Morning Prayer - Monday 14 May 2018

from the day after Ascension Day until the Day of Pentecost

Matthias the Apostle

Psalm 16

Preserve me, O God, for in you have I taken refuge; I have said to the Lord, ‘You are my lord,all my good depends on you.’ All my delight is upon the godly that are in the land, upon those who are noble in heart.

Though the idols are legion that many run after, their drink offerings of blood I will not offer, neither make mention of their names upon my lips. The Lord himself is my portion and my cup; in your hands alone is my fortune. My share has fallen in a fair land; indeed, I have a goodly heritage.

I will bless the Lord who has given me counsel, and in the night watches he instructs my heart. I have set the Lord always before me; he is at my right hand; I shall not fall. Wherefore my heart is glad and my spirit rejoices; my flesh also shall rest secure. For you will not abandon my soul to Death, nor suffer your faithful one to see the Pit. You will show me the path of life; in your presence is the fullness of joy and in your right hand are pleasures for evermore.

Psalm 147.1-12

Alleluia.How good it is to make music for our God, how joyful to honour him with praise.

The Lord builds up Jerusalem and gathers together the outcasts of Israel.

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up all their wounds.

He counts the number of the stars and calls them all by their names.

Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his wisdom is beyond all telling.

The Lord lifts up the poor, but casts down the wicked to the ground. Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving; make music to our God upon the lyre; Who covers the heavens with clouds and prepares rain for the earth; Who makes grass to grow upon the mountains and green plants to serve our needs.

He gives the beasts their food and the young ravens when they cry.

He takes no pleasure in the power of a horse, no delight in human strength;

But the Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their trust in his steadfast love.

1 Samuel 2.27-35

A man of God came to Eli and said to him, ‘Thus the Lord has said, “I revealed myself to the family of your ancestor in Egypt when they were slaves to the house of Pharaoh. I chose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to offer incense, to wear an ephod before me; and I gave to the family of your ancestor all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel. Why then look with greedy eye at my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded, and honour your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?” Therefore the Lord the God of Israel declares: “I promised that your family and the family of your ancestor should go in and out before me for ever”; but now the Lord declares: “Far be it from me; for those who honour me I will honour, and those who despise me shall be treated with contempt. See, a time is coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your ancestor’s family, so that no one in your family will live to old age. Then in distress you will look with greedy eye on all the prosperity that shall be bestowed upon Israel; and no one in your family shall ever live to old age. The only one of you whom I shall not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep out his eyes and grieve his heart; all the members of your household shall die by the sword. The fate of your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you—both of them shall die on the same day. I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed one for ever.

Acts 2.37-47

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what should we do?’ Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.’ And he testified with many other arguments and exhorted them, saying, ‘Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.’ So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

The Collect

Almighty God, who in the place of the traitor Judas chose your faithful servant Matthias to be of the number of the Twelve: preserve your Church from false apostles and, by the ministry of faithful pastors and teachers, keep us steadfast in your truth; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Morning Prayer - Saturday 12 May 2018

from the day after Ascension Day until the Day of Pentecost

Gregory Dix, Priest, Monk, Scholar, 1952

Psalm 21
The king shall rejoice in your strength, O Lord; how greatly shall he rejoice in your salvation! You have given him his heart’s desire and have not denied the request of his lips. For you come to meet him with blessings of goodness and set a crown of pure gold upon his head. He asked of you life and you gave it him, length of days, for ever and ever. His honour is great because of your salvation; glory and majesty have you laid upon him. You have granted him everlasting felicity and will make him glad with joy in your presence. For the king puts his trust in the Lord; because of the loving-kindness of the Most High, he shall not be overthrown.

Your hand shall mark down all your enemies; your right hand will find out those who hate you. You will make them like a fiery oven in the time of your wrath; the Lord will swallow them up in his anger and the fire will consume them. Their fruit you will root out of the land and their seed from among its inhabitants. Because they intend evil against you and devise wicked schemes
which they cannot perform, You will put them to flight when you aim your bow at their faces.

Be exalted, O Lord, in your own might; we will make music and sing of your power.

Psalm 47
Clap your hands together, all you peoples; O sing to God with shouts of joy. For the Lord Most High is to be feared; he is the great King over all the earth. He subdued the peoples under us and the nations under our feet. He has chosen our heritage for us, the pride of Jacob, whom he loves. God has gone up with a merry noise, the Lord with the sound of the trumpet. O sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises.  For God is the King of all the earth; sing praises with all your skill.

God reigns over the nations; God has taken his seat upon his holy throne.
The nobles of the peoples are gathered together with the people of the God of Abraham. For the powers of the earth belong to God and he is very highly exalted.

Numbers 21.4-9
From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.’ Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.’ So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

Luke 7.18-35
The disciples of John reported all these things to him. So John summoned two of his disciples and sent them to the Lord to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?’ When the men had come to him, they said, ‘John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” ’ Jesus had just then cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind. And he answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’

When John’s messengers had gone, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who put on fine clothing and live in luxury are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.”

I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.’ (And all the people who heard this, including the tax-collectors, acknowledged the justice of God, because they had been baptized with John’s baptism. But by refusing to be baptized by him, the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God’s purpose for themselves.)

‘To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the market-place and calling to one another,
“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.”

For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, “He has a demon”; the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.’

The Collect

O God the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: we beseech you, leave us not comfortless, but send your Holy Spirit to strengthen us and exalt us to the place where our Saviour Christ is gone before, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Learning the Church's Seasons "We don't do Ascension!"

I'm working hard to become a full-blown grumpy old goat (GOG) - if it was a postgraduate thing it'd be doctoral level - but there are days when I feel there's good reason for being one! And today i I feel that this might be the case as I bask in the shadow of grossly complacent Christian ignorance.

The reason for my reaching for the walking stick to wave at the miscreant believer complete with the words, "And I know there you live you know!" is the amazingly ease they possessed when they told me that their church doesn't 'do' Ascension! How can we claim to be Christian and not observing the Ascension?

Christianity has a distinct shape and feel about it. There are rhythms and events which communicate amazing truths. The church's liturgical year starts with Advent and ends with 'Christ the King'.

click for full-size image

There is a reason that we have the liturgical seasons: They teach us to understand, and create, a pattern which makes sense of the major events in the Christian faith. There are other feasts and festivals and commemorations which add to the picture, but the list above is a good starting place for the process of learning about our liturgy and the reasons we keep days as special.

So over the next few days we will be exploring and learning together the special times and seasons and hopefully by the end we will all have a better understanding of it all and some (who don't mark the Ascension) will begin to understand why this is a wrong practice.

See you shortly . . .

Morning Prayer - Friday 11 May 2018

from the day after Ascension Day until the Day of Pentecost

Psalm 20
Refrain: We will call on the name of the Lord our God.
May the Lord hear you in the day of trouble, the name of the God of Jacob defend you;
Send you help from his sanctuary and strengthen you out of Zion;
Remember all your offerings and accept your burnt sacrifice;
Grant you your heart’s desire and fulfil all your mind.
May we rejoice in your salvation and triumph in the name of our God; may the Lord perform all your petitions.
Now I know that the Lord will save his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven, with the mighty strength of his right hand.
Some put their trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will call only on the name of the Lord our God.
They are brought down and fallen, but we are risen and stand upright.
O Lord, save the king and answer us when we call upon you.


Psalm 81
Sing merrily to God our strength, shout for joy to the God of Jacob.
Take up the song and sound the timbrel, the tuneful lyre with the harp.
Blow the trumpet at the new moon, as at the full moon, upon our solemn feast day.
For this is a statute for Israel, a law of the God of Jacob,
The charge he laid on the people of Joseph, when they came out of the land of Egypt.

I heard a voice I did not know, that said:
‘I eased their shoulder from the burden; their hands were set free from bearing the load.
‘You called upon me in trouble and I delivered you; I answered you from the secret place of thunder and proved you at the waters of Meribah.
‘Hear, O my people, and I will admonish you: O Israel, if you would but listen to me!
‘There shall be no strange god among you; you shall not worship a foreign god.
‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt; open your mouth wide and I shall fill it.’
But my people would not hear my voice and Israel would not obey me.
So I sent them away in the stubbornness of their hearts, and let them walk after their own counsels.

O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways!
Then I should soon put down their enemies and turn my hand against their adversaries.
Those who hate the Lord would be humbled before him, and their punishment would last for ever.
But Israel would I feed with the finest wheat and with honey from the rock would I satisfy them.

Numbers 20.1-13
The Israelites, the whole congregation, came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month, and the people stayed in Kadesh. Miriam died there, and was buried there.

Now there was no water for the congregation; so they gathered together against Moses and against Aaron. The people quarrelled with Moses and said, ‘Would that we had died when our kindred died before the Lord! Why have you brought the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness for us and our livestock to die here? Why have you brought us up out of Egypt, to bring us to this wretched place? It is no place for grain, or figs, or vines, or pomegranates; and there is no water to drink.’ Then Moses and Aaron went away from the assembly to the entrance of the tent of meeting; they fell on their faces, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Take the staff, and assemble the congregation, you and your brother Aaron, and command the rock before their eyes to yield its water. Thus you shall bring water out of the rock for them; thus you shall provide drink for the congregation and their livestock.

So Moses took the staff from before the Lord, as he had commanded him. Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, ‘Listen, you rebels, shall we bring water for you out of this rock?’ Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff; water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their livestock drank. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not trust in me, to show my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.’ These are the waters of Meribah, where the people of Israel quarrelled with the Lord, and by which he showed his holiness.

Luke 7.11-17
Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favourably on his people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.

The Collect
Risen, ascended Lord, as we rejoice at your triumph, fill your Church on earth with power and compassion, that all who are estranged by sin may find forgiveness and know your peace, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

When they ask, "What can I give God?"

This question was asked to me by someone who, over the past few weeks, has come to know the joy of knowing God and has seen their life transformed by it all. Telling me how everything had changed for the better since that first day they'd finally made the step into the church building they wanted to know what God might need them to do for Him as their response.

My answer was not, "Quick, fill out this standing order form," (the experience a new convert was subjected to) but to tell them the answer was, "Everything!" I then went on to explain that the words of Deuteronomy 6 we use at the Eucharist: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength," summed it up perfectly.

So often when we find people coming to Jesus and experiencing changes for the better we (or so it seems to me with my limited experience) push for the wrong things. We talk about being a committed member - but the last thing we need is for them to be committed (I've worked in mental health, believe me I know!) - we need them to be discipled!

We need to take our newbie on the journey which flows from meeting God to experiencing His love and life-changing power through to a committed and contemplative fullness of life in everything we are and do.

The challenge is that so many of us want to take our new folk off and fill them with knowledge. This something we've wrongly taken up as the norm thanks to the enlightenment project (Reformation) where the mantra, "If we understand it we can control it," rules the show. The reality is that rather than teach our people all the facts we need to teach them 'all the faith' and get them to experience all the feeling.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying, "Leave your brains at the door," that's something the world does and accuses the Church us of doing! We need to experience God in all His fullness and provide explanations which cause us to join the dots and to grow. We need to explain the basics and then explain as they find a question - and we need to encourage questions (for how else will they learn?).

I love the Acts story of the Ethiopian Eunuch coming to faith. Phillip asks him, "Do you understand what you are reading?" To which the Eunuch replies, "How can I, unless someone guides me?". This is the model of discipleship I love most:

1. Encourage them to meet God through the Gospel of Jesus, the Christ,

2. Ask they experience things, explain them and show them how to make the experience theirs,

3. Challenge their thinking so they develop a sound theology,

4. Wait for them to bring someone into Church and with the new person at step 1 repeat the process until the church building is full - then create another service or do Church in more than one place - repeat until the Church is full and the world is brought into relationship with God.

Enough writing - let's get out there and plunder hell (the place where humanity and God are forever separated).

Morning Prayer - Thursday 10 May 2018

Ascension Day

Psalm 110
The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’

May the Lord stretch forth the sceptre of your power; rule from Zion in the midst of your enemies. ‘Noble are you on this day of your birth; on the holy mountain, from the womb of the dawn the dew of your new birth is upon you.’

The Lord has sworn and will not retract: ‘You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.’

The king at your right hand, O Lord, shall smite down kings in the day of his wrath. In all his majesty, he shall judge among the nations, smiting heads over all the wide earth. He shall drink from the brook beside the way; therefore shall he lift high his head.

Psalm 150
Alleluia. O praise God in his holiness; praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts; praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with the blast of the trumpet; praise him upon the harp and lyre. Praise him with timbrel and dances; praise him upon the strings and pipe. Praise him with ringing cymbals; praise him upon the clashing cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Alleluia.

Isaiah 52.7-15
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’

Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy; for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion. Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem; for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

Depart, depart, go out from there! Touch no unclean thing; go out from the midst of it, purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the Lord. For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight; for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rearguard.

See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. Just as there were many who were astonished at him—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals—so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.

Hebrews 7.11-28
Now if perfection had been attainable through the levitical priesthood—for the people received the law under this priesthood—what further need would there have been to speak of another priest arising according to the order of Melchizedek, rather than one according to the order of Aaron? For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well. Now the one of whom these things are spoken belonged to another tribe, from which no one has ever served at the altar. For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests.

It is even more obvious when another priest arises, resembling Melchizedek, one who has become a priest, not through a legal requirement concerning physical descent, but through the power of an indestructible life. For it is attested of him, ‘You are a priest for ever according to the order of Melchizedek.’

There is, on the one hand, the abrogation of an earlier commandment because it was weak and ineffectual (for the law made nothing perfect); there is, on the other hand, the introduction of a better hope, through which we approach God.

This was confirmed with an oath; for others who became priests took their office without an oath, but this one became a priest with an oath, because of the one who said to him, ‘The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest for ever” ’— accordingly Jesus has also become the guarantee of a better covenant.

Furthermore, the former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office; but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues for ever. Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.]

For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints as high priests those who are subject to weakness, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect for ever.

The Collect
Grant, we pray, almighty God, that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens, so we in heart and mind may also ascend and with him continually dwell; who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Soul Trader - Church as a business

One of the recent, more frustrating, trends I have encountered of late is the rise of clergy who appear to have put aside the quest for new life in those around them and instead entered into task of merely managing decline. So often we appear to be functioning as tradesman rather than priests and, if the conversation I was part of is representative, many of us clergy are merely rearranging the shop window display with the diminishing stock that remains in an attempt to make it look like we’re still open for business!

A colleague recently asked, “What do you call a Vicar without a congregation?"
One of the responses  was, 'The future!" The problem is that it seems that we might be a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom if some of what I've encountered is more than a small pocket of tired and apathetic clergy.

I find myself transported to memories of a clothes shop in Westcliff (nr. Southend on Sea). The windows had a transparent yellow sheet of acetate on the inside heralding a retail experience of days long past. In the window were ageing and fading items of stock and, as I recall, a multitude of dead flies! Looking in through the door I saw an ageing man with a white shirt, bow tie and red velvet waistcoat sitting behind the counter. Over the space of a couple of years the shop, and the man were there and then one day as I passed by I realised the yellow film, the aged stock and the man inside had all gone!

I stopped with a mix of sadness and surprise - the place, and the man, had become a sort of landmark; a shrine to something now gone, The shop was being refitted so I  asked the man sitting outside having a brew where the owner had gone?  "Dead," came the reply.

As the conversation continued it transpired that the grandson (who I was talking to) had been left the shop and was turning it into a record store. The family owned the store for three generations and he'd decided to have a go at keeping it on. Inside he showed me photographs of women with rolled up sleeved and men with boater, bowler and trilby atop their heads - all relatives - standing proudly outside the shop. Images of a retail experience now almost totally extinct.

Recently we've seen the demise of Toys 'r Us, Maplin and many other stores. Put to death by a changing culture and the electronic shopping experience. "It's cheaper on the internet," said one Maplin staff member. "They go to Amazon and buy the same product for less than half what we sell it for," said a former member of our local toy outlet. Our local specialist cheese shop has just closed its doors and others are noticeably moving the same stock around in increasingly wider retail areas in a hope that they will attract the diminishing passing trade.

The problem is that as Bob Dillon rightly proclaimed all those years back, "Times they are a changing!" and the response from many of us is to invent ways of getting people through the doors so we can talk of footfall and how we're generating revenue so we can pay our parish share and continue to exist in a relatively conflict free miasma until we can get our pensions and slope off into the sunshine.

It's like a local company who having found their orders slowly diminishing decided to rent out parking space at £60 a month. It didn't take them long to find they'd filled the area on offer and were £15k a year better off; an extremely prudent act which meant they stayed solvent. I see some of our churches doing the same with the renting out of the building for events - another example of prudent facilities management.

But what happens when we reach that moment where we see more people coming into our church buildings for events than we do in the delivery of the firm's core business? I'm happy to have a building which serves the whole community and provides a place for the Church to meet, but how do we still witness without it becoming hollow or mere token?

I'm strongly of the opinion that God had a shrewd idea about the changing cultures and as there is truly 'nothing new under the sun' (compare the Western world with the declining Greek or Roman empires) then the words of Jesus: "Truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do even greater things that I have done . . ."

We need to stop acting like the proprietor of an ageing and increasingly irrelevant retail outlet and start giving away what we have been given in the places where the people are to be found and in a way that communicates with today's culture.

I leave you with the key idea of NLP* :

'If you always do what you've always done then you'll always get what you've always got. So if it isn't what you want, CHANGE IT!'

This is not change for the sake of change but a call to public theology in the marketplace, where the people are, at a time when the people are there.

It's a call to be Church for the people who aren't Church and to make ourselves available at times and in places where the people are to be found (which almost certainly isn't on a Sunday morning!).

Or you can stick with for the 8:30am and 11:00am services and see who turns up.

*Neuro Linguistic Programming

Morning Prayer - Wednesday 9 May 2018

Easter Season 
Rogation Day

Psalm 132
Lord, remember for David all the hardships he endured; how he swore an oath to the Lord and vowed a vow to the Mighty One of Jacob:
‘I will not come within the shelter of my house, nor climb up into my bed;
‘I will not allow my eyes to sleep, nor let my eyelids slumber,
‘Until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob.’

Now, we heard of the ark in Ephrathah and found it in the fields of Ja-ar.
Let us enter his dwelling place and fall low before his footstool.
Arise, O Lord, into your resting place, you and the ark of your strength.
Let your priests be clothed with righteousness and your faithful ones sing with joy.
For your servant David’s sake, turn not away the face of your anointed.

The Lord has sworn an oath to David, a promise from which he will not shrink:
‘Of the fruit of your body shall I set upon your throne.
‘If your children keep my covenant and my testimonies that I shall teach them, their children also shall sit upon your throne for evermore.’

For the Lord has chosen Zion for himself; he has desired her for his habitation:
‘This shall be my resting place for ever; here will I dwell, for I have longed for her.
‘I will abundantly bless her provision; her poor will I satisfy with bread.
‘I will clothe her priests with salvation, and her faithful ones shall rejoice and sing.
‘There will I make a horn to spring up for David; I will keep a lantern burning for my anointed.
‘As for his enemies, I will clothe them with shame; but on him shall his crown be bright.’

Psalm 133
Behold how good and pleasant it is to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down upon the beard, even on Aaron’s beard, running down upon the collar of his clothing. It is like the dew of Hermon running down upon the hills of Zion. For there the Lord has promised his blessing: even life for evermore.

Numbers 17.1-11
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelites, and get twelve staffs from them, one for each ancestral house, from all the leaders of their ancestral houses. Write each man’s name on his staff, and write Aaron’s name on the staff of Levi. For there shall be one staff for the head of each ancestral house. Place them in the tent of meeting before the covenant, where I meet with you. And the staff of the man whom I choose shall sprout; thus I will put a stop to the complaints of the Israelites that they continually make against you. Moses spoke to the Israelites; and all their leaders gave him staffs, one for each leader, according to their ancestral houses, twelve staffs; and the staff of Aaron was among theirs. So Moses placed the staffs before the Lord in the tent of the covenant.

When Moses went into the tent of the covenant on the next day, the staff of Aaron for the house of Levi had sprouted. It put forth buds, produced blossoms, and bore ripe almonds. Then Moses brought out all the staffs from before the Lord to all the Israelites; and they looked, and each man took his staff. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Put back the staff of Aaron before the covenant, to be kept as a warning to rebels, so that you may make an end of their complaints against me, or else they will die.’ Moses did so; just as the Lord commanded him, so he did.

Luke 7.1-10
After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to death. When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, ‘He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.’ And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, ‘Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, “Go”, and he goes, and to another, “Come”, and he comes, and to my slave, “Do this”, and the slave does it.’ When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.’ When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

The  Collect
Risen Christ, by the lakeside you renewed your call to your disciples: help your Church to obey your command and draw the nations to the fire of your love, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.