Thursday Evenings at All Hallows (Thursday, April 13, 2023)

 

Welcome to Thursday Evenings at All Hallows. For 50 days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday (or Whitsunday), Christians in the Western Church celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and his victory over death. The Fifty Great Days of Easter, also known as Eastertide, is celebrated as a single joyful feast, which the Patristic writer, Athanasius, called the "great Lord's Day." This Thursday evening falls within the Octave of Easter, an eight-day period that begins on Easter Sunday and concludes on the following Sunday, Low Sunday. In churches that celebrate this octave, it marks the beginning of Eastertide.

DRAWING NEAR TO GOD

Christ is risen, alleluia!
The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!

Opening Hymn:
Open this link in a new tab to hear St. John of Damascus’ “Come Ye Faithful Raise the Strain.” 

1 Come, you faithful, raise the strain
Of triumphant gladness!
God has brought His Israel
Into joy from sadness.
Loosed from Pharoah's bitter yoke
Jacob's sons and daughters,
Led them with unmoistened foot
Through the Red Sea waters.

2 'Tis the spring of souls today:
Christ hath burst His prison,
And from three days' sleep in death
As a sun has risen;
All the winter of our sins,
Long and dark, is flying
From His light, to whom is giv'n
Laud and praise undying.

3 Now the queen of seasons, bright
With the day of splendor,
With the royal feast of feasts,
Comes its joy to render;
Comes to gladden faithful hearts
Which with true affection
Welcomes in unwearied strains
Jesus' resurrection!

4 For today among His own
Christ appeared, bestowing
His deep peace, which evermore
Passes human knowing.
Neither could the gates of death
Nor the tomb's dark portal
Nor the watchers nor the seal
Hold Him as a mortal.

5 Alleluia! Now we cry
To our King immortal,
Who, triumphant, burst the bars
Of the tomb's dark portal.
Come, you faithful, raise the strain
Of triumphant gladness!
God has brought His Israel
Into joy from sadness!

Hymns of Praise:
Open this link to hear Isaac Watt’s “Come, Let Us Join Our Cheerful Songs.” 

Come, let us join our cheerful songs
with angels round the throne;
ten thousand thousand are their tongues,
but all their joys are one.

"Worthy the Lamb that died," they cry,
"to be exalted thus."
"Worthy the Lamb," our lips reply,
"for he was slain for us."

Jesus is worthy to receive
honor and pow'r divine;
and blessing more than we can give
be, Lord, forever thine.

Let all that dwell above the sky
and air and earth and seas
conspire to raise thy glories high,
and speak thine endless praise.

The whole creation joins in one
to bless the sacred Name
of him that sits upon the throne,
and to adore the Lamb.

Open this link in a new tab to hear Larry Dempsey’s “Glory to the Lamb.”

Glory, Glory, Glory to the Lamb
Glory, Glory, Glory to the Lamb
For You are glorious
And you're worthy to be praised
You're the lamb upon the throne
And unto You we lift our voice in praise
You're the lamb upon the throne

Glory, Glory, Glory to the Lamb
Glory, Glory, Glory to the Lamb
For You are glorious
And you're worthy to be praised
You're the lamb upon this throne
And unto You we lift our voice in praise
You're the lamb upon the throne

For You are glorious
And you're worthy to be praised
You're the lamb upon the throne
And unto You we lift our voice in praise
You're the lamb upon the throne

For You are glorious
And you're worthy to be praised
You're the lamb upon this throne
And unto You we lift our voice in praise
You're the lamb upon the throne

The Lord be with you.
The Lord bless you.

Let us pray.

Silence

Glorious Lord of Life,
we praise you,
that by the mighty resurrection of your Son,
you have delivered us from sin and death
and made your whole creation new;
grant that we who celebrate with joy
Christ’s rising from the dead,
may be raised from the death of sin
to the life of righteousness;
for he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God for ever.
Amen.

HEARING GOD’S WORD

A reading from the New Testament (Luke 24:35-48)

Then the two from Emmaus told their story of how Jesus had appeared to them as they were walking along the road, and how they had recognized him as he was breaking the bread. And just as they were telling about it, Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. But the whole group was startled and frightened, thinking they were seeing a ghost!

“Why are you frightened?” he asked. “Why are your hearts filled with doubt? Look at my hands. Look at my feet. You can see that it’s really me. Touch me and make sure that I am not a ghost, because ghosts don’t have bodies, as you see that I do.” As he spoke, he showed them his hands and his feet.

Still they stood there in disbelief, filled with joy and wonder. Then he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he ate it as they watched.

Then he said, “When I was with you before, I told you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And he said, “Yes, it was written long ago that the Messiah would suffer and die and rise from the dead on the third day. It was also written that this message would be proclaimed in the authority of his name to all the nations, [or all peoples] beginning in Jerusalem: ‘There is forgiveness of sins for all who repent.’ You are witnesses of all these things.

Silence

Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church.
Thanks be to God.

Who Is Jesus to You? What Place Does He Have in Your Life?

In today’s New Testament reading Luke the physician puts to rest the notion that what the disciples saw was an apparition or ghost following Jesus’ death. As Jesus tells the disciples, ghosts do not have bodies. They cannot be touched. They also do not eat.

Jesus not only demonstrated that he was not a ghost by allowing the disciples to touch and examine his hands and feet and by eating a piece of fish.

Jesus was also more than a reanimated corpse, a zombie. While he had a physical body, he was also able to come and go at will. He could enter a room even though the door was locked. He had a physical existence in this world but was not bound by its physical restraints. He was alive in the fullest sense of the word but at the same time he also much, much more.

The disciples could not believe their own eyes. They were filled with doubt. They believed in a general resurrection of the dead at some future date. But someone actually rising from the dead as Jesus had, was outside their normal experience. Like ourselves, they judged things and people based upon what they considered normal human experience. If something occurred outside their everyday experience, they were prone to question its reality. We do the same thing.

But as scientists tell us, we have only limited knowledge and understanding of the universe in which we live. What we conceive to be normal human experience is not a good measure of what exists and what does not exist, what can happen and what cannot happen.


While Hamlet’s words are open to several different interpretations, the sixteenth century English playwright William Shakespeare puts it best when Hamlet tells his friend Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” This is not to belittle or dismiss reason and empirical study but to recognize their limitations. We cannot account for everything by these means.

There is more to our world than what we can perceive with our senses. We had no idea that the world was filled with microscopic creatures until a lens was ground through which we could see them. We keep making discoveries that throw into question what we thought that we already knew.

Maintaining an open mind means making allowances for the existence or occurrence of things that lie outside our everyday experience. It also means recognizing the very human tendency to choose not to believe anything that unsettles our perception of ourselves, the world, and others.

If we accept that Jesus’ resurrection was an actual occurrence, then we are confronted with the claim that not only is Jesus Lord of all but also he commands our allegiance and obedience. We are no longer the master of ourselves. Jesus is! In a culture that puts self and self-expression on a pedestal, acknowledging the Lordship of Jesus is a serious challenge to our cultural values and our conception of ourselves.

We may be tempted to fall back on normal human experience as a measure of what can exist and what can happen and dismiss Jesus’ resurrection as implausible, as unlikely to be true. This leaves us in charge of our own lives. Or so we believe. We may also be tempted to choose what we like about Jesus’ teaching and actions while ignoring what else he said or did. We reshape Jesus to our liking as we might playdough or plasticene. We turn him into a safe Jesus—a dead sage who lived a long time ago rather than a living Lord.

The real challenge of the resurrection is not its believability but the claim a risen Jesus has on our loyalty and obedience. It takes the form of two questions, “Who is Jesus to me? What place does he have in my life?” They are questions which we need to keep asking ourselves and to which we need to give a thoughtful answer. The answers we give today may not be the answers we give tomorrow. Or a week or a year from now.

Who then is Jesus to you? What place does he have in your life?

Silence

Anthem:
Open this link in a new tab to hear Richard Hillert’s arrangement of George Ratcliffe Woodward’s “This Joyful Eastertide.” 

1 This joyful Eastertide
Away with sin and sorrow!
My love, the Crucified,
Has sprung to life this morrow:

Had Christ, who once was slain,
Not burst His three-day prison,
Our faith had been in vain;
But now has Christ arisen,
arisen, arisen;
But now has Christ arisen!

2 My flesh in hope shall rest
And for a season slumber
Till trump from east to west
Shall wake the dead in number:

Had Christ, who once was slain,
Not burst His three-day prison,
Our faith had been in vain;
But now has Christ arisen,
arisen, arisen;
But now has Christ arisen!

3 Death's flood has lost its chill
Since Jesus crossed the river;
Lover of souls, from ill
My passing soul deliver:

Had Christ, who once was slain,
Not burst His three-day prison,
Our faith had been in vain;
But now has Christ arisen,
arisen, arisen;
But now has Christ arisen!

PRAYING FOR GOD’S WORLD

Concerns and Prayers
A short pause for silent prayer may be made after each response. The bidding in brackets [ ] may be omitted.

Let us implore the all-holy and ever-blessed Trinity to show mercy and grace to us and to all people.

O God the Father, have mercy upon us:
O God the Father, have mercy upon us.
O God the Son, have mercy upon us:
O God the Son, have mercy upon us.
O God the Holy Spirit, have mercy upon us:
O God the Holy Spirit, have mercy upon us.

Stretch out your hand upon us, O Lord, and save us; raise us up and defend us.

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for the peace that comes from above, and for the salvation of our souls.

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for the peace of the whole world, and for the welfare and unity of the Church of God.

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for the conversion of those who do not yet believe or have fallen into error.

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for our country, for this place [or city], for this district, and for all that live in it.

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for all Christian people throughout the world.

Lord, have mercy.

[Let us pray for all Christian princes and governors, especially our Sovereign Lord, King Charles.]

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for all in authority in this land, especially those in this county [or city or place].

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for all who minister in Christ's Church, especially for N. our pastor.

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for all who are traveling by land, sea, or air.

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for steadfastness in the faith for our brothers and sisters in other lands.

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for all who are sick or suffering, in mind, body, or state of life.

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for quiet, peaceful lives, free from temptation and sin, and for a joyful reunion with all our loved ones in heaven at life’s end.

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray that we may faithfully represent Christ in the world and to the world.

Lord, have mercy.

Let us pray for the faithful departed.

Lord, have mercy.

(Other biddings may be added here.)

Lord, you have given us grace to agree in these prayers, and you have promised that when two or three ask together in your name you will grant their requests. Fulfil now, Lord, our desires and prayers as may be best for us. Grant us in this life, knowledge of your truth and in the age to come, life eternal. Amen.

And now as our Savior Christ 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, and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.

GOING OUT TO SERVE

Closing Hymn:
Open this link in a new tab to hear George William Kitchin and Michael Robert Newbolt’s “Lift High the Cross.” 

Lift high the cross,
The love of Christ proclaim
Till all the world adore
His sacred name.

Come Christians, follow where our Captain trod,
Our King victorious, Christ the Son of God.

Lift high the cross,
The love of Christ proclaim
Till all the world adore
His sacred name.

Led on their way by this triumphant sign,
The hosts of God in conquering ranks combine.

Lift high the cross,
The love of Christ proclaim
Till all the world adore
His sacred name.

All newborn soldiers of the Crucified
Bear on their brow the seal of him who died.

Lift high the cross,
The love of Christ proclaim
Till all the world adore
His sacred name.

O Lord, once lifted on the glorious tree,
As Thou hast promised, draw the world to Thee. Refrain

Lift high the cross,
The love of Christ proclaim
Till all the world adore
His sacred name.

Amen! Amen!

Benediction:
The God of peace,
who by the blood of the eternal covenant
brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ,
that great shepherd of the sheep,
make us perfect in every good work;
working in us that which is pleasing and good,
and the blessing of God almighty, Father, Son
and Holy Spirit, be with us and remain with us
for ever. Amen.