and faith, God by his grace sanctifies and perfects us, transforming us into the likeness of Jesus. God enables us to grow in faith, love, and obedience. We become like the One whom we call Lord.

What people in our own communities do we treat like the Jewish believers treated the Gentiles? This is an important question to ask ourselves in light of the political, religious, and social climate that exists today in the United States with people deeply divided in their opinions on a wide range of matters and forming into tribes on the basis of their opinions and supporting their tribe regardless of what that tribe does.

It is very clear in the Acts of the Apostles and the other books of the New Testament that God would have us proclaim salvation through repentance from sin and faith in Jesus to everybody, not just to people like ourselves, to the members of our tribe. We are to point everyone to Jesus. 

It is not for us to determine to whom we offer salvation. Whether they in our opinion do not appear to be a likely candidate for God’s forgiveness is not a consideration. We are to share the good news with as many people as possible and to make disciples in the same way. We must exhibit toward others the same generosity as God exhibits toward us.

Silence is kept.

SONG OF PRAISE

Open this link in a new tab to hear Ruth Duck’s adaptation of the Magnificat, “My Heart Sings Out with Joyful Praise.”

My heart sings out with joyful praise
to God who raises me,
Who came to me when I was low
and changed my destiny.
The Holy One, the Living God,
is always full of grace
To those who seek their Maker’s will
in every time and place.

The arm of God is strong and just
to scatter all the proud.
The tyrants tumble from their thrones
and vanish like a cloud.
The hungry all are satisfied;
the rich are sent away.
The poor of earth who suffer long
will welcome God’s new day.


[Instrumental interlude]

The promise made in ages past
at last has come to be,
for God has come in power to save,
to set all people free.
Remembering those who wait to see
salvation’s dawning day,
Our Savior comes to all who weep
to wipe their tears away.


PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE

In the power of the resurrection
we offer our prayers to God.

Let us pray.

Remember, O Lord, in your love

the Church throughout the world . . .
those recently baptized and confirmed . . .
those who minister to others . . .

Silence

May your whole Church know your power
and be a sign that Christ is risen.

Lord of life,
hear us in your love.

Remember in your love the world you have made . . .
those who seek a fair and proper use of the
world’s resources . . .
those who strive for justice and peace
among the nations . . .

Silence

May the whole earth be transformed by mercy and rejoice in hope.

Lord of life,
hear us in your love.

Remember in your love those who suffer . . .
the victims of violence and injustice . . .
those who mourn . . .

Silence

May all in need find comfort, strength and freedom in the living Christ.

Lord of life,
hear us in your love.

Remember in your love those who have died:
those who have confessed the faith
and those whose faith is known to you
alone.

Silence

May all your children receive grace and light according to their needs and come at last to share with all the saints in life eternal.

Lord of life,
hear us in your love.

Gracious God, we ask these prayers through Jesus Christ, our risen Lord and Saviour. Amen.

The Collect

Make us glad we pray you, gentle God,
to give each other your loving care;
make us happy to receive it.
May there daily grow within us
a generous, trusting spirit.
This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

RESPONSE

Open this link in a new tab to hear Graham Kendrick’s “Teach Me to Dance.”

Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart
Teach me to move in the power of your Spirit
Teach me to walk in the light of your presence
Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart

Teach me to love with your heart of compassion
Teach me to trust in the word of your promise
Teach me to hope in the day of your coming
Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart

You wrote the rhythm of life
Created heaven and earth
In You is joy without measure
So, like a child in your sight
I dance to see your delight
For I was made for your pleasure
Pleasure

Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart
Teach me to move in the power of your Spirit
Teach me to walk in the light of your presence
Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart

Teach me to love with your heart of compassion
Teach me to trust in the word of your promise
Teach me to hope in the day of your coming
Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart

Let all my movements express
A heart that loves to say 'yes'
A will that leaps to obey you
Let all my energy blaze
To see the joy in your face
Let my whole being praise you
Praise you


Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart
Teach me to move in the power of your Spirit
Teach me to walk in the light of your presence
Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart

Teach me to love with your heart of compassion
Teach me to trust in the word of your promise
Teach me to hope in the day of your coming
Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart


THE LORD’S PRAYER

As our Saviour taught his disciples,
we pray:

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.

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