All Hallows Evening Prayer for Wednesday Evening (September 28, 2022)

 

PROCLAMATION OF THE LIGHT

One or more candles may be lit.

Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world.
The light that no darkness can overcome.

Stay with us now, for it is evening,

and the day is almost over.

Let your light scatter the darkness,

and shine within your people here.

EVENING HYMN

Open this link in a new tab to hear William George Storey’s translation of the Phos hilaron, “O Radiant Light, O Sun Divine.”

1 O radiant light, O sun divine,
Of God the Father's deathless face,
O image of the light sublime
That fills the heav'nly dwelling place.

2 O Son of God, the source of life,
Praise is your due by night and day.
Our happy lips must raise the strain
of your esteem'd and splendid name.

3 Lord Jesus Christ, as daylight fades,
As shine the lights of eventide,
We praise the Father with the Son,
The Spirit blest and with them one.

PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING

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

Blessed are you, Creator of the universe
from old you led your people by night and day
May the light of your Christ make our darkness bright,
For your Word and your presence are the light of our pathways.
and you are the light and life of all creation. Amen.

PSALMODY

Open this link in a new tab to hear Peter Inwood’s setting of Psalm 141, “O Lord, Let My Prayer Rise Before You Like Incense.”

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

1. Lord, I am calling:
hasten to help me.
Listen to me as I cry to you.
Let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

2. Lord, set a guard at my mouth,
keep watch at the gate of my lips.
Let my heart not turn to things that are wrong,
to sharing the evil deeds done by the sinful.
No, I will never taste their delights.

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

3. The good may reprove me,
in kindness chastise me,
but the wicked shall never anoint my head.
Ev’ry day I counter their malice with prayer.

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

4 To you, Lord, my God, my eyes are turned:
in you I take refuge;
do not forsake me.
Keep me from the traps they have set for me,
from the snares of those who do evil.

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you like incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

5 Praise to the Father, praise to the Son,
all praise to the life-giving Spirit.
As it was, is now and shall always be
for ages unending. Amen.

O Lord, let my prayer rise before you as incense,
my hands like an evening offering.

Silence is kept.

May our prayers come before you, O God, as incense
and may your presence surround and fill us,
so that in union with all creation, we might sing your praise
and love in our lives. Amen.

SCRIPTURE READING

Jeremiah 36 The Lord warns the people of Judah and their king

During the fourth year that Jehoiakim son of Josiah was king in Judah, the Lord gave this message to Jeremiah: “Get a scroll, and write down all my messages against Israel, Judah, and the other nations. Begin with the first message back in the days of Josiah, and write down every message, right up to the present time. Perhaps the people of Judah will repent when they hear again all the terrible things I have planned for them. Then I will be able to forgive their sins and wrongdoings.”

So Jeremiah sent for Baruch son of Neriah, and as Jeremiah dictated all the prophecies that the Lord had given him, Baruch wrote them on a scroll. Then Jeremiah said to Baruch, “I am a prisoner here and unable to go to the Temple. So you go to the Temple on the next day of fasting, and read the messages from the Lord that I have had you write on this scroll. Read them so the people who are there from all over Judah will hear them. Perhaps even yet they will turn from their evil ways and ask the Lord’s forgiveness before it is too late. For the Lord has threatened them with his terrible anger.”

Baruch did as Jeremiah told him and read these messages from the Lord to the people at the Temple. He did this on a day of sacred fasting held in late autumn, during the fifth year of the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah. People from all over Judah had come to Jerusalem to attend the services at the Temple on that day. Baruch read Jeremiah’s words on the scroll to all the people. He stood in front of the Temple room of Gemariah, son of Shaphan the secretary. This room was just off the upper courtyard of the Temple, near the New Gate entrance.

When Micaiah son of Gemariah and grandson of Shaphan heard the messages from the Lord, he went down to the secretary’s room in the palace where the administrative officials were meeting. Elishama the secretary was there, along with Delaiah son of Shemaiah, Elnathan son of Acbor, Gemariah son of Shaphan, Zedekiah son of Hananiah, and all the other officials. When Micaiah told them about the messages Baruch was reading to the people, the officials sent Jehudi son of Nethaniah, grandson of Shelemiah and great-grandson of Cushi, to ask Baruch to come and read the messages to them, too. So Baruch took the scroll and went to them. “Sit down and read the scroll to us,” the officials said, and Baruch did as they requested.

When they heard all the messages, they looked at one another in alarm. “We must tell the king what we have heard,” they said to Baruch. “But first, tell us how you got these messages. Did they come directly from Jeremiah?”

So Baruch explained, “Jeremiah dictated them, and I wrote them down in ink, word for word, on this scroll.”

“You and Jeremiah should both hide,” the officials told Baruch. “Don’t tell anyone where you are!” Then the officials left the scroll for safekeeping in the room of Elishama the secretary and went to tell the king what had happened.

The king sent Jehudi to get the scroll. Jehudi brought it from Elishama’s room and read it to the king as all his officials stood by. It was late autumn, and the king was in a winterized part of the palace, sitting in front of a fire to keep warm. Each time Jehudi finished reading three or four columns, the king took a knife and cut off that section of the scroll. He then threw it into the fire, section by section, until the whole scroll was burned up. Neither the king nor his attendants showed any signs of fear or repentance at what they heard. Even when Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah begged the king not to burn the scroll, he wouldn’t listen.

Then the king commanded his son Jerahmeel, Seraiah son of Azriel, and Shelemiah son of Abdeel to arrest Baruch and Jeremiah. But the Lord had hidden them.

After the king had burned the scroll on which Baruch had written Jeremiah’s words, the Lord gave Jeremiah another message. He said, 28 “Get another scroll, and write everything again just as you did on the scroll King Jehoiakim burned. Then say to the king, ‘This is what the Lord says: You burned the scroll because it said the king of Babylon would destroy this land and empty it of people and animals. Now this is what the Lord says about King Jehoiakim of Judah: He will have no heirs to sit on the throne of David. His dead body will be thrown out to lie unburied—exposed to the heat of the day and the frost of the night. I will punish him and his family and his attendants for their sins. I will pour out on them and on all the people of Jerusalem and Judah all the disasters I promised, for they would not listen to my warnings.’”

So Jeremiah took another scroll and dictated again to his secretary, Baruch. He wrote everything that had been on the scroll King Jehoiakim had burned in the fire. Only this time he added much more!

Silence

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

HOMILY

God Is Not a Quitter

Today’s reading is a chapter from the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, one of the books of the Old Testament, which Jesus and the rabbis of the time of his earthly ministry called the “Prophets.” It is Chapter 26 to be exact. Jeremiah had delivered a number of messages from God to the people of Judah and their kings, urging them to turn from their evil ways and turn to God and warning them of the consequences if they do not repent. The Babylonians have invaded Judah and threaten the city of Jerusalem, which was the capital of Judah and the site of the Temple, which Solomon had built when he was king of all Israel and before Israel split into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

The Assyrians would conquer Israel, disperse its people, transporting them to the far corners of their empire, and replacing them with peoples from various parts of that empire. These peoples would intermarry with the remaining Jewish population of the northern kingdom, peasants whom the Assyrians had left to till the soil and produced a mixed race who would be called the Samaritans, after Samaria, the region where the northern kingdom had been located. They would adopt the Jewish religion and build a temple on Mount Gerizim which they regarded as the site that God had chosen for his temple, not Jerusalem.

Through Jeremiah God warns the Judeans that, if they do no repent, Jerusalem will fall to the Babylonians, the city will be burned, and the land of Judah will be devastated. God’s warnings go unheeded, and the city eventually falls to the Babylonians who ransack the city and the Temple, tear down the city walls, and take its people into captivity.

What we learn from reading the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah is that God is not a quitter. He does not give up easily. He keeps warning the Judeans of the consequences of their evil ways and calling them to repentance. As he tells Jeremiah in today’s reading, he is hoping that the Judeans repent so that he will be able to forgive their sins and wrongdoings.

As we learn from reading the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, God takes no pleasure in the death of wicked people. He only wants them to turn from their wicked ways and live (Ezekiel 33:11). These two books offer us a window into God’s character.

The prophet Jonah in remonstrating with God for sparing the people of Nineveh when they and their king repented in sack cloth and ashes in response to Jonah’s warning summarizes these qualities of God’s character. 

“Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people.” (Jonah 4:2 NLT)

If you have studied siege warfare in ancient times as I have, you will know that the siege of a walled city takes months and longer. The besieging army will surround the city to prevent entry or escape. They will take steps to cut off the city’s water supply and keep it from receiving supplies or reinforcements. They will build siege ramps against its walls, constructing them from earth, rubble, and timber. Disease, starvation, and thirst will take its toll inside the city. The leaders of the city might choose to surrender and accept terms if the commander of the besieging army was willing to grant terms. Unless a friendly army intervened and the siege was lifted, eventually the city would fall to the besiegers. Its surviving inhabitants were at their mercy.

We may have difficulty regarding a protracted siege as an act of compassion and mercy, but if we look at the bigger picture, God’s actions are more compassionate and merciful than we might imagine at first glance. Archeologists have excavated the remains of ancient walled cities in which the entire city was burned to the ground. Ancient Troy is one example.

The Judeans became a captive people. Jeremiah was taken to Egypt against his will after a remnant of the Judeans whom the Babylonians had permitted to remain in Jerusalem engaged in armed resistance to the Babylonians. The remaining Judeans were forced to flee Babylonian retaliation and they took Jeremiah with them.

God, however, did not abandon the Judeans in their captivity in Babylon. This we learn from the Book of Daniel and the Book of Esther. During the reign of King Cyrus who established the first Persian Empire and conquered the Babylonians, they would be allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the city’s walls.

But the fullness of God’s compassion and mercy is not seen in the restoration of Jerusalem or the subsequent deliverance of Judea and Jerusalem from the invading Greeks, which you can read about it in the Deuterocanonical Books of the Bible. They are books and passages that are considered by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Oriental Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East to be canonical books of the Old Testament. The Protestant denominations, on the other hand, regard them as apocrypha. Anglicans and Lutherans, while they do not use these books and passages to establish any doctrine, read them because they provide examples of heroic conduct and faithful lives. Anglicans and Lutherans also use canticles taken from them in worship.

God showed the fullness of his compassion and mercy in Jesus, the Messiah whom God sent to save not just the Jews but all the nations of the earth. Eucharistic Prayer B in the Church of England’s Common Worship service book puts it this way:

“Father, we give you thanks and praise
through your beloved Son Jesus Christ, your living Word
through whom you have created all things;
who was sent by you in your great goodness to be our Saviour.

By the power of the Holy Spirit he took flesh;
as your Son, born of the blessed Virgin,
he lived on earth and went about among us;
he opened wide his arms for us on the cross;
he put an end to death by dying for us
and revealed the resurrection by rising to new life;
so he fulfilled your will and won for you a holy people.”

God himself was in Jesus, reconciling humanity to himself. God himself in the person of the Son suffered and died for us on the cross and put things right between himself and us. God, as Jesus pointed to his disciples’ attention was through him, fulfilling his promise to teach his people and make them his disciples. 

What did Jesus teach? To be compassionate and merciful as God is compassionate and merciful. To be holy as God himself is holy. Jesus taught his disciples to forgive others and to make peace with those who had anything against them, to treat others the same way as they would wish to be treated, to love even those who did not love them and to be good to them, and to love each other as he loved them. You can learn more about Jesus, the message that he proclaimed, what he taught and the example he set for us by reading the four Gospels.

As Jesus went about teaching, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, enabling the lame to walk, freeing people from demons, raising the dead, and doing good, he urged people to turn away from the things came between them and God and to turn to God, to have a change of heart toward God. While Jesus no longer walks the earth, he still calls us to repentance—turn our back on our old life, put our faith in him, and begin a new life as his disciple.

God is not a quitter. God is calling us to repent this very moment, to have a change of heart toward him. He wants to be able to forgive us and he wants us to enjoy a new relationship with him, a relationship which, if we lean into it, we will discover that it is far more fulfilling than any earthly relationship.

Silence is kept.

GOSPEL CANTICLE

Open this link in a new tab to hear Owen Alstott’s “Luke 1: My Soul Rejoices.”

My soul rejoices in God, my Saviour.
My spirit finds joy in God, the living God.

My soul proclaims your mighty deeds.
My spirit sings the greatness of your name.

My soul rejoices in God, my Saviour.
My spirit finds joy in God, the living God.

Your mercy flows throughout the land
and ev’ry generation knows your love.

My soul rejoices in God, my Saviour.
My spirit finds joy in God, the living God.

You cast the mighty from their thrones
and raise the poor and lowly to new life.

My soul rejoices in God, my Saviour.
My spirit finds joy in God, the living God.

You fill the hungry with good things.
With empty hands you send the rich away.

My soul rejoices in God, my Saviour.
My spirit finds joy in God, the living God.

Just as you promised Abraham,
You come to free your people, Israel.

My soul rejoices in God, my Saviour.
My spirit finds joy in God, the living God.

PRAYERS AND CONCERNS

(Let us offer our prayers to the source of all love and all life, saying, “Lord, hear our prayer.”)

Merciful Lord, we pray for all who call themselves Christians: that we may be faithful disciples of your Son Jesus Christ.
Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for N our pastor, for all pastors, and for all who serve Christ in his Church: that they may remain faithful to their calling and rightly proclaim the word of truth. Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for the leaders of the nations, and all in authority: that your people may lead quiet and peaceable lives.
Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for our community and those who live here, the poor and the rich, the elderly and the young, men and women: that you will show your favor and goodwill to all.
Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for those who are in any kind of trouble or need that you will deliver them from their distress.
Lord, hear our prayer.

We pray for _______________________.
Lord, hear our prayer.

We give thanks for all the saints who have found favor in your sight from earliest times, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and those whose names are known to you alone: and we pray that we too may be counted among your faithful witnesses.
Lord, hear our prayer.

Free Prayer

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

The Collect

Almighty God,
you alone are our true judge,
for you know what we are,
you know what we should be,
and with you there is mercy.
Give us feeling for what is right;
set us on fire to see that right is done.
Hear this prayer for your love’s sake.
Amen.

THE LORD’S PRAYER

The Lord be with you.
The Lord bless you.

As our Savior 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.

CLOSING SONG

Open this link in a new tab to hear hear Maurice Bevan's setting of Frederick William Faber's "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy."

1 There’s a wideness in God’s mercy,
Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in His justice,
Which is more than liberty.

2 There is no place where earth’s sorrows
Are more felt than up in Heaven;
There is no place where earth’s failings
Have such kindly judgment given.

3 For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of our mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

4 But we make His love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify His strictness
With a zeal He will not own.

5 There is plentiful redemption
In the blood that has been shed;
There is joy for all the members
In the sorrows of the Head.

6 There is grace enough for thousands
Of new worlds as great as this;
There is room for fresh creations
In that upper home of bliss.

7 If our love were but more simple,
We should take Him at His word;
And our lives would be all gladness
In the joy of Christ our Lord.

BLESSING

Let us bless the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the love of God, and the fellowship of
the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore.
Amen.