Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
21st August 2022
20th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Year C
10th Sunday after Trinity
Proper 16
ORDER OF SERVICE
You can click to expand or minimize the order of service below.
All are requested to join in wherever text is GREEN or when instructed by Fr. David.
Where the is shown, all are encouraged to make the sign of the cross.
Where the is shown all are encouraged to strike their breast with a closed hand following the actions of Fr. David.
Where the is shown all are encouraged to tap their breast with an open hand following the actions of Fr. David.
HYMN: Glorious things of thee are spoken, Sion, city of our God
Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Sion, city of our God;
He whose word cannot be broken
Formed thee for his own abode:
On the Rock of Ages founded,
What can shake thy sure repose?
With salvation’s walls surrounded,
Thou may’st smile at all thy foes.
See, the streams of living waters,
Springing from eternal love,
Well supply thy sons and daughters,
And all fear of want remove:
Who can faint, while such a river
Ever flows their thirst to assuage?
Grace, which like the Lord the giver,
Never fails from age to age.
Saviour, if of Sion’s city
I through grace a member am,
Let the world deride or pity,
I will glory in thy name:
Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,
All his boasted pomp and show;
Solid joys and lasting treasure
None but Sion’s children know.
BLESSED BE GOD: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:
Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And blessed be his kingdom, now and forever. Amen
From Easter to Pentecost:
Allelulia. Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia
In Lent and other penitential occasions:
Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins;
His mercy endures for ever.
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Let us pray:
Almighty God, to whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name, through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
This prayer is omitted during Lent and Advent:
Glory to God in the highest, and peace to God’s people on earth. Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father, we worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory. Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us; you are seated at the right hand of the Father: receive our prayer. For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen.
Holy God, holy and mighty , holy and immortal, have mercy on us.
THE COLLECT OF THE DAY
Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
THE FIRST READING
A reading from the book of
Isaiah
9If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 11The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. 12Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
13If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; 14then you shall take delight in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God
THE RESPONSE
Psalm 103:1-8
1 Bless the Lord, O my soul, *
and all that is within me, bless his holy Name.
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, *
and forget not all his benefits.
3 He forgives all your sins *
and heals all your infirmities;
4 He redeems your life from the grave *
and crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness;
5 He satisfies you with good things, *
and your youth is renewed like an eagle’s.
6 The Lord executes righteousness *
and judgment for all who are oppressed.
7 He made his ways known to Moses *
and his works to the children of Israel.
8 The Lord is full of compassion and mercy, *
slow to anger and of great kindness.
THE SECOND READING
A reading from the book of
Hebrews
18You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, 19and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. 20(For they could not endure the order that was given, “If even an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned to death.”21Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, “I tremble with fear.”) 22But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. 25See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking; for if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much less will we escape if we reject the one who warns from heaven! 26At that time his voice shook the earth; but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.” 27This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of what is shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain. 28Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe;29for indeed our God is a consuming fire.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God
All stand for the Acclamation and Gospel reading.
ACCLAMATION
Alleluia! Alleluia!
The Sabbath was made for man,
And not man for the Sabbath.
Alleluia!
THE GOSPEL
The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to:
Luke
Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.
After the Gospel reading
This is the Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
THE HOMILY
But I digress. Not long ago I came across an interview with David Steindl-Rast, and the host of the show asked him to define the word “mysticism.” The answer that came forth was rather lovely: Mysticism is “union with ultimate reality,” he said. This might sound a bit vague or hard to understand, but granted a second listen, it is quite profound: Steindl-Rast is reminding us that although God is personal, and although He bends toward our prayers and answers them, He is nevertheless an unfathomable mystery, for He is infinite and our minds are finite. The Christian life is about union with God, yes, but since God is love and since love is infinite, He always escapes the boundaries of our comprehension. There is always more God to know.
In his answer, David Steindl-Rast is giving voice to the mystics of old, and letting their wisdom echo down the centuries and into our time. Meister Eckhart. Gregory of Nyssa. Marguerite Porete. Maximus the Confessor. All of them talk about the paradox of growing in intimacy with God: we love God as we fall ever deeper into His mystery, and there is no end to the fall. As love enfolds us, darkness engulfs us. They describe God as luminous darkness, and in holding this paradox before our imaginations they guard our minds from the idolatrous assumption that we can ever attain perfect knowledge of our creator. He is infinite, and our minds are finite. And in their poetry, the mystics play with shadow and light to remind us of this. God is light, and we come to know Him; but when that flash of revelation dawns in our minds, it casts a shadow of mystery, for there is always more to know.
But why am I rambling on about the Christian mystics? And what does any of this have to do with the woman in our gospel passage, the one whom Jesus heals? We usually think of her as an ordinary person, an unremarkable soul moving through her the day. She meets Jesus, and she is healed, but after the miracle, she fades back into obscurity, from whence she came, and we forget her. But in my humble opinion, she is a mystic, and she deserves to be honoured as one. She is a mystic because she is able—unlike the others in the story—to hold God’s love and His mystery in tension, to embrace them together.
At the beginning of the story, she is bent over and hobbles along, but soon enough the grace of Christ enlivens her frail body, and she is healed and finally stands upright, after eighteen long years of suffering. But what if she had thought, “Today is the Sabbath. I am supposed to find rest here, now, in this moment. And that is enough. I should be content with what I have.” She would never have gone out into the streets, and our story would have a different ending. She would have let Christ pass her by. But it was not so. She knew God intimately enough to expect Him to show His compassion on her behalf, but she was also open enough to mystery that she could find His grace even in a Nazarene drifter.
Bystanders accused her of breaking the Sabbath, but there is no evidence in this passage that she did so, and I suspect that she honoured the Lord’s Day and found rest in it. But she was also open to the unexpected, and it was this openness to mystery that allowed her to see Christ as a healer. Because she held intimacy and mystery together, she found God in the Sabbath and in Christ, its fulfilment and consummation.
I am not making a comment on the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament. That is a different issue altogether, and it would take hours upon hours to deal with all the nuances. I am only saying that she did veer to either extreme: she was familiar with God’s ways but not overfamiliar, and she did not brush the Sabbath aside out of contempt, and instead, she found rest in the Lord’s Day and in the Lord Himself.
As we read this passage, we might feel tempted to accuse her accusers. I certainly do. They scolded her for breaking the Sabbath, and they were lacking in grace and compassion. They should have been kind, it is true, but in my view, their mistake was deeper than that: They only searched for God in familiar places, and so their hearts were impenetrable when Christ moved in surprising ways. They cast mysticism aside, for they preferred familiarity to mystery, and their inner lives fell out of balance. When they looked into the face of Christ, they saw a drifter; but when she looked on Him with eyes of faith, she saw a wellspring of grace. They accused the Son of God of breaking the Sabbath, but she found in Him a profound and ultimate rest.
In Christ, love and mystery appear together. It is always this way, and it always will be. In the familiar light of His humanity and flesh, we see the unfamiliar darkness of God’s transcendence. Christ is always near and far. The woman in our story knew this, and as she beheld Christ, she saw His mystery flowing together with His love, and she was transfigured into His image, made whole.
Christ is infinite love, and although we are finite, if we go out of ourselves in love, we become like Him, for transcending our own limitations and allowing our love to expand, we begin to resemble Him. This is what happened to the woman in our story. Jesus of Nazareth stood before her, and she fell in love, went out of herself and into Him, and she was healed. Healing was the wake of her soul’s ecstasy as it passed by and into Christ.
This woman who, on the surface and at first glance, appears so ordinary… She was a great mystic, for she knew one of the deepest truths of our Christian faith: that God often meets our expectations by defying them.
Amen
THE NICENE CREED
Please stand for the Nicene Creed.
Let us together affirm the faith of the Church.
We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
INTERCESSION
To follow
THE CONFESSION
THE CONFESSION:
God is steadfast in love and infinite in mercy, welcoming sinners and inviting them to the Lord’s table.
Let us confess our sins in penitence and faith, confident in God’s forgiveness.
Merciful God, our maker and our judge, we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, and in what we have failed to do: we have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbours as ourselves; we repent and are sorry for all our sins , Father forgive us, strengthen us to love and obey you in newness of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
**(Note: all are encouraged to strike their breast 3 times following the lead of Fr. David as he utters the words: ‘sorry for all our sins’)**
THE PEACE:
THE PEACE:
The congregation stands.
We are the Body of Christ.
His Spirit is with us.
The peace of the Lord be always with you.
And also with you.
Please greet each other with a sign of peace.
HYMN: Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now I’m found,
Was blind, but now I see.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come.
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promised good to me;
His word my hope secures.
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life endures.
♫♫ Scroll to the bottom of the page for the media player where you can hear the music and practice your singing. ♫♫
THE OFFERTORY
THE OFFERTORY
Blessed are you, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have these gifts to share. Accept and use our offerings for your glory and the service of your kingdom.
Blessed be God forever.
Let us pray
We do not presume to come to your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table, but you are the same Lord whose nature is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us. Amen.
CLICK HERE FOR EUCHARISTIC PRAYER
The Lord be with you.
and also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give thanks and praise.
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.
Proper Preface
Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we proclaim your great and glorious name, for ever praising you and saying:
Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
Lord, you are holy indeed, the source of all holiness; grant that by the power of your Holy Spirit, and according to your holy will, these gifts of bread and wine may be to us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; who, in the same night that he was betrayed, took bread and gave you thanks; he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take, eat; this is my body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way, after supper he took the cup and gave you thanks; he gave it to them, saying: Drink this, all of you; this is my blood of the new covenant,
which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this, as often as you drink it,
in remembrance of me.
Great is the mystery of faith:
Christ has died:
Christ is risen:
Christ will come again.
And so, Father, calling to mind his death on the cross, his perfect sacrifice, made once for the sins of the whole world; rejoicing in his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, and looking for his coming in glory, we celebrate this memorial of our redemption.
As we offer you this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, we bring before you this bread and this cup and we thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you. Send the Holy Spirit on your people and gather into one in your kingdom all who share this one bread and one cup, so that we, in the company of [N and] all the saints, may praise and glorify you for ever, through Jesus Christ our Lord; by whom, and with whom, and in whom, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honour and glory be yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Let us pray with confidence to the Father, as our Saviour 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.
O Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
O Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
O Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.
**(Note: All are encouraged to tap their breast three times following the example of Fr. David as he utters the words ‘…have mercy, …have mercy and …grant us peace’)**
We break this bread to share in the body of Christ.
Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread.
This is the Lamb of God , who takes away the sins of the world;
Happy are those who are called to his supper.
Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.
**(Note: All are encouraged to strike breast following the example of Fr. David as all utter the words ‘not worthy’)**
After Communion the celebrant and the congregation say
Let us pray.
Father of all we give you thanks and praise that when we were still far off you met us in your Son and brought us home. Dying and living, he declared your love, gave us grace, and opened the gate of glory. May we who share Christ’s body live his risen life; we who drink his cup bring life to others; we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world.
Keep us in this hope that we have grasped; so we and all your children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise your name.
Father, we offer ourselves to you as a living sacrifice through Jesus Christ our Lord. Send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord: and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit , be amongst you and remain with you always.
Amen.
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord:
In the name of Christ. Amen.
HYMN: Just as I am, without one plea But that thy blood was shed for me
Just as I am, without one plea
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that thou bidd’st me come to thee,
O Lamb of God, I come.
Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings within, and fears without.
Just as I am, thou wilt receive,
Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve
Because thy promise I believe.
Just as I am (thy love unknown
Has broken every barrier down),
Now to be thine, yea thine alone,
Just as I am, of that free love
The breadth, length, depth and height to prove,
Here for a season than above,
O Lamb of God, I come
♫♫ Scroll to the bottom of the page for the media player where you can hear the music and practice your singing. ♫♫
Music
Here is the music for this week’s hymns, if you would like to practice beforehand.
Performed by Fr. David Price
NOTE: The introductory music is ‘Finale on ‘Hyfrydol’ – Colman
