Pentecost 20

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Blessed be our strength and our hands of our weather.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, under whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy holy name through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

The Lord be with you.

Let us pray.

Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity, and that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

A reading from Deuteronomy.

Moses went up from the plains of Moab to the Mount Nebo, to the top of Piskah, which is opposite Jericho, and the Lord showed him the whole land, Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the western sea, the Negeb and the plain, that is the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar.

The Lord said to him, This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, I will give it to your descendants.

I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.

Then Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord's command.

He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day.

Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died.

His sight was unimpaired, and his vigor had not abated.

The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days.

Then the period of mourning for Moses was ended.

Joshua, son of Nun, was full of spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hand on him, and the Israelites obeyed him, doing as the Lord had commanded.

Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.

He was unequaled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform in the land of Egypt against Pharaoh and all his servants and his entire land, and for the all the mighty deeds and all the terrifying displays of power that Moses performed in all of in the sight of Israel.

The word of the Lord.

You turn us back to the dust and say, For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past.

You sweep us away with like a dream.

In the morning it is green and flourishes.

Return, O Lord, how long will you tarry?

Be gracious to your servants.

Satisfy us by your loving kindness in the morning.

Make us glad by the measure of the days that you afflicted us.

Show your servants your works.

May the graciousness of the Lord our God be upon us.

But though we had already suffered and been shamefully mistreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition.

For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery.

But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak not to please mortals, but to praise God, to please God who tests our hearts.

As you know, and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed, nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others.

But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children.

So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

The word of the Lord.

Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your exceedingness.

This is the greatest and first commandment.

And the second is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question What do you think of the Messiah?

Whose son is he?

They said to him, The son of David.

He said to them, How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord?

saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.

If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?

No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask Jesus any more questions.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Well, a reminder to you as we draw near to the end of the church year, that'll be here at the end of November, the lectionary is having us relive the Passion Week.

And here the last couple of weeks, we've been able to hear something that we hear on the national stage too, people trying to entrap Jesus in a question so they can find some sort of uh quote that can misrepresent him and get him condemned.

I mean, isn't that the nature of politics nowadays?

So uh that was happening then as well.

And we're asked to relive this not just so we can identify with Jesus at the end of the year in him escaping entrapment, um, but escaping entrapment in general and growing into larger life.

And so uh the trap today is that uh the Pharisees who believe there are 613 commands, and you've heard of these, they're called mitzvot.

When you're 13 and you're a Jewish boy, you're supposed to know all of these.

If you know them all, you can become a bar mitzvah, a son of the commands.

There are 365 that are yes commands, like do this, one for every day in the solar calendar.

There are 248 don'ts, one for every bone in your body.

You don't have that many.

Um, this is a tradition.

This is all about being the bar mitzvah.

So this is your obligation as a good Jewish person to know 613 commands.

Which one is the most important?

That's entrapment.

How can one be more important than all the others?

Jesus responds with this uh part from Deuteronomy, which is essentially the Jewish equivalent to John 3.16.

Uh, maybe you've heard it before.

It says, Here, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one, and you will love the Lord your God with all your heart.

Remember in the Hebrew Bible, your heart is the center of your will, not the center of your feelings.

We'd probably say your brain.

With all of your soul, in the Hebrew Bible, you don't have one of those.

You are one of those.

Your body, your feelings, your mentality, your will, you add all that together, that's your soul.

And in Hebrew, you heard me read it in the gospel today, not the way it's printed, with all your exceedingness.

In Hebrew, this says, Love God with all of your will, with everything that puts you together.

And if there were anything left over after that, love God with that as well, your exceedingness.

This was so important that our Jewish brothers and sisters have done something really interesting because in Deuteronomy the injunction is get up every morning and go to bed every night and tell your children.

And every time you come in and out of your house, recite these words.

Hero Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.

This is a mezuzah.

Our Jewish brothers and sisters have this usually right outside their front door.

Inside it is a little scroll.

The box is not important.

You can make the box out of clay or out of gold or rubies, whatever you want.

What matters is the scroll inside that has this from Deuteronomy, this same verse.

And the tradition is so that you don't forget that you kiss the box every time you come in and out of your home to remind you, oh, I'm coming home.

Love the Lord with all that I am.

I'm going out into the world.

Love the Lord your God with all that I am.

Oh, I forgot my keys, and I have to go back in and love the Lord with all that I am.

It's a great uh mnemonic device for remembering.

Remembering.

I last time had one because the previous occupant was Jewish and had painted behind it a number of times, so you could see in the paint where it had lived.

The mezuzah was gone, but the footprint was there.

It really was a lovely thing to move into, to be honest.

Jesus does something uh really quite interesting today, though.

He says the second command is just like it, and he quotes, what do you know, Leviticus, and says, the second one is like it.

He makes an equivalent of two commands that are not commands.

Love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Now, I want to tell you, I grew up in a spirituality that was not um, frankly, very mature.

And the way I learned it was the trick is you're supposed to not love yourself, you're supposed to love other people who think like you, and you're supposed to love God.

And essentially the vision I got was that I could somehow grow closer to God without growing closer to my neighbor.

And I'd like to reintroduce you to this orthodox idea is very, very old, of the equilateral triangle.

I probably should have blown this up, but I didn't.

In the middle of the triangle, that is orthocenter, is where you are right now.

And each of the vertices represents God, others, and the self God made you to be.

So you see there's some distance between all three things.

That distance actually is really good.

Because if you're all the same thing, guess what?

You can't have a relationship.

The early church fathers had this idea that the closer you grow to God, that is where you are now, the closer you grow to God, it's not just that the triangle starts to go like this and become a skewed triangle.

They believe the closer you go to God, the closer you grow to other people and yourself.

In fact, this is the test of healthy spirituality.

If you think you're growing closer to God and you're not growing closer to your neighbor, you're wrong.

It's pretty mature, to be honest, right?

And unfortunately, some of the work I'm doing, and hopefully many of you aren't doing, is that I thought I could grow closer to my neighbor and God by growing further away from myself.

But I am really enriched by the African proverb that says, never accept a shirt from a naked man.

That is to say, if I do not have love for the self God made me to be, I can neither love God nor my neighbor.

Without love for the selves God made us to be, when our neighbor shows up with some kind of talent or beauty, we can only be jealous instead of grateful that God has gifted them and gifted us.

Now we, of course, struggle with narcissism and egotism.

But that's not the self God made us to be.

God asks us to love who God has made us and to be that person and to be neither more nor less.

As a good southerner, I'm really good at being less than.

We learn to speak about ourselves that way.

It's called self-deprecation.

And that's not love.

And it leads us only to envy and strife and enmity and jealousy.

So I want you to hear Jesus' saying, we probably do love our neighbors like we love ourselves, which is often not very well.

In Luke, if you know this story, the lawyer immediately does something very lawyerly and says, That's all well and good.

Who's my neighbor?

We continue to struggle with who my neighbor is.

Jesus in Luke tells the story of the Samaritan.

In Matthew, that's not the story.

In Matthew, Jesus tells this really interesting bit about who is the Messiah going to be, and the answer is he's going to be the son of David.

This may seem like the gospel writers are totally at ends with one another, but I want to suggest Matthew is doing something actually really similar to Luke, albeit in a very different way.

Consider, there's this genealogy in Matthew.

And it starts with Abraham and it goes to David, and do you know who it ends with?

Come on, somebody grew up Baptist in here.

It ends with Joseph.

And what do we know about Joseph?

He's not Jesus' dad.

They're not related at all.

Jesus is not a descendant of David, not a literal one.

He's a figurative one, right?

Jesus says, where's the Messiah going to come from?

He's going to come from David.

And you know what David represents?

David represents crushing the opposition on God's behalf.

David represents not managing your own household very well.

David represents at least statutory rape, if not intentional rape, because you can do it and get away with it and say you're sorry when you're done.

That's what the guy represents.

And Jesus says the Messiah is not going to be like that.

The Messiah is not going to be somebody who succeeds whatever means are required.

The Messiah is going to be a different way, where the ends and the means are the same thing.

So I struggle sometimes with my neighbor.

Because to be honest, I have very polite neighbors.

I don't know them very well.

They're very polite because when one of my chickens flies into their yard, they let me know.

Many of us, I think, struggle with neighbors.

And quite honestly, this is a time when I think the text is really relevant.

Who, in fact, is my neighbor and what means are acceptable as we think about ends.

Sometimes we decide who our neighbors are based on what political sign is in their yard.

And friends, I want to tell you, if that's where you find yourself, you are finding yourself in a state of sin.

And this is really important because that way of being a neighbor comes from King David and not from who Jesus calls us to be.

And this is where I want to return to something I said a few weeks ago about St.

Francis and internal family systems theory.

That is to say, there are neighbors I don't like because they don't think like me.

In general, neighbors are people who think like me or keep their offensive thoughts to themselves so we can just sort of get along.

That is typically the way I act as a neighbor, even though that is not the way to be a neighbor.

The reason I act that way is because there are parts of myself that drive me crazy.

Some of those parts are really, really effective.

They're really helpful.

They came from times in my life, honestly, where I didn't have the emotional resources or maturity to take care of myself in a mature way.

So they uh they helped me cope with ways of being.

As such, they have worked really hard to protect me from bad behavior.

The problem is I have more maturity and resources now, and I don't actually need them to offer that protection, which often gets in the way of me loving myself and my neighbor and God.

Often I look at those parts and I say, You're bad.

Stop! I hate that part of myself.

And because I cannot love those parts of myself, I cannot love neighbors who are like that.

And often God disappoints me.

And I want to suggest that there's something very Franciscan and beautiful about reconciling ourselves with the wolves that are part of ourselves.

So I'm going to tell you something that's really strange.

With my spiritual director about three weeks ago, I had a conversation with my left rhomboid and trapezius.

This part of my body really likes for my shoulder to do this, especially when I'm running.

A marathon I haven't adequately trained for.

I finished that race, let me tell you.

But running 18 miles and training ahead of 26 miles is not good prep.

But because I put my shoulder forward, I finished that race.

I finished a half Iron Man when I'd only run half the distance.

This was really helpful in finishing the race.

It said, soldier on.

Push through.

If you stop, you're a failure.

And you know what?

It helped.

Never mind that it really hurt my knees and hip and all of that.

I finished those races.

It's not just about racing.

My shoulder will do this in times of conflict or stress with my job, with my family.

And I realize sometimes what I do is I get in there and I say, let's hustle and let's achieve something.

I'll sit down to relax and jump back up because there's something else I could do.

This works really hard to make sure I finish what I start.

These muscles work really hard to make sure I don't prematurely give up.

With my spiritual director, I was able to have a conversation with these muscles.

I want you to know.

Sometimes I would get relief by doing physical therapy exercises or by doing stretching.

But the most relief I've had in a long time was having a conversation with these muscles and asking them what it is that they're doing and what they're afraid of will happen if I make them stop.

And I realized these things, even though they're really tight and they threaten to ruin my posture, they're working really hard on my behalf all the time.

Even at night when I lay down in bed, my shoulder would be up.

So we had a conversation in which I realized what they're offering me, and I said, you know, I think we would enjoy life a little more if you would use your same work ethic and your same commitment to our finishing to really invest in good form.

So would you try this, guys?

Would you try pushing back so that instead of going into the world like a bull rush, we could be back and have good form, which is actually gonna help us do more finishing and lifting long term, and we can be open.

This is gonna sound crazy, but um so far they've been cooperating.

Because I had a conversation with my shoulder muscle.

I know that's really strange, um, but I spent years being frustrated and mad at these knots, and then I realized um they're part of me.

They're a part of me, and they really would like to serve and better me if I could appreciate them and we could join and get on the same side.

It's gonna sound really strange, and I don't want to be the hero in my own narrative because I'm not, but something that small has made me realize there are a number of people who have bothered me.

And I've been able, even in the last three weeks, to think of them and think, I wonder if they're doing that thing that drives me crazy because of blank.

And I realized that even though in some ways those behaviors are self-defeating, like my shoulder leaning forward, they served a purpose.

And they were working really hard to serve that purpose.

And I found myself not only only growing closer to my shoulder, but to people who have ruffled my feathers for years.

And to God.

I think we get to hear this story about Moses precisely for the same reasons.

The story is really clear.

Moses can't go to the promised land, so he goes up to Mount Nebo.

I've been there.

You go up to Mount Nebo and you look, and you know what you see?

A desert and the Jordan River and a fortified city called Jericho with a bunch of people who are using clubs that have nails sticking out of them.

No wonder he died.

He'd been working 40 years ago to the promised land, and there he saw a castle.

And this text says there was nobody like Moses, the replacement's Joshua.

If you know your Bible, Joshua's a warrior, he's a fighter.

Moses fights from time to time, but mostly what he does is he represents a bunch of whiny, complainy people on behalf of them and God, and he loves them.

And the text is saying, I'm afraid there's not been anybody like Moses because we're not willing to advocate for people we don't like, because we don't even advocate for the parts of ourselves we don't like.

I don't think this is saying Moses is special in the case that he's not repeatable.

I think this is saying Moses is special if we would just only live into his advocacy for all of God's people, especially the ones we don't like.

Especially for the parts of ourselves that God made and deeply loves, and that we all too often reject.

And don't you see, when we reject parts of ourselves, we're really rejecting the God who made those parts of ourselves.

And that is why we cannot grow closer to God until we grow closer to who God has made us to be.

This is timely.

It's always timely.

But here at the end of the year, it's timely.

As we approach all saints and an election day that is bitterly divisive, it's extremely timely.

Because the truth is, God is not calling us as a church to just do one of the three bits of this triangle.

God is inviting us to join the messianic spirit that is truly liberating and gives life by showing up in all three of these places.

And the best news I have is you don't even have to feel like it.

It's really good news that you don't have to feel like loving anybody, especially yourself.

You know, feelings, uh, they're really strong and they send really good messages.

They say, pay attention, but they can be wildly incorrect even though you have them.

And if you're like me, feelings will get you through the first two years of your marriage, and if that's all you got, it's over.

Feelings won't even get you through the first week of your newborn, they'll get you through the first couple of hours.

But if that's all you've got, you don't have love.

You just had some feelings.

No, love is about showing up, especially when you don't feel like it.

You don't have to want to show up for your neighbor.

The gospel says, show up for your neighbor.

You don't have to show up.

You don't have to feel like loving those parts of yourself that drive you crazy.

You don't have to feel like it.

The way you love those parts is you show up.

You don't have to feel like showing up before God all the time.

In fact, you can show up really mad at God.

And the fact that you show up means you're practicing love.

Because there is nothing more loving 90% of the time than just showing up.

And imagine the maturity we could grow into and model and invite in a church if we could love God and love our neighbor and love the self that God is desperately, deeply in love with.

And God, let me tell you, the biggest myth of spirituality grew up is that God loves you but doesn't like you.

Totally wrong.

God is madly in love with the you that God is calling you to be.

God doesn't just love that, God enjoys it.

So part of this, I think, is as we grow into loving who God called us to be, then we can love our neighbor, quirks and all.

And our neighbor can be radically different from us.

And friends, that's about the only hopeful thing I can think of in the world right now.

So no matter where you find yourself on election day, or all saints day, or in your prayer time.

Show up for God.

Show up with your neighbor.

Show up for yourself and live into the law and the prophets.

Please join me as we pray our faith in the words of the Nicene Creed.

We believe in one God, the Father of the Almighty, maker of the all that is seen and unseen.

We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally God of the Father, God will God, light and light, true God is true, the God, the only being, through all Jesus, each, each, and what's made.

For us, I mean, he self-production is very, very, forces, he is, you know, you will come again for justice in the death, and to see you.

You believe in the Holy Spirit, Lord, you are life, who receives your father and son, we all have some to worship and glorified.

He is the only process, believe in one only Catholic church, we all baptism, we have together and the prayers of the people.

Let us pray for the church and the world.

We thank you, O God, for your universal church and its mission, and for calling us to serve you and among your people.

Continue, we pray, to equip us with all we need to tell others of you and glorify your name in all we do.

O Lord, in your compassion, hear our will.

We pray for the leaders of all nations that they may seek to do your will for the welfare of the people they lead and serve.

We pray for those holding public office in our nation, that they may be guided by your gifts of wisdom and charity.

We thank you, Creator God, for the beauty, majesty, and abundance of your creation, especially for its manifestation here around Clear Lake.

Keep us mindful of the holiness and fragility of our earthly home and all creatures who dwell therein, that we may rejoice in being stewards and peacemakers.

O God, giver of all things, we thank you for the abundance of grace poured out upon us.

May we with grateful hearts show compassion through our thoughts, words, and deeds for those who are hungry, homeless, neglected, abused, exploited, or in any other need.

Lord Jesus, healer of bodies and spirits, may your healing hand touch all who suffer in mind, body, or soul.

May those who attend to them use their God-given skill, wisdom, and compassion to restore them.

We pray especially for Chris, Jerry, Sean, Jerome, Susie, Ted, Andrea, Kevin, Ron, Joe, Larry, and Nancy.

The congregation is invited to name their own celebrations or petitions silently or allowed.

Trusting that you are able to do more than we ask or imagine.

We give thanks, Lord Jesus, for graciously restoring those who have battled and survived serious illnesses and near-death situations.

That by your help and the help of those who sent to them, they may continue to serve you in this life according to your will.

We're especially grateful for, and now the congregation is invited to name thanksgiving silently or aloud.

Lord, in your compassion, hear our prayer.

We thank you, loving God, for the fellowship and relationships we enjoy in this gathering and pray that we may continue to grow in love and support for each other.

May your presence known, make your presence known, we pray, with those who grieve for broken relationships and struggle to mend walls created through conflict, disagreement, and mistrust, that they may seek and find forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation.

Lord, in your compassion, hear our prayers.

Living God, we remember our loved ones and colleagues who no longer journey with us in this life.

Have compassion on all who mourn, and may the souls of the departed share in your eternal kingdom, especially Drew and Patty.

Lord, in your compassion, hear our prayer.

Rejoicing in the fellowship of all the saints, let us commend ourselves and one another and all our life to Christ our God.

Amen.

Let us humbly confess our sins against God and our neighbor.

Almighty and most merciful God, we are thankful that your compassion is higher than the heavens, wider than our eyes, deeper in all our sin.

Forgive our earless attitudes toward your purposes, our refusal to leave the suffering of others, our individual through hand, our obsession with creating a light of constant entertainment, our indifference to the treasures of heaven, our neglect of your wise and gracious law.

Help us to change our way of life so that we may desire what is good, love what you love, and do what we command.

Amen.

The Almighty and Merciful Lord grant you absolution and remission of all your sins, true repentance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

The socially distanced peace of the Lord be always with you.

There are a few announcements I'd like to draw your attention to.

Most of these will be in the e-news.

But one thing that is really tremendous about our diocesan grant for the streaming equipment that we have, and some parishioners have made memorial gifts as well, is that yesterday we were able to celebrate the life of Britain Eedler, who, by all accounts, was really a wonderful human being.

And we were able to do that both physically and throughout the United States with this stream.

And it is such a helpful and wonderful and hospitable ministry that Bob and Todd and so many have invested in, both with their time and with their financial gifts, to be able to celebrate somebody's life in these current conditions, which are really, really hard.

And so this is good and faithful work.

And I want to make sure you know people are doing that, and uh it's it's an incredible part, incredibly a part of it, especially as a priest.

Next Sunday, of course, is All Saints Day, and it's maybe helpful to remind you that in the Episcopal Church, a saint is somebody living or dead who points us toward God, just like John the Baptist does in Renaissance art, right?

And so there's two ways I put before you that we can celebrate all saints.

One is that if somebody has departed from your life in the last year, thinking calendar year, please submit their name to us by Tuesday so that we can celebrate their sainthood with a candle and with the chimes during the Eucharist.

There's a simultaneous opportunity to celebrate people living or dead who have pointed us to God by joining with our day school and adding a token or a photo to the ofrenda that they're going to make this week.

So this is the Dia de los Muertos tradition to make an of, which is a table and sometimes it has pictures and uh tokens.

And again, you have this opportunity if you'd like to celebrate a saint in your life, living or dead, to bring in a picture and a token so we can celebrate the communion of all of the saints.

And you can do that during the week, or you can do it on Sunday.

There'll be an offrenda setup next week, and again, we'll have the likes of the saints who have departed in the last year.

Um, I also want to raise to you that we have this um incredible opportunity on election night.

I know many of you will be watching the results.

Uh, that's November the 3rd.

We also have this great opportunity to speak to somebody who um spent 20 years incarcerated and while incarcerated earned an associate's degree, a bachelor's degree, and two master's degrees, three of them from the University of Houston, Clear Lake.

So Johnny Ward is going to avail himself to talk about his journey, what it is like to be incarcerated and pursue education, and the hope, honestly, of remediation that education opened for him.

We're gonna do that on election night from seven to eight, and then you can join the results again.

Um, but this is truly a unique opportunity.

Uh, he, for his master's project, wrote a book.

Uh, I'm happy to lend it to you if you want.

I've got a copy of it, in which he compiled stories from other inmates about um what incarceration and education, sometimes false accusation, was like, and meant for them.

So I hope you will join us for this conversation on Zoom on November the 3rd from 7 to 8.

And you'll find a link both in the e-news, or you can talk to me, or you'll find it um on the website as well.

Uh, two other bits worth mentioning um our our you know, Houston Methodist Hospital has recently said please do not go trick or treating because it is an exposure event.

And so um, here we are, nine weeks into school here at St.

Thomas Episcopal School, and one of the most treasured days for our kids is Halloween, and um they're not supposed to go trick or treating, so we are hoping to put on a chunk or treat for them this.

Friday, and we could still use about five folks to show up for one hour with 50 or fewer treats, quite honestly, to hand out the kids in costume who know that you'll be wearing a mask.

It is actually a community service because Methodist Hospital says don't go out door to door because of the exposure risk.

And this is our most visible service to the community that fills our parking lot Monday through Friday.

So doing it for folks, if you're able, please just talk to me or send me an email.

And that's this Friday for one for one hour.

The other thing you may have noticed in the e-news is that we are now halfway through our stewardship drive for next year, which is really funny.

And I can't think of a better collect than the one that says, Amidst the swift and varied changes of the world, fix our hearts on where true joy is to be found.

So it's been a wonky year.

It's probably gonna be a wonky year next year, and I'm grateful in advance for your consideration and your generosity because the truth is we are doing more together between food drives and distributions for the school and collecting for Lord of the Streets and providing families with Thanksgiving meals and raising up a group of students and families and wisdom and connecting here at an open invitation to God's table.

So please think with generosity on your church and consider where God might be leading you to serve.

And it really is a privilege to serve with you as your priest at this time.

So continue to walk in love.

You who have much faith, and you who have little, you who have been here often, and you who have not been for a long time or ever before.

You who have tried to follow and you who have failed, come.

Not because the church invites you, it is Christ.

He invites you to meet him here.

The Lord be with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift up the Lord.

Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.

It is very meet right in our bound in duty that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father Almighty, everlasting God.

And therefore, with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of thy glory.

Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High.

Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest.

All glory be to thee, O Lord our God, for that thou didst create heaven and earth, and didst make us in thine own image, and of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to take our nature upon him, and to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption.

He made there a full and perfect sacrifice for the whole world, and did institute, and in his holy gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that, his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again.

For in the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread.

And when he given thanks to thee, 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.

Likewise after supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, and when he given 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 all for the remission of sins.

Do this as oft as ye shall drink it in remembrance of me.

Wherefore, O Lord and Heavenly Father, we thy people do celebrate and make, with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy son hath commanded us to make, having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, and looking for his coming again with power and great glory.

And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us, and with thy word and Holy Spirit to bless and sanctify these gifts of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the body and blood of thy dearly beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

And we earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness to accept this, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, whereby we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies.

Grant, we beseech thee that all who partake of this holy communion may worthily receive the most precious body and blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, and be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction.

And also that we in all thy whole church may be made one body with him, that he may dwell in us and we in him through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

By whom and with whom and in whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honor and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end.

Amen.

Now, as our Savior Christ hath taught us, we are bold to 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 and the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

Therefore, let us keep the feast.

These are the gifts of God for you, the people of God.

Feed on them in your hearts by faith and with thanksgiving.

And I invite you to receive either bread or a blessing by coming to the aisle to your right.

If you'll come down socially distanced, I'll give you bread or a blessing and ask you to come back around to your seat.

Almighty and ever-living God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us in these holy mysteries with the spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of thy Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, and dost assure us thereby of thy favor and goodness towards us, and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people, and are also heirs through hope of thy everlasting kingdom.

And we humbly beseech thee, O Heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in, through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with thee and the Holy Ghost be all honor and glory, world without end.

Amen.

May God, who by the Holy Spirit calls those of many languages and world views to proclaim Jesus as Lord, strengthen your faith, and send you out to bear witness to God in word and deed.

And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you this day and remain with you always.

Amen.