Whenever I baptise someone into the Christian faith, I always make a point of clearing up what seems to me to be a great misunderstanding about baptism. Most people seem to think that being baptised makes someone a Christian and that is simply not true. I’m sure that, in part, comes from the fact that these days everyone, including the Church itself, calls the sacrament of baptism, ‘Christening’, a word that, I think, implies that we are making Christians of people when we baptise them. But what we’re actually doing when we baptise someone is making them a member of the Church, and that does not automatically make them Christians. To be a Christian is to be a disciple of Christ. It’s to try each and every day of our lives to follow the teaching and example of Christ. But to do that we need to know what that teaching and example is, obviously. And so we baptise people into the Christian faith by making them a member of the Church where they can learn what Jesus said and did and by that, learn what it means to be a Christian and, hopefully, progress along the road towards becoming one.

Being a Christian then, is about discipleship, it’s about following Christ. Coming to church is a very important part of being a Christian but that isn’t all there is to it, and that alone isn’t enough to make us Christians. Being a Christian is about taking what we do and learn in church, out into the world, and putting those things into practice in our daily lives. And a very big part of doing that is sharing our faith with other people; letting them know that we are Christians. It’s important that we do that for a number of reasons. For one thing, Christians don’t have a monopoly on doing good works so that alone doesn’t mark us out as Christians, and if we do good works and people don’t know that we’re Christians, who gets the glory, God or us? And we also need to let people know that we’re Christians for the very simple reason that Jesus told us to in that Great Commission to,

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

We’d find it very hard indeed to teach people about Jesus and bring them into membership of the Church without sharing our faith with them wouldn’t we? Impossible in fact. So as Christians, as disciples of Christ, we are called to share our faith with others. 

Anyone then, who takes their Christian discipleship seriously does, and will have tried to share their faith with people outside the Church. And so anyone who takes their Christian discipleship seriously will find a great deal of personal experience being borne out in the Parable of the Sower that we read in this morning’s Gospel.

If we’ve taken this aspect of our Christian discipleship seriously, and shared our faith with those outside the Church, we’ll all have met and spoken about our faith to people who are just like those whom Jesus spoke about in the parable. We’ll have tried to share our faith with people who aren’t really interested. This is the seed we’ve sown that’s fallen on the path. We’ll have shared our faith with people who have seemed genuinely interested in what we’ve said, but the seed we’ve sown hasn’t really taken root. Some of those people might have even come to church for a while, but they haven’t done that for long. Very often these are the people who come to church for a short time and then stop because they say they weren’t getting anything out of it. This is the seed we’ve sown on rocky ground. Almost certainly some of the people we’ve tried to share our faith with will have said they’ll think about coming to church, but never have. Quite often these are the people who always have something else to do, they have too many other commitments  and so they’re too busy to come to church. This is the seed we’ve sown among thorns. And, hopefully, we’ll have shared our faith with people who’ve started coming to church and become good and faithful members of the Church and disciples of Christ who’ve then gone on to share their faith with others. This is the seed we’ve sown on good soil and that’s borne fruit.

As I think back on my time as an adult member of the Church, I can think of times when I’ve experienced all these things. As both a lay person and member of the clergy, I’ve shared my faith with people outside the Church and, without wanting to sound boastful, I have sown seed in some good soil. I’ve spoken to people about my faith, and they’ve come to church and become good, faithful, confirmed members of the Church themselves. And I know that they’ve gone on to share their faith with others. I know that because people have told me that they’ve spoken to them about the Church and the Christian faith. I’ve sown that seed in different ways. Sometimes it’s been through chance conversations with people. Sometimes it’s happened when I’ve planned to speak to people about the Church and the faith, and that’s often been successful in bringing people back to the Church who’ve lapsed, whether that’s because of an argument and fall-out with someone in the Church, or the un-Christian, hypocritical behaviour of Church members, or perhaps even the Church itself. Sometimes I’ve sown that seed through a ministry I’ve performed, a baptism, a wedding, a funeral, through teaching courses, even through civic ceremonies I’ve carried out. I’ve sown seed in good soil in all these ways but, I said I don’t want to sound boastful, and I’m not being because I’ve sown more seed on the rocks and among thorns than I have on good soil, and the vast majority of the seed I’ve sown has fallen on the path. Or has it?

When we share our faith with people outside the Church, it can often seem as though we’re wasting our time. People, on the whole, don’t seem to be in the least bit interested in what we’re saying and even if they do show some interest, that wanes very quickly. Those who do come to church don’t come for long, and those who say they’ll think about it, hardly ever do come to church. In fact, despite what they say, they probably hardly give it another thought, if they think about it at all. So are we wasting our time trying to share our faith? Or perhaps I should say, have wasted our time trying to share our faith when what we’ve said falls on deaf ears, on the path, the rocks and among the thorns? It might seem that way but actually, no, we’re not and we haven’t.

In the Gospel, we read about Jesus sending his disciples on ahead of him into the towns and villages to proclaim the kingdom. And he says this;

“Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you.” 

The prophet Isaiah tells us that peace and the good news of salvation, is God’s message to his people. This is what Jesus sent out his disciples to proclaim, and it’s what he calls us to do as his disciples today. But he says that if the message is rejected, that peace, that good news of salvation, returns to rest on the messenger. So when we share our faith with others, if they reject what we’re saying to them, any blessing that would have come to them by accepting the message, comes back to us. So in a spiritual sense, we can’t lose whatever happens when we share our faith. If people listen and come to faith themselves, that’s great. But if they don’t listen, we’re blessed simply for trying. So we haven’t wasted our time, whatever happens.

But also, we can never be sure what might happen in the future on account of us sharing our faith with another person. We might not see any immediate result from what we’ve said, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have an effect and a good result at sometime in the future. We might have sown a seed that will lie dormant until some more favourable soil conditions arise in the future.

And again, this is something I’ve experienced, and perhaps you have too? At times, people have told me that something’s happened in their lives, and they suddenly remembered something I’d said, perhaps in a conversation or in a sermon, something that they didn’t really think much about at the time but suddenly made sense to them and helped them to understand the Christian faith a little better and more clearly. And when that happened, when they gained that better and clearer understanding, the seed that I’d sowed some time before, sometimes so long ago that I’ve had trouble actually recalling when I’d said it, and even just what I’d said exactly, had taken a firmer root in that person. And these are people whom I still see to speak to. How often has that happened with people I don’t have contact with anymore? How many of those thousands, and it will be thousands, of people whom I’ve shared my faith with over the years could say the same thing? How many of the people you’ve shared your faith with could say it?

We never know just what will happen to the seed we sow when we share our faith with others. The seed may seem to have fallen on the path, on the rocks or amongst the thorns. But the seed we’ve sown my still be there, lying dormant, until some more favourable conditions arise later that will allow it to spring to life. So we should never think that we’re wasting our time or have wasted our time sharing our faith. We should share our faith because it’s what we’re called to do as Christians. We should share our faith because it’s what Jesus told his disciples to do and, as his disciples, we should do what he tells us to do. And we should share our faith because, whatever happens to the seed we sow, we can’t lose. If the seed we sow falls on good soil, we’ve gained a new member of the Church, or perhaps regained and older member, and goodness knows, we need to do that. And if the seed we sow falls anywhere other than on good soil, regardless of what may happen in the future, we gain God’s blessing simply for sowing the seed.

As long as we do share our faith, we can’t lose. We don’t come across many win-win situations, anywhere in life, so let’s share our faith and make sure that we don’t miss out on this one.

Amen.  

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Propers for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 6) 16th July 2023

Entrance Antiphon
In my justice I shall see your face, O Lord; when your glory appears, my joy will be full.

The Collect
Merciful God,
you have prepared for those who love you,
such good things as pass our understanding:
pour into our hearts such love toward you,
that we, loving you in all things and above all things,
may obtain your promises,
which exceed all that we can desire;
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.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Isaiah 55:10-11
Psalm 65:9-13
Romans 8:18-23
Matthew 13:1-23

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Isaiah 55:10-13
Psalm 65:8-13
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

One of the most well-known and popular pieces of music ever written, is Handel’s Messiah. And perhaps one of the most beautiful pieces in Messiah is the aria, He shall feed his flock. The words of the alto part of the aria are taken from the prophet Isaiah and the words of the soprano part, whilst they’re changed from the first to the third person, him instead of me and he instead of I, are taken from the Gospel reading we heard this morning:

“Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

The beauty of the music that Handel set these words to, mirrors the beauty of the words themselves because, I think, these are some of the most beautiful words we find in the Gospels. But having said that, I think these words, and in particular the last sentence (which Handel actually sets to a different tune as a chorus), can cause us something of a problem.

Jesus says that his yoke is easy, and his burden is light, and yet we know that being a Christian can be far from easy and it can, at times be quite a heavy burden to bear, partly because of the way we can be treated on account of our faith, and partly because of the pain it can cause us to see the world ignoring the teaching and example of Jesus and carrying on in its own, often very far from sweet way.  We can be ridiculed for our faith. We can be abused for our faith. Our beliefs and values can be ignored and trampled on by people who don’t share them. And despite the fact that these days anyone and everyone seems to be able to stop anything being said or done that they find offensive, it seems that we Christians, have to simply put up with being offended repeatedly, without being able to do anything about it. We can, and do, suffer all these things for taking on Christ’s yoke. And in some places still, those who take on Christ’s yoke are violently persecuted, sometimes to the extent of taking their lives in their hands simply by going to church. So where is the ease and the rest that Jesus promises to those who come to him?

Just before the words we read this morning, Jesus had been speaking about those who rejected both John the Baptist and were now rejecting him. He also warned the unrepentant about what was in store for them;

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgement for Tyre and Sidon than for you.”

We know that Jesus used similar language when he spoke about the hypocrisy and spiritual blindness of the scribes and Pharisees because we read it later in St Matthew’s Gospel. There Jesus begins by telling the people to do what the scribes and Pharisees teach, but not to do what they do. And he uses these words:

“For they preach, but do not practise. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.”

So in this morning’s Gospel, when Jesus thanked God that he had,

“…hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children…”

the ‘wise and understanding’ he’s speaking about are almost certainly the scribes and Pharisees. And so, if we take Jesus’ words in the context of his overall teaching, what he appears to be doing here is contrasting his way with the way of the scribes and Pharisees. What Jesus appears to be saying is that  his way is easier than that of the scribes and Pharisees because he won’t place impossible demands on people. He won’t impose heavy burdens on others by compelling them to obey the minutiae of religious regulations. He’ll teach them to understand the spirit of the law and keep that, as he himself did. And how much easier is that than the way that some in the Church have tried to make people follow over the years? How many people over the years have been put off the Church, or have even turned away from the Church because  of the rigid rules and regulations some people in the Church have tried to impose on them? ‘You can’t do this; you must do that.’ How many people have come to see the Church as an organisation whose purpose is to stop people enjoying themselves, because of this kind of rigid authoritarian teaching, not to mention the often quite obvious hypocrisy of those who teach it? But if that’s what Jesus meant by easy and light, what about finding rest?

We know that Jesus didn’t promise his disciples an easy life, quite the contrary in fact, Jesus’ tells us that we will make enemies because of our faithfulness to him. He tells us we’ll have trouble and be persecuted on his account. So what does Jesus mean when he says that those who come to him will find rest?

In his famous work, Confessions, St Augustine of Hippo says this to God:

‘You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.’

And we find a similar understanding in the Psalms too, the idea that our hearts, our souls, all that we are in the very depth of our being is constantly searching for God. The idea that, in the very depth our being, we know that we’re in need of something to bring us peace and fulfilment. And we can’t rest from this searching until we find what it is we’re looking for. St Augustine understood that what we’re looking for is God because only God can give us what it is that we really need. And this is what the Scriptures are saying too.

The Psalms are amongst the books of the Bible that are known as wisdom literature. Another is the Book of Ecclesiasticus, and the words Jesus used in this morning’s Gospel are very similar to something we read in Ecclesiasticus;

‘Draw near to me, you who lack education, and stay in my school. Why are you still lacking in these things; why does your soul thirst for this?
I opened my mouth and said,
“Acquire Wisdom for yourselves without money. Place your neck under her yoke, and let your soul receive instruction. It is found close at hand.”

See for yourselves that I have laboured a little, and I have found much rest for myself.’

As we know, Wisdom is a deep knowledge and understanding of God’s ways. To have Wisdom is to know what the righteous thing to do in any situation is. Once we have Wisdom, we shouldn’t really need the written law to instruct us about what to do. The law will be part of who and what we are and so we’ll know what to do without having to consult and follow rules and regulations.

Wisdom is equated with the Holy Spirit but ultimately Wisdom, like all things, comes from God the Father.

But in this morning’s Gospel Jesus says,

“My Father has handed all things over to me. No one knows the Son except the Father. And nobody knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wants to reveal him.”

So Wisdom also comes through Jesus, the Son of God. And Jesus will give Wisdom to whoever he chooses. What Jesus is saying in this morning’s Gospel then is ‘Come to me and I will give you what your hearts and souls are searching for. I’ll teach you how to obey God’s law but not by imposing rules and regulations on you, like other teachers have done, I’ll teach you how to obey God’s law by teaching you and giving you Wisdom, the Wisdom that comes from God . I’ll give you Wisdom so that you’ll know how to do the righteous thing without having to make sure that you’ve crossed every ‘t’ and dotted every ‘i’ of every one of the hundreds of written rules and regulations in the law. I’ll show you how to find rest because what I teach you and give you will mean that you don’t have to keep searching and striving to find God and to know what to do to be in a right relationship with God. I’ll give you all this if you come to me and follow me. And I can give you all of this because what I will teach and give you isn’t mediated through a human teacher who may put their own interpretation on God’s law, what I will give you comes directly from God the Father himself.

I said towards the beginning of my sermon that I think these words of Jesus are among the most beautiful in the Gospels. I didn’t say that because they offer us the kind of things we normally associate with something easy and light and restful, because they don’t do that. They don’t offer us the kind of ‘I’m alright Jack’, ‘eat drink and be merry’, ‘put your feet up and relax’ kind of life we usually think of when we talk about things being easy and restful, because Christian discipleship isn’t like that. We still have to take up our cross each and every day and follow Jesus; we have to take his yoke upon us, and sometimes that’s hard to do and it isn’t restful in the normal sense of that word. But these words of Jesus are beautiful nevertheless, because the ease and rest for heart and soul that he promises to those who do come to him and follow him, is a promise to free us from the ‘can’t do this’, ‘must do that’,  merchants and hypocrites who can make our lives so much more difficult than they need to be. Who can make our lives so restless because we’re constantly having to think about what to do and wonder whether what we do is the right or the wrong thing to do. And these words are beautiful too because this promise of Jesus isn’t just a promise for the next life when the  difficulty and restlessness of this life is over, it’s something that we can have now, despite the difficulty and restlessness of this life. And given how hard and restless life can be, who doesn’t want to have that kind of ease and rest in their lives? And isn’t the promise of this kind of ease and rest a beautiful thing?  

Amen. 

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Propers for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 5) 9th July 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Within your temple, we ponder your loving kindness, O God.
As your name, so also your praise reaches to the end of the earth;
your right hand is filled with justice.

The Collect
Almighty and everlasting God,
by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified:
hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people,
that in their vocation and ministry,
they may serve you in holiness and truth,
to the glory of your name;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)        
Zechariah 9:9-10
Psalm 145:1-2, 8-11, 13-14
Romans 8:9, 11-13
Matthew 11:25-30

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Zechariah 9:9-12
Psalm 145:8-15
Romans 7:15-25
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

One of the things that a priest has to deal with when they first come to a parish, is the influence of their predecessor. That might be good influence on the people of the parish, but it’s very rarely quite so good as the people in the parish think it is. A new priest can usually see the good that their predecessor has done, but they can also see what their predecessor has done that isn’t so good, and perhaps what they simply haven’t done at all. And because the people in a parish have become so used to the ways of their old priest, especially if that priest has been in the parish for a long time, a new priest can usually see these things in a way that the people in a parish can’t. And so, among the most common things a new parish priest has to contend with when they first move into a new parish is people telling them what was or wasn’t done when their predecessor, Fr so and so, was here.

In a sense, it’s quite understandable that this should happen, but it does make the job of a new parish priest harder than it should be. They can usually see what a parish needs to do, and especially how it needs to change in order to move on and grow but, because people are so used to the ways of their old parish priest, they very often don’t see things in that way. They’re usually quite happy with the way things are and so they don’t want to change, and at times they simply won’t change and, if the new priest insists on doing things differently, they sometimes can, and do, stop going to church. If we think about it, I’m sure we all know people who’ve left this church because they don’t like what I’ve done or said, or not done and said as the case may be. Whether what I’ve done or said, or not done and said is right or not has been completely irrelevant to the people concerned, they’ve left this church simply because my ways are not the same as those of my predecessor as parish priest here. That this happens is, as I say, understandable in a way, but that doesn’t make it right, or even alright, because what this boils down to at the end of the day is simply the cult of personality and, as Jesus implies in this morning’s Gospel, there is no place for that in the Church, and there should be no place for it in the minds and hearts of Christians.

Jesus tells us that, whoever comes to us in God’s name, whether that be disciple, prophet or other  holy person, they should be welcomed as such, as someone who’s come to us in God’s name to help us to follow God and God’s ways more closely. And that should apply whether that person is a new parish priest or simply a new member of the congregation.

I’ve mentioned about how the work of a new parish priest can be made more difficult by people’s inability, or even refusal, to welcome them as Christ says we should, but how often have we come across a situation where a new member of a congregation has been ignored or perhaps even told to shut up, simply because they are new members of a congregation, as though that, in some way, makes them lacking in, or incapable of understanding and therefore incapable of having anything worth saying about the faith or about Christian discipleship to older or longer standing members of the Church? This happens too and yet, in my experience, those who are new to the Church and to the faith are often those who are most worth listening to because their faith and their enthusiasm for the faith hasn’t been tempered by Church politics or the like. Their faith is very often a pure and simple faith, and they often see things that more established members of the Church have lost sight of because of their involvement in the human institution of the Church. And so they are worth listening to. I see and hear this time and time again when I go into St Gabriel’s school to lead worship there. In one sense, children don’t understand, but in another way their understanding is quite amazing at times. What I mean by that is, If we invited a child to a PCC meeting and asked them what was going on, they might very well say that they don’t know, but if we asked them about the Christian faith, they might very well surprise us about just how much they do know and how well they do understand. But who would listen to a child who tried to teach us something about the Christian faith? Wouldn’t people be much more likely to think, and perhaps say, “What do you know about it?” and either tell them to be quiet or just ignore them?

The Church is Christ’s creation so it’s a divine institution, but it’s also a human institution because it’s organised and run by human beings, and as a human institution it’s flawed because human beings are flawed. And one of the ways the Church is flawed is by the cult of personality. The Church can, and often does, see and treat people just like the world, or at least the society the Church exists in, sees and treats people. But this is not the way the Church should be and, as this morning’s Gospel implies, it’s not the way Christ intended the Church to be. 

One of the great disputes in Church history was the Donatist Controversy which raged during the 3rd and 4^th Centuries. One of the issues in this controversy was whether the personal qualities of a minister affected the validity of the sacraments. In other words, if the priest wasn’t a good person, if they weren’t perfectly holy, did that invalidate the sacraments they administered. The Donatists argued that it did whereas the Catholic wing of the Church argued that the personal qualities of the priest were irrelevant to the validity of the sacraments they administered. It boiled down to an argument about whether the sacraments were effective on account of the one who works, i.e. on the personal qualities of the minister, or were they effective on account of the work itself, which is the work of grace and of Christ. In the end, the Catholic view prevailed and quite rightly so. As Pope Innocent III said in the late 12^th Century, in defending the Catholic view,

“…the sickness of a doctor does not destroy the power of his medicine.”

Or, as one of the Church of England’s 39 Articles of Religion puts it,

Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ’s, and do minister by his commission and authority, we may use their Ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in receiving of the Sacraments. Neither is the effect of Christ’s ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God’s gifts diminished from such as by faith and rightly do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them; which be effectual, because of Christ’s institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men.

Obviously, this is concerned with the worthiness or otherwise of priests and so it does have a direct bearing on what I said earlier about the cult of personality that can make a new parish priest’s work so much more difficult than it should be when they first move into a parish. But it also applies to anyone who comes to us in God’s name, however they come to us and whatever they come to us to do. Who they are and what they are matters less than what they do, and if what they do is from God, who they are and what they are shouldn’t matter to us at all. The fact is though, that all too often, who and what someone is does matter to us and it does affect the value we place on what they say and do.

For example, since I’ve been here as your vicar, I’ve spoken about a number of things that we could, and probably should, do in order to move the parish forward and to stimulate some growth. But very often, the response I’ve had has been something along the lines of,

“We’ve never done this kind of thing here before.”

But what is that response other than another way of saying,

“The last vicar didn’t ask us to do this so why should we do it now?” 

Well, perhaps the last vicar didn’t ask you to do these things, but what has what you did under the last vicar that got to do with it? Perhaps the last vicar should have asked you to do them. In any case, times change and what was done and worked 30, 20 and even 10 years ago probably isn’t going to work, or at least not work so well, now.

Or let me put it another way. Twice in the last few weeks I’ve been in the company of people who’ve disagreed about something to do with the Church or the Christian faith. One has said something, the other has disagreed, and they’ve argued. In the end they’ve asked for my opinion and, I’ve had to say that the person who made the first statement was right. And that’s settled the issue, the other person has then accepted what was said. As a priest I am ordained and am here as your vicar to settle this kind of dispute by giving advice and teaching, but if something said about the Church or the faith is true, does it really matter who says it? It shouldn’t, but clearly, it does.

The Donatist Controversy, which I spoke about a little earlier, took place in North Africa. Now, that’s a predominantly Muslim part of the world, but then it was strongly Christian. For many people it was the ravages of the Donatist Controversy, the damage it did to the Church, that enabled Islam to displace Christianity and become the dominant religion of that part of the world. But have we learned anything from that? In spite of the fact that the Catholic view of sacramental efficacy won out all those years ago, are we really any better than the Donatists at looking beyond personalities, at looking beyond who and what people are so that we can see what they might be offering to us in God’s name, to the gifts that God might be offering to us in and through them?

Jesus said that those who welcome a prophet, a holy man or a disciple will receive their reward. I think the implication is that the opposite is also true, if we don’t welcome those who come to us in God’s name we’ll lose our reward. I’m sure we all want our heavenly reward, so let’s rid ourselves of the cult of personality and start to look beyond who and what people are so that we can see what God might be trying to give is in and through each and every person whoever and whatever they are.

Amen.

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Propers for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Trinity 4) 2nd July 2023

Entrance Antiphon
All nations clap your hands.
Shout with a voice of joy to God.

The Collect
O God, the protector of all who trust in you,
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy:
increase and multiply upon us your mercy;
that with you as our ruler and guide,
we may so pass through things temporal,
that we lose not our hold on things eternal;
grant this, heavenly Father,
for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)      
1 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16
Psalm 89:2-3, 16-19
Romans 6:3-4, 8-11
Matthew 10:37-42

RCL (St Gabriel’s)         
Jeremiah 28:5-9
Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42