All Hallows Evening Prayer for Saturday Evening (December 3, 2022)

THE BLESSING OF THE LIGHT

A lamp or candle may be lit.

The Lord is my light and my salvation:
my God shall make my darkness to be bright.

The light and peace of Jesus Christ be with you
and also with you.

Blessed are you, O Lord our God,
Ruler of the universe,
Creator of light and darkness.
In this holy season,
when the sun’s light is swallowed up
by the growing darkness of the night,
you renew your promise to reveal
among us the splendor of your glory,
enfleshed and visible to us
in Jesus Christ, your Son.
Through the prophets you teach us
to hope for his reign of peace.
Through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit
you open our blindness
to the glory of his presence.
Strengthen us in our weakness.
Support us in our stumbling efforts
to do your will and free our tongues
to sing your praise.
For to you all honor and blessing are due,
now and forever. Amen.

Other candles may be lit as the following is sung.

Open this link in a new tab to hear David von Kampen’s choral arrangement of “Joyous Light of Glory.”

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,
your glory, your glory.

As Psalm 141 — A Song of the Evening Sacrifice, is sung, incense may be burned.

Open this link to hear David W. Music’s choral arrangement of Timothy Dudley-Smith’s paraphrase of Psalm 141,"Come Quickly, Lord."

1 Come quickly, Lord, and hear the cries
my heart and hands uplifted raise;
and let my prayer as incense rise,
an evening sacrifice of praise.
Guard now the lips that speak your Name,
lest they, and I, be put to shame.

2 And if my steps should go astray
and from the path of truth I move,
restore me to your narrow way
and in your mercy, Lord, reprove;
from love of self my soul defend,
and wound me as a faithful friend.

*3 When at the last, O Lord our God,
we look to you alone to save,
the plough of judgment breaks the clod,
and bones are scattered from the grave:
our Rock, our Refuge and our Tower,
protect us in the final hour.

4 We fix our eyes upon you, Lord,
and tune our ears to hear your voice;
our hearts by faith receive your word
and in your promises rejoice.
Till morning breaks and night is gone,
in God we trust, and journey on.

*Omitted in the choral arrangement.

This opening prayer is said.

That this evening may be holy, good and peaceful,
let us pray with one heart and mind.

Silence is kept.

As our evening prayer rises before you, O God,
so may your mercy come down upon us
to cleanse our hearts
and set us free to sing your praise
now and for ever.
Amen.

THE WORD OF GOD

PSALMODY

Open this link in a new tab to hear Christopher Walker’s adaptation of Psalm 27, “The Lord Is My Light, My Help, My Salvation.”

The Lord is my light, my help, my salvation.
Why should I fear? With God I fear no one.
God protects me all my life.
With the Lord what should I dread?

The Lord is my light, the Lord is my help,
The Lord is my salvation.

There is one thing I ask, of the Lord that I long for:
All of my days with God to be dwelling.
Gazing with awe at the beauty of God,
And in wonder look on God's house.

The Lord is my light, the Lord is my help,
The Lord is my salvation.

I know I will live to see the Lord's goodness;
Now, in this life, I'm sure I will see it.
Trust in the Lord, be strong and be brave;
Wait in hope for God, our salvation.

The Lord is my light, the Lord is my help,
The Lord is my salvation.

Silence is kept.

God, our light and our salvation,
illuminate our lives,
that we may see your goodness in the land of the living,
and, looking on your beauty,
may be changed into the likeness of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen

NEW TESTAMENT CANTICLE

Open this link in a new tab to hear Liam Lawson’s setting of the Magna et Mirabilia, “Canticle.”

Oo_____ oo_____ oo_____ oo_____

Great and wonderful are your deed, O Lord God, the Almighty.
Just and true are your ways, O King of the ages.

1 Who shall not fear and glorify your name,
for you alone are holy?
For you alone are holy.

Great and wonderful are your deed, O Lord God, the Almighty.
Just and true are your ways, O King of the ages.

All nations shall come and worship you,
for your judgments have been revealed.
For your judgments have been revealed.

Great and wonderful are your deed, O Lord God, the Almighty.
Just and true are your ways, O King of the ages.

Oo_____ oo_____ oo_____ oo_____

Silence may be kept.

HYMN OF THE DAY

Open this link in a new tab to hear Allan Mahnke’s arrangement of the Advent hymn, “Creator of the Stars of Night” for SAB ,organ or piano, and optional bells.

1 Creator of the stars of night,
Thy people's everlasting Light:
O Christ, Redeemer, save us all
And hear Thy servants when they call.

2 Thou, grieving that the ancient curse
Should doom to death a universe,
Hast found the healing, full of grace,
To cure and save our ruined race.

3 At whose dread name, majestic now,
All knees must bend, all hearts must bow;
All things celestial Thee shall own,
And things terrestrial, Lord alone.

4 To God the Father and the Son
And Holy Spirit, Three in One,
Praise, honor, might, and glory be
From age to age eternally. A-men.

SCRIPTURE READINGS

A reading from the Old Testament: Isaiah 29: 15-24 A Message about Jerusalem

What sorrow awaits those who try to hide their plans from the Lord,
who do their evil deeds in the dark!
“The Lord can’t see us,” they say.
“He doesn’t know what’s going on!”
How foolish can you be?
He is the Potter, and he is certainly greater than you, the clay!
Should the created thing say of the one who made it,
“He didn’t make me”?
Does a jar ever say,
“The potter who made me is stupid”?

Soon—and it will not be very long—
the forests of Lebanon will become a fertile field,
and the fertile field will yield bountiful crops.
In that day the deaf will hear words read from a book,
and the blind will see through the gloom and darkness.
The humble will be filled with fresh joy from the Lord.
The poor will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
The scoffer will be gone,
the arrogant will disappear,
and those who plot evil will be killed.
Those who convict the innocent
by their false testimony will disappear.
A similar fate awaits those who use trickery to pervert justice
and who tell lies to destroy the innocent.

That is why the Lord, who redeemed Abraham,
says to the people of Israel,

“My people will no longer be ashamed
or turn pale with fear.
For when they see their many children
and all the blessings I have given them,
they will recognize the holiness of the Holy One of Jacob.
They will stand in awe of the God of Israel.
Then the wayward will gain understanding,
and complainers will accept instruction.

Silence is kept.

A reading from the New Testament: Matthew 13: 44-52 Parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl; Parable of the Fishing Net

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.

“Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant on the lookout for choice pearls. When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned and bought it!

“Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a fishing net that was thrown into the water and caught fish of every kind. When the net was full, they dragged it up onto the shore, sat down, and sorted the good fish into crates, but threw the bad ones away. That is the way it will be at the end of the world. The angels will come and separate the wicked people from the righteous, throwing the wicked into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Do you understand all these things?”

“Yes,” they said, “we do.”

Then he added, “Every teacher of religious law who becomes a disciple in the Kingdom of Heaven is like a homeowner who brings from his storeroom new gems of truth as well as old.”

Silence is kept.

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

HOMILY

Making Sense of Three Parables of the Kingdom of Heaven

In this evening’s New Testament reading from Matthew’s Gospel Jesus tells three parables. A parable is a short, simple story that is used to teach or explain an idea. It may represent a basic moral truth or religious principle.

In the first two parables Jesus compares the kingdom of Heaven, the term used in Matthew’s Gospel for the Kingdom of God with something of great valuable, so valuable that an individual will go to great trouble to obtain it. Implied is that the two men must have made sacrifices to obtain what they had desired. They may be destitute by the time they have gotten it. Implied also is that the Kingdom of God is of far greater value than a treasure in a field or a pearl, and the kinds of sacrifices individuals must make to enter it will be far greater than the two men may have made.

In the third parable Jesus likens the Kingdom of God to a fishermen’s seine net. This is a round net that measured up to twenty five feet in diameter and was thrown from the shore or a boat. Seine nets were also dragged between two boats. It was made from flax ropes and had stone weights attached to its edges.

Fishing was done at night when the fish rose to near the surface of the water because it had more oxygen and the fish also could not see the net.

At sunrise the fishermen would return to shore with their night’s catch and sort the fish that they had caught. Some fish they sold at the fish gate, or fish market. Some they brough home to their families. Some fish may have also been preserved by salting or may have been processed with fish entrails into garum, or fish sauce.

What fish could not be sold, eaten, salted, or processed into garum, they discarded. This fish may have been too bony, or it may have had no scales or fins and therefore would have been unclean according to the Jewish dietary code.

Jesus links the sorting of the fish to the final judgment when the good and the evil will be separated and the evil cast into the “fiery furnace.”

The three parables present two rather different views of the Kingdom of God. The first two present the kingdom as a thing of great value—a treasure and a pearl. The third presents the kingdom as a net into which both the good and the evil will be drawn.

The juxtaposition of these three parables does not appear to be unintentional. Their juxtaposition points to the conclusion that one way or another the kingdom of God will affect us.

Jesus himself embodies the kingdom. On the one hand, he is the ruler of the kingdom. He is its king. On the other hand, he exemplifies a citizen of the kingdom. The way that we respond to Jesus is the way that we respond to the kingdom. We can believe Jesus and listen to him and follow his example. Listening to him entails doing what he said. Following example entails being obedient to God as he was obedient.

Whatever we do, we will be caught in the mesh of the net and our response to Jesus will determine our relationship with God for all time. We will be either made right with God through our faith in Jesus or be unreconciled with God and suffer the consequences of our enmity toward God.

God’s grace, the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, enables us to see Jesus for who is, enable us to recognize him as the Person of most value to us. Like the man who found the treasure in the field, the merchant who discovered the pearl of great value. we realize that we have come upon something whose value is such that it is worth selling everything we own to get it. Everything!

The third parable acts as a counterbalance to the first two parables. A fishing net is not something like a hidden treasure or a pearl that we would want to keep to ourselves and not share with others. It has purpose: it is used to catch fish. Jesus is not someone whom we would want to keep to ourselves and not share with others. Jesus has a purpose. Jesus’ purpose is more complicated than a fishing net. Just as a fishing net catches fish, Jesus, however, catches people. He showed his disciples how to be fishers of people because he himself was a fisher of people. He cast his net into the multitudes that gathered to hear him, to witness his miracles, and to be healed themselves. He himself was the net.

While the Parable of the Hidden Treasure and the Parable of the Pearl do not tell us what the man who sold everything to buy the field did with the treasure or the merchant who sold everything to buy the pearl did with the pearl, it would have been inconsistent with Jesus’ teaching for the man who bought the treasure to hoard it to himself or the merchant who bought the pearl to have done likewise. Jesus in his teaching emphasized generosity and openhandedness toward others and told the rich young man to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor. The image of the man who found the treasure and the merchant who discovered the pearl gloating over their good fortune simply does not fit with what Jesus taught. An image more in keeping with Jesus’ teaching is the two men celebrating and sharing their good fortune with others.

Some New Testament scholars consider Jesus’s comparison of a teacher of the religious law who becomes a disciple in the Kingdom of Heaven with a homeowner bring from his storeroom treasures new and old a fourth parable. It too acts as a counterbalance to the Parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl. The homeowner is putting these treasures on display. He is not keeping them locked away, out of sight, in his storeroom, and showing them only to close friends and intimates. He is showing them to all and sundry.

The implication is that the good news about Jesus is not gnosis, that is, secret knowledge for only a few initiates. It is good news to be proclaimed to everyone. It is not up to us to decide who gets to hear it and who does not. We are to make every effort to share the good news about Jesus with as many people as possible.

The rabbis of Jesus’ time expected people to come to them to hear their teaching. Jesus went to the people and taught them.

John Wesley, Anglican priest and founder of the Methodist movement, followed Jesus’ example and took up field preaching, preaching outdoors, in part because he was denied access to the pulpits of the churches in whose parishes he preached, in part because he discovered that he could reach more people, people who did not attend the church in the parish in which they lived, members of the working class and the poor.

Telling others about Jesus, however, is not solely the responsibility of pastors, ordained elders or licensed local preachers. It is the responsibility of every believer. Telling others about him is an integral part of being a disciple of Jesus.

Among the ways that John Wesley urged the early Methodists to keep the second general rule that he had laid out for members of the Methodist societies, the rule to do good, was to do good to people’s souls “by instructing, reproving, or exhorting” all with whom they had contact. While we may want to go about it in a different manner from the way it was done in Wesley’s day, it is clear that Wesley had in mind telling others about Jesus. It was the witness of the early Methodists as well as the preaching of Wesley and other Methodist leaders and Wesley’s organization of the early Methodists in small groups for mutual accountability and encouragement. that caused the movement to spread like it did. The early Methodists not only lived their faith in front of their families, relatives, friends, neighbors, and others but they also shared their faith with them.

Christians in the United States and Canada, whatever their denominational affiliation, would do well to take a page or two out of the playbook of John Wesley and the early Methodists and develop the habit of sharing their faith with others and meetings in small groups for mutual accountability and encouragement. In this way we can be faithful to the instructions that he gave to the first disciples.

After telling his disciples the story of the persistent widow and the unjust judge, Jesus makes this remark, “…when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?” (Luke 18:8 NLT) When Jesus comes again in glory, he will be looking for faith, faith in him, the kind of faith that leads to repentance from sin and turning to God, the kind of faith manifest in a life of love and obedience lived according to his teaching and example. He will not acknowledge everyone who called him “Lord, Lord,” but those who did the Father’s will. What is the Father’s will but to listen to Jesus in whom he is well-pleased. Listening to Jesus does mean nodding our heads in agreement to what he taught and then doing things the way that we see fit and not the way that he taught.

I do not believe that I am wrong in hazarding that the good fish that the fisherman keep in the Parable of the Fishing Net are the people whom the Son of Man upon his return finds to have faith, a living faith, the living who believe in him and demonstrate their belief in him through their words and deeds and the dead who did the same in their lifetime.

Silence is kept.

GOSPEL CANTICLE

Open this link to hear Lori True’s adaptation of the Magnificat, “Magnificat, Magnificat.”

Magnificat, magnificat anima mea Dominum.
Magnificat, magnificat anima mea Dominum.

1 I sing with all my heart, my spirit leaps for joy.
Who am I that you should honor me?
By your saving grace all will call me blest;
and proclaim the greatness of your name!

Magnificat, magnificat anima mea Dominum.
Magnificat, magnificat anima mea Dominum.

2 How great your gifts to us, how wonderful your works,
with your pow’r you strengthen all the weak.
Your mercy will endure: steadfast is your love
All the faithful follow and believe.

Magnificat, magnificat anima mea Dominum.
Magnificat, magnificat anima mea Dominum.

3 You scatter all the proud, the rich you send away.
All the mighty vanish in your sight.
You fill each hungry heart, raising up the least.
You are hope for all who are in need.

Magnificat, magnificat anima mea Dominum.
Magnificat, magnificat anima mea Dominum.

4 You rescue all the poor, your servant Israel.
You preserve your promise long foretold.
You keep your saving word, faithful is your name.
Ev’ry generation sings your praise!

Magnificat, magnificat anima mea Dominum.
Magnificat, magnificat anima mea Dominum.

Silence may be kept.

PRAYERS

THE COLLECTS

Almighty God,
you sent your servant John the Baptist
to prepare the way for the coming of your Son;
grant that those who proclaim your word
may so guide our feet into the way of peace,
that we may stand with confidence before him
when he comes in his glorious kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Judge and our Redeemer.
Amen.

Gracious God,
you have given us much today;
grant us also a thankful spirit.
Into your hands we commend ourselves
and those we love.
Be with us still, and when we take our rest
renew us for the service of your Son Jesus Christ.
Amen.

In darkness and in light,
in trouble and in joy,
help us, heavenly Father,
to trust your love,
to serve your purpose,
and to praise your name,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

THE LORD’S PRAYER

Let us pray with confidence as our Savior has taught us:

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 Skip Cleavinger’s choral arrangement of “To Christ the Seed.”

To Christ, the seed, to Christ, the harvest.
Into the barns of Christ may we be brought.
To Christ the fish, the depths, the oceans.
Into the nets of Christ may we be caught.

From birthing through age, from age to our parting,
Your two strong arms, O Christ, be around us all.
From age to end – not end, but birthing,
Into the House of Heaven may we be called.

To Christ – be the harvest;
To Christ – his nets for us all,
Into the arms of Christ may we be called.

THE CONCLUSION

Let us bless the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

The almighty and merciful God bless us
and keep us now and for ever. Amen.