Holy One, we lift our hearts to You
in praise and thanksgiving.
Envelop us in your light, O God,
that your radiance may shine through us into the world.
Make us bearers of your gospel with each step we take,
and worthy disciples in your Way.
Purify our hearts of all malice, enmity, or carelessness,
and forgive us our offenses,
as well as those done in our name.
Open our spirits to receive your truth
as we await the coming of your Son, O Almighty One.
Bend near to those who call upon you, Merciful God,
and accept our prayers.
Amen.
Great Spirit,
we rise to sing your praise
and ask your blessing upon this day.
Give us tomorrow's bread today,
O God of Abundance;
plant within our hearts
a hunger for wisdom
and a thirst for justice.
Strengthen us to stand
with the oppressed,
the discounted,
and the pushed-aside,
O Holy One,
that we may overturn
the thrones of corruption.
May we stand alongside each other
in peace and contentment,
Blessed Jesus,
triving only for your kingdom
come among us as a little child
to call us into new life and hope.
At day's end,
may the blanket of night soothe us,
and may we rest securely in your embrace,
O Most High.
Grant your benediction
upon all those who seek You,
and rest your healing hand
upon all whose hearts are heavy or troubled,
as we pray.
Amen.
Light of Our Hearts,
in joy we praise you,
and draw near to seek your wisdom.
Forgive us our failures of faith,
O God Who Sees,
and break open our frozen hearts
that they may be warmed and restored
by the hearth of your mercy and grace.
Beloved Jesus, take our hands,
consecrate our intentions,
and hallow our hearts by your love,
then send us out to do your will.
Wonderful Teacher,
renew our spirits
to walk in love,
to live in compassion and awareness,
to work for the healing of the world.
Spirit of the Living God,
envelop the hurting within your peace,
and watch over those for whom we pray.
Amen.
Merciful, Loving God,
we turn to you in gratitude
for bringing us through the shades of night,
and for the gift of this new day.
We pray for those exposed to the cold,
human and animal alike,
for those who lack adequate housing,
for those who lack warm food,
and for those who work in all weather.
Your eye is on the sparrow,
O God of Creation;
may we follow in your Way of Empathy.
Help us to show our gratitude
by sharing what we have,
and by caring for those we meet
in recognition of our common bonds,
each a beloved child or creature of God.
Grant your blessing, O Savior,
upon all who work or watch or weep this day,
and gather around the hearth of your mercy
all those for whom we pray.
Amen.
O Infinite One, Lover of Our Souls,
your mercy is a canopy over us,
your love is a lamp unto our feet.
Accept our repentance
for the error of our ways,
for our refusal to be guided by your healing example,
O Giver of Life to All.
We center our hearts within your benevolence,
Our Guide and Way,
that we may proclaim your glory
with each breath that you have given us.
You, O Lord, are the Light,
All-Pure and Sublime,
encompassing all creation
within the song of your love,
that sets the pillars of the heavens
and lays the foundations at the heart of the universe.
Yet you also walk alongside us as we seek your truth,
bending near to hear our whispered prayers,
gathering our tears within your mercy.
Give ear to our prayers and guidance to our steps,
strengthening our heart and minds for discipleship
that we may joyfully and faithfully serve You,
O Ground of Our Being.
Extend the hand of your mercy
over all those who seek You,
especially those we remember before You as we pray.
Amen.
Lord Jesus, abide with us this day,
and open our hearts to proclaim your grace
as we bless and magnify your Holy Name.
Let the whole round earth declare your glory,
and all creation join in hymns of praise.
Draw us within the enclosure of your mercy,
O Lover of Souls,
and in the name of your Beloved Son
preserve us and keep us. Guide us through your gospel
to persevere in faithfulness and hope,
that we may testify to your Love throughout the world. In your great mercy,
forgive us from all our sins,
and set our feet securely in pathways
of peace and forbearance.
You are the Life and Truth
to all who live, O God,
and the hope of all who seek You.
Press the kiss of your blessing,
O Spirit of Healing,
upon all who call upon You.
Amen.
This last summer, I took three weeks of vacation, as you may recall, combining two trips into one for the sake of practicality. Even before my call to serve among you, I had been making plans to go to Iona with Confluence St. Louis for 9 days, and it was an incredible time of prayer and renewal in what the Celts call a “thin place” a place where the division between heaven and earth seems especially thin, the barrier seeming somewhat less of a wall than of a doorway.
This last week, I took some continuing education time on Iona’s “sister island” here in the US—and it was incredible to me how an island half a world away and very different in terms of terrain could still have such a holy and inspirational vibe to it.
But last summer, after nine days in Scotland, I then traveled to Paris and met my husband Bill there, where we spent another nine days exploring that city and the nearby region in France. One of the day trips we took was to Chartres—another important, ancient pilgrimage site for hundreds of years for people of faith. Bill was careful to plan this trip for a day when the chairs of the cathedral are moved aside so that visitors can walk the original labyrinth set in the floor of the Cathedral there.
The Chartres labyrinth has been copied repeatedly in hundreds of other sites throughout the world—you can even get a portable, life sized copy on heavy canvas, such as one owned by our very own diocesan Cathedral. This same pattern has been embedded in the floors of both Grace Kirkwood and recently at my home parish of Holy Communion in University City. There’s even one at my friend Pamela’s parish in Davis, CA.
But another reason why I thought about that trip to Chartres this week was that Chartres Cathedral also has a magnificent stained-glass window depicting the Jesse tree spoken of in our reading from Isaiah. This magnificent window is one of the original windows in the cathedral, created around 1150 CE, more than 850 years ago.
So my heart and mind are drawn to Chartres when I read our readings for this weekend. I remember gazing at that beautiful window depicting part of Jesus’s genealogy from Jesse to Jesus. The center panel of the window shows Jesse lying on his couch, and tree sprouting from him, successively showing his descendants that led to Jesus: David; then Solomon; then a couple of generic kings of Israel to emphasize Jesus’s royal lineage; then Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and finally, at the top of the tree, Jesus—the pinnacle of Jesse’s lineage, the king and descendant that David was promised who would sit on the throne of Israel forever. Thus the symbol of the Jesse tree is one of promises God makes and keeps.
Hovering around Jesus are symbols for the seven gifts of the Spirit listed in the very beginning of our Isaiah reading: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and awe before the Lord our God, the last of which is so important that our Isaiah text mentions it twice for good measure. These were all attributes that Jesus himself embodied.
After standing gazing at that window for at least half an hour, I then took my place at the labyrinth and slowly, mindfully traced the path shared by millions of pilgrims before me by walking on that ancient stone labyrinth at the heart of the Cathedral. With each step, I contemplated the ideas of promises made and kept. I thought of the twists and the turns of my own life--and in my life of faith.
I prayed for the courage to cultivate and open myself to the powerful, life-disturbing gifts of the Spirit within myself:
wisdom,
understanding,
counsel,
fortitude,
knowledge,
piety,
and awe and wonder before the Lord.
Just like at Chartres Cathedral, promises and pathways intertwine in our readings today. The idea of promises being fulfilled by God, even when it seems they continue unconsummated according to our understanding, is a theme that runs through scripture. Remember Abraham being promised descendants more numerous than the stars, even though he and his wife were old and she had so far had no children herself? With that promise, Abraham set out on a path he had never imagined—to a new life and a new land. What it’s often easy to forget is that years then elapsed after that promise was made to Abraham and Sarah by God, even as they scrupulously sought to fulfill their end of the bargain by packing up everything and moving to a land they’d never seen, which was itself promised to Abraham and his descendants by God. Like Abraham, we too live a life of faith that rests upon promises and pathways.
We begin to really settle in to Advent this week with readings that remind us of the glorious promises which are our inheritance as people of faith. Advent is a time of penitence as well as expectation, a time of remembering things past while also inhabiting the “not-yet” of the coming Messiah. In the darkness and cold of winter, we are reminded of promises made and promises kept.
One of the main theses of the gospel of Matthew is that God fulfills the promises he makes, in this case to David, and this reading from Isaiah helps establish proof for that claim in Matthew. Jesus is referred to as the “son of David” ten times in the gospel of Matthew, more than in any other synoptic gospel (the term does not appear in John). Promises made by God are never forgotten.
The vision recounted here in our Isaiah passage ends with a description of a restored creation: many of the animals paired together are domesticated animals and the wild animals who prey upon them, led by an innocent. The vision ends with a reference to the “root of Jesse”—to David and David’s descendants—and again expresses the wish that the entire world will turn its face toward Israel and look to it as the source of salvation. Even though, as Isaiah writes, it appears that the tree of Jesse has fallen, the hope is that a rod or branch will spring up from the fallen tree that will grow to be even mightier than its parent.
As we begin year A in the three-year lectionary cycle, we will spend most of this year with the gospel of Matthew. Matthew’s gospel is the most Jewish of all the gospels, supposedly—Jesus gives five discourses in Matthew, just like there are five books in the Torah, for instance. Matthew’s driving claim is that Jesus, as the Messiah, is the fulfillment of promise and prophecy to the people of Israel throughout the centuries. And even in the early chapters of this gospel we see this case building— chapter 1 recounts Jesus’s genealogy and legitimacy as a son of David and as a son of Abraham—of which our Jesse tree is a symbol.
Today’s gospel, from chapter 3, skips ahead to Jesus’s adulthood, and introduces his cousin, John the Baptist—another familiar character each Advent. John is a prophetic herald, warning his listeners that the one who by rights may judge them is at hand. Our gospel also quotes Isaiah (although chapter 40) as a touchstone to solidify the claims that John will make about Jesus and about himself. John is the one crying out from the wilderness, proclaiming the coming of the Lord.
The appearance of John himself here is itself a sign or promise fulfilled, since he comes out of the wilderness dressed just so for the role of an Old Testament prophet—his attire is remarkably similar to that of Elijah.
The appearance of John the Baptist on our Advent stage is therefore another reminder that promises made through the prophets of Israel were being fulfilled, as the birth of Christ and the launching of his public ministry drew near.
“Prepare the way of the Lord! “John, as promised, will shout out from the wilderness. “Make his paths straight!”
And it is here again that I am drawn to the walking of that labyrinth in Chartres, for to me, that is where our reading from Isaiah and our reading from the Gospel came together in one space, and where their connection was physically embodied in the pilgrim path the hundreds of us there that day traced. And I think of that experience every time I get the chance to pray in a labyrinth.
By a special blessing, I even got a chance to walk a labyrinth again this week on Whidbey Island near Seattle as I prayed and thought about these readings—just as I had back in Chartres. With each step I took, twisting and turning, doubling back on myself, I noticed seeming to draw near to the heart of the labyrinth only to be led away again I thought about how that labyrinth walk is so symbolic of the life of seeking faith, of seeking deeper knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
With every twist and turn, I thought about that command, “Make straight the path of the Lord!”
Jesus’s incarnation reminds us that Jesus comes to show us the way that is straight to the heart of God.
Our problem is, as we seek to follow him and emulate him, we often turn aside, distracted or fearful, often, to the right and the left. Now, we can beat ourselves up for that—or let that convince us that the journey is pointless. But this Advent season reminds us of the promise of God to send us one to show us the way, to accompany us in navigating the twists and turns of our lives, the obstacles and seeming dead-ends that really only become dead ends if we fail to remember how God accompanies us as we go through them or around them.
The labyrinth reinforces one of the messages of this season of the new church year of honoring the journey as much as the destination. As we move from turn to turn in our lives, as we encounter detours and obstacles which we never expected, the gift of that labyrinth calls us to peace in the face of each twist and turn, of relying on the sureness of God’s promises to always walk beside us. A promise that is so sure that God sent God’s only begotten Son to led us through the labyrinth of our hearts to the path of love, of hope, of mercy, and of grace.
Even if Jesus’s way is straight, and ours isn’t, what we are reminded today is to nonetheless persist in seeking to follow Jesus, and be transformed by his presence within us.
By wisdom, by understanding, by counsel, by fortitude, by knowledge, by piety, and by awe and wonder the path before us will seem to straighten. What once appeared to be a barricade or a detour instead becomes a blessing that shapes us along the journey.
This coming Christ child will be our companion, our model, and our guide along the way. By him, with him, and through him we will not only reach the heart of God, the center of the life of faith. We will ourselves become lights in the darkness to others as they contemplate the call of the path in the deepest recesses of their hearts. We become companions along the way for others as disciples, accompanying each other on the twists and turns of the life of faith.
The labyrinth also literally embodies for us something we don’t often talk about-- the life of repentance. Think about it. To repent means to turn aside from the path we have been following, and recommit ourselves to the Way of Jesus. A Way that is beautiful and alluring—yet also costly, as all precious things always are. The turns in the labyrinth also remind us of how important it is to examine our paths each day—and turn back from those times we have interposed our own will for God’s vision of love and light for us.
We have to be patient, of course, and persistent. The time it takes to traverse the path of course may seem interminable. There is always the temptation to step off. There is always the temptation to just attempt a shortcut, like proclaiming we are Christians yet turning aside from the transformation and repentance that following the path literally demands of us. Yet the minute we fail to honor the twists and turns in the journey as gifts to ourselves and as proofs of the abiding promise of the love of God, we actually risk losing the path altogether.
As the winter nights lengthen, may we have the faith to embrace the promises of God’s strength in our lives, and the strength to embrace the pathways of faith that lead us deeper into the life of abundance God dreams of for this world. May we remember, no matter how we get to the heart of God, we have the promise of light from light, true God from true God, coming among us, offering salvation and enlightenment for all. May we hold fast to the promise of not retribution, but mercy coming to live among us, judging with righteousness and equity the cause of the oppressed. May we have assurance that surely that goodness and mercy will walk alongside us, no matter where the labyrinth of our lives may lead us.
Amen.
Preached at the 505 on December 7 and at 8:00 and 10:30 on December 8 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.
Readings:
Isaiah 11:1-10
Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12
Almighty God, we thank you for light and life,
for all your gifts and blessings upon us.
We thank you especially
for sending prophets among us,
to teach us to return to the ways
You have hallowed and blessed.
May all who profess your Name
work to stamp out the fires of hatred,
and bring mercy and forbearance to life in all things.
Help us turn again
deliberately
toward justice, compassion, and peace.
Help us turn away
from exulting over each other's losses or pain
but toward setting each other's good as our own.
Help us work for the oppressed and the marginalized,
standing against systems of oppression and hatred.
Help us to walk into the light of love and peace,
secured on a foundation of justice and equality with all beings.
Holy One, we give thanks
for your abiding faithfulness to us
even when we wander.
Set our hearts and minds
on the path of compassion,
and place your blessing upon those
whose needs we raise before You.
Amen.
Let us now praise our God:
Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver,
Ground of Being and Source of Beauty.
Come, Light of the World,
and fill our hearts with fire
to bring victory to the oppressed
and comfort to the fearful.
Let us sing hope
before the forces of despair,
and breathe your love
into the frozen air of division.
You have taught us to walk
in the ways of the Holy One:
now let us arise and set our hearts to work with joy.
Place the mantle of your solace
and the balm of your healing
on all who cry out for help,
O God of Power and Mercy.
You know what is written in our hearts,
O Holy One:
place your blessing upon all
whom we now remember before You, we pray.
Amen.
Holy One,
the beauty of your handiwork
dances before our eyes
like shook foil:
receive our humble prayers
of thanks and praise!
For rain that softens
the winter-cold Earth,
we give you thanks.
For music that breathes its blessing
through soft pine branches
on the salty-sweet ocean air,
we give you thanks.
For the blessing of home and hearth,
for the kindness of strangers
and the kinship of all living things,
we give you praise.
For the approaching Prince of Peace,
whose way is pure and compassionate,
hallowing our poor flesh
with God’s own only-begotten,
we bow in humble awe.
God of All,
bend near
to hear
our whispered intercessions,
and gather within your surpassing peace
all those for whom we pray.
Amen.
Holy One,
we lift our hearts to You
in praise and thanksgiving.
Envelop us in your light, O God,
that your radiance may shine
through us
into the world.
Make us bearers of your gospel
with each step we take,
and worthy disciples in your Way.
Purify our hearts
of all malice, enmity, or carelessness,
and forgive us our offenses,
as well as those done in our name.
Open our spirits to receive your truth
as we await the coming of your Son, O Almighty One.
Bend near to those who call upon you, Merciful God,
and accept our prayers.
Amen.
Come, Lord Jesus,
and teach us to follow your path
with humble joy and peace!
Help us to hear your call to transformation,
that we may live by the values proclaimed in your gospel.Help us stand with the poor and the oppressed,
and bring healing and relief to all who suffer.Help us learn to live together
in justice and peace for all,
and seek to work alongside each other
for the common good.Help us worship You
by honoring You and your creation,
not only in our words, but by our deeds.
Holy One,
we are drawn to your light and mercy;
help us to reflect that light and mercy
as your disciples.
United by our hope in God,
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-Giver,
we ask you send your Spirit upon all who call upon You.
Amen.
Why is it, we all must wonder, that the start of the liturgical year—Year A, even, in the three -year cycle—begins with talking about the end? And I don’t mean like reading the last page of a book first kind of end, but THE END. We begin with a vision of the final judgment at Jesus’s second coming, the one we proclaim about in the Nicene Creed that will be when Jesus “will come again in great glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.” His kingdom—you know, the thing we celebrated last Sunday.
Eschatology is that branch of theology which deals with “the study of the end of things” (“eschatos” means “last”). The gospel reading for this week is eschatological, as it is traditional for Advent to begin with a gospel reading that deals with this subject.
It is the end of Year C and the beginning of Year A. It is the end of the Season after Pentecost, also known as “Ordinary Time.” And indeed, Advent reminds us that we do not live in ordinary time during this month of preparation that is at once both joyful and solemn. Thus, in this Advent reading, we have a discussion of the end times, right as we balance upon the edge of the beginning.
This passage we read from Matthew’s gospel today itself was one that was quoted to me often in my childhood churches. Many of them talked often about the “end-times,” and this was one of their favorite images: two people will be working side by side, and one will be taken and the other “left behind” when Jesus makes his “second coming.”
I didn’t like hearing that back then any more than I imagine you do. It didn’t help when my mother tried to scare the living hell out of me-- yes, I mean it-- by taking me to see some low-budget alleged “documentary”—notice the air quotes I used with my fingers when I said that word— called A Thief in the Night, about what the earth would be like for those who were “left behind.”
Nuclear war, disease, disruption and yes, even mutants—these were all the fates awaiting those who were left after Jesus took the faithful bodily up to heaven and left everyone else down here on earth to suffer—which didn’t square with what I knew about Jesus, either. This one imagined that the United Nations became a tool of Satan during his reign on earth and forced everyone to wear “the Mark” or face execution by guillotine, because why not a guillotine? I remember sitting with my big-haired mama in a darkened movie theatre with a bunch of other families with their big-haired mamas as they, I guess, tried to scare their kids into being “born again.”
It didn’t help that the preacher behind this series of films—yes, he managed to get FOUR of these pieces of cheesy garbage made and actually watched by millions of people—always cast himself in the movies and he looked like Grampa from the Waltons but talked like Oral Roberts when he REALLY got wound up.
So I sat there in the dark with my arms crossed against my chest, slouched down in my seat eating the margarine-drenched popcorn my mom had brought into the theatre in a grocery sack and waited for it to be all over. I was waiting for, you know, it to end. And then I struggled not to laugh at the absurdity of waiting for a movie about the End Times to end for the last hour, because I was sitting next to a bunch of people who believed that this movie was the best chance to save our souls.
The problem I had with the strategy behind this movie was that it put all the emphasis on the end. It really didn’t matter HOW you lived your life—so long as you personally accepted Jesus as your savior. You could still be mean to people, and make fun of the poor and hate foreigners and refugees—and I knew people who smugly assured me that they were “saved” who did all those things while also assuring me that the Buddhist family in the newspaper were all doomed to hell even though they cooked Thanksgiving meals for the homeless in their restaurant every year. You could look down your nose at those different from you all day long, only just as long as you believed in Jesus, you would go to heaven, these movies subtly and not so subtly told us.
But when we look at the message of the gospels in their entirety, we see a Jesus who called us to be disciples during our lives right now—to heal the sick and feed the multitudes and welcome the outcast.
For all of this talk about Jesus coming again like a thief in the night in Matthew 24, there’s the outline of what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus in Matthew 25, where the king judges the nations based on whether they cared for the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, and the stranger.
For every place in the scriptures that it talks about Jesus’s second coming, there’s many times as much of an emphasis that Jesus’s birth and life already initiated the coming near of the Kingdom of God.
The judgment spoken of in our gospel passage today reminds us that judgment and justice, both tempered by grace and mercy, are two sides of the reign of Jesus. When Jesus comes to judge us, he will judge us on how well we embodied justice and mercy for those who are forced to the margins in this world we have made and of which we are a part. These people who assured me that they were saved when the rapture came also loved to quote scraps of scripture about terrifying prophecies and about a vengeful God, one without mercy. But in John 5:39-42, Jesus accuses those who profess their own faithfulness but hollow out their responsibility to others with this observation: ‘You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life. I do not accept glory from human beings. But I know that you do not have the love of God in you.'
That movie may not have taught me anything about God. But today I went with my husband and our daughters to see the new movie about Mr. Rogers called A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I had heard about how this movie made grown adults cry, including my oldest. But Mr. Rogers was one of the spiritual gurus of my childhood, and so we went.
I was fine until we got to a scene where Mr. Rogers and the cynical writer who is interviewing him are riding the subway in New York. The full range of humanity was in that subway car around them. But all of a sudden a teenager called out, “Hey—Mr. Rogers!” in kind of a tough voice. But when they got his attention, these oh-so-cool teens started singing Mr. Rogers’ theme song, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”
By the time they get through the middle of the first verse, the entire car, including cops and tough guys, was singing along, “Won’t you please? Won’t you please? Please won’t you be my neighbor?” And boom—cue the waterworks.
I thought about how Mr. Rogers embodied Jesus for me, long before I knew he was a Presbyterian minister. I thought about how he was a dependable, calming influence in a time of great chaos in my own life. How he talked about how he liked each of us just the way we are. How he embodied a life of faithful witness without ever saying the name of Jesus even once.
Just like Mr. Rogers, Jesus calls us to be faithful, and Christianity as a whole is judged in our world based on how faithfully we embody the love of God within us, how prayerfully we embody the command to love God and love each other, to have love in our hearts or else faith is nothing. The call of Jesus to us is to embody Jesus’s teachings so faithfully that, as one of my favorite hymns of childhood goes, “They will know we are Christians by our love.”
“Belief” in Jesus isn’t just about heaven and the end times. It’s not just about grabbing a magic ticket to save yourself. Belief in Jesus is about having LIFE, and having it more abundantly, right now. It’s about transforming our lives through joy, and then using those lives transformed by love to do nothing less than transform the world.
Jesus calls us to go beyond belief to discipleship. Belief in Jesus is most importantly a call to work for the repair of the world. Belief in Jesus is about nothing if it is not directed outwardly toward those around us—that’s why there are so many commands to love one another in scripture.
Belief in Jesus is nothing if it is not transformative, leading to making us not just fans out to save our own necks, but disciples. Discipleship is about transformation of our lives and our relationships with each other, especially the marginalized, the oppressed, and the helpless, right now. It’s about working to bring the kingdom of God into being the kin-dom of God, to recognize each other as beloved children of the One Who Made Us and Loves Us.
Jesus calls us to be ready. To be ready and watchful, for Christ appears in ten thousand places. But he also calls us to transform our hearts so that we can see him here with us now. He appears—right now-- among those we easily overlook. He appears among those the rest of the world seeks to turn away, among those whose outstretched hand is sneered at not as a plea for help but as a con.
He appears among those who are carrying burdens we can never see and may not understand. He appears in the vesture of those whom we tell ourselves are not truly needy or deserving of our time or attention.
Jesus leaves no one behind, but calls the world unto himself and to his life of joyful care for each other.
The days grow short—quite literally—as we hear these words. Yet the sure and certain promise that carries us through this darkness is that even in the darkest of nights, the light of a single candle can be seen for miles. Even when we talk about Jesus’s second coming, we are reminded that he is risen and with us even right now, calling us into deeper bonds of kinship and companionship with each other.
Amen.
Preached at the 505 on November 30, and at 8:00 and 10:30 am on December 1, 2019, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.
Readings:
Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
Light of Hope,
shine within our hearts
that we may waken the dawn with our praises.
God Of All Wonders,
bring us to new life in You,
that we may cast away the works of darkness,
clothing ourselves instead with your truth,
drawing all the world to your glory.
Make us ready and watchful,
Most Merciful Jesus,
that we may be found worthy of your Name,
living by your kingdom values
of justice, mercy and peace,
ever upheld by your grace.
By the power of the Holy Spirit,
kindle the fire of our spirits
to blaze anew within us,
and place those for whom we pray
under the mantle of your blessing.
Amen.
