This morning’s Gospel continues our reading of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse from St John’s Gospel. This is something we’ve been reading for the last few Sundays, and this morning, we hear the start of the last part of that discourse which, although it still forms part of the Farewell Discourse, is often given its own name or title, and that is, Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer.

As we go through this part of the Farewell Discourse, Jesus says a number of times that he’s praying but we know right from the outset, before he says that, that he is praying because we’re told in the first verse that Jesus “lifted up his eyes to heaven” which is a posture people adopted when praying that we read about a number of times in the Scriptures. And Jesus prays first for himself, then for his disciples, and we read part of that prayer this morning, and then finally, in a part of the prayer we don’t read this morning, he prays for those who will believe through the disciples, and in this part of the prayer Jesus is praying, among others, for us.

It’s not unusual to read of Jesus praying in the gospels but the first part of the prayer, I think, can seem a bit strange to us. For one thing, Jesus starts by praying for himself and that’s something we tend not to do isn’t it? We usually pray for others first and ourselves last, probably because we think to do things the other way round is self-centred, perhaps even un-Christian. And yet, in this prayer, Jesus does pray for himself first. But as he goes on, it becomes obvious why he does that. The prayer begins with the Father, but what Jesus then  prays for makes it quite clear why he comes next; it’s because what he says amounts to a statement of his own equality with the Father. And it’s all to do with glory.

All this talk of ‘glorification’ is another reason, I think, why this prayer can sound a bit strange to us. What is Jesus really saying amidst all this prayer for glorification and talk about glorification?

We know that to glorify someone is to say something good about them, and that’s essentially what glorification means in this prayer. Jesus starts by praying to the Father, that that the Father, his Father will,

“… glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you …”

What Jesus is praying for here is that, through his Passion, his death on the Cross, and his Resurrection, his own true identity as God’s Son will be revealed. And as Jesus is glorified by being revealed as God’s Son, he will glorify the Father because his words and works will be shown to have come from the Father.

Because Jesus’ words and works will be shown to have come from the Father, the Father will be glorified too, because his nature will be revealed in and through what Jesus has said and done. The Father’s love for us, his willingness, and desire, to forgive us our sins, his wish for us to be restored to that loving relationship with him that we were created for, and the Father’s wish for us to enter eternal life, will all be revealed through Jesus’ words and works. And to all intents and purposes, that’s what Jesus is saying when he says to the Father,

“I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.”

So, in essence, Jesus is saying, ‘When I’m raised from the dead, I’ll be glorified because everyone will know who I am, and because they know who I am, you, my Father, will also be glorified because they’ll also know you. People will finally understand that I came from you, and so they’ll also realise that everything I said about you is true. And he then moves on to this great claim to equality with the Father;

“And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

Here, Jesus is praying that he will be restored to his rightful place at his Father’s side. He’s saying that this is where he came from, and this is where he will return to. He’s saying that he was in the beginning with the Father and the Spirit before creation began. He’s saying that he, like the Father and the Spirit, is from all eternity.

When we understand what Jesus is praying for and saying in the first part of this prayer, it isn’t such a great surprise that he comes first in the prayer. But Jesus prayer for glorification doesn’t end here. Later, when he prays for his disciples, he says,

“… I am glorified in them”.

When we understand what Jesus means when he speaks about his glorification by the Father and the mutual glorification of the Father and the Son, I think it’s quite obvious that when Jesus says he will be glorified in his disciples, he means that, just as the Father revealed the Son to the world through the Resurrection, and Jesus revealed the Father to the world through his words and works, the disciples will reveal Jesus, the Son, to the world through their words and works. And that is, in fact, what we’re called to do as disciples of Christ isn’t it. That’s the content of the Great Commission Jesus gave his Church, the mission we were reminded of in the Gospel reading just a few days ago on the Feast of the Ascension. Jesus’ call to his Church to,

“Go, 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.”

This how we glorify Jesus, how we reveal Jesus to the world. But have you ever stopped for a moment to consider just what a great and terrible commission this is? What an awesome and frightening commission this is?

We glorify Jesus by revealing him to the world, but what if we do something in his name, which doesn’t reveal Jesus to the world? What if we, as a Church, or as individual Christians, do something that Jesus has taught us not to do, or don’t do something he told us that we should do, what then? How are we glorifying Jesus in those cases? Who and what are we revealing to the world when we do things like this? Aren’t we, in fact, dishonouring Jesus when we do these things?

We know that some terrible things have happened in the Church, and in churches. We know that there have been some terrible crimes committed by Church people. We also know that there have been attempts to cover-up and hide these crimes. But these things haven’t only been crimes against their human victims, they’ve also been crimes against Jesus because we are called to glorify him by revealing him to the world. What have those who’ve committed these crimes revealed to the world? They are called Christians, people who model themselves on Jesus Christ. What then, have the things they’ve done revealed to the world about Jesus? Have they glorified him, or dishonoured him? And in all the apologies the Church and its people have made, have we ever heard anyone from the Church say ‘This is not what Jesus Christ taught. What has happened here has nothing to do with Jesus Christ and we also ask his forgiveness for dragging his name and the name of his Church through the mud and the mire.’ You may have heard someone say that, but I don’t ever recall hearing it.

But we in the Church, we who call ourselves Christians, can dishonour Jesus in so many ways. We do it through our petty squabbling. We do it through our jockeying for position, lusting after a position in the Church that gives us some authority, and then using, though abusing might be a better word for it, that authority to get our own way. We do it through our ‘empire building’ wanting multiple positions in a church so we can be in charge of everything. We do it through forming cliques so that we can keep hold of the reins of power and keep down, or even force out those we disagree with or simply don’t like. And how many people have left the Church because they’ve been misused and abused by other members of the Church? I come across people like that all the time, people who tell me that they used to go to this church or that but stopped going because of an argument with another member of the church.

Sometimes they’ve stopped going to church because of the hypocrisy of another member, or members, of the church, the way they were behaving. On the other hand, some of those people have stopped going to church because they’ve been taken to task for their own inappropriate and un-Christian behaviour. This is something Jesus told us we should do, but how many people are too proud to accept or admit that they’ve been in the wrong and, when they’re told that they are, or have been, get on their high horse and simply stop going to church? Often playing the victim into the bargain?

We know all these things go on in the Church and in churches but does any of this glorify Jesus, or does it all dishonour him? And if we, who are called to glorify Jesus, dishonour him, how can we reveal him to the world? If we call ourselves Christians, people who are Christ-like, and we’re petty, and proud, and malicious, and arrogant, and stubborn, isn’t there a danger that’s what the people who we’re called to bring to know Jesus will think of him too? We don’t like to be called hypocrites but, when we do things like this, it’s for the best that we are. Better that people know we’re being hypocrites than for them to think that Jesus himself was like this.

In this morning’s reading from the First Letter of St Peter, we’re told that when we suffer for Christ’s sake, the spirit of glory rests on us. It doesn’t rest on us if we suffer for doing wrong, but it does when we suffer for being a Christian. So, when we glorify Jesus through our obedience to him, he glorifies us in the Spirit; we’re glorified because we’re revealed to the world as his disciples. So let’s be glorified in the way Christians should be glorified. Not by trying to glorify ourselves, but by glorifying Christ, so that he will glorify us. That will mean suffering for Christ in some ways, and one of those ways is certain to be through accepting that we have to be a little more humble than we’d like to be; by not insisting on having our own way, by not wanting to be in charge and having the final say in everything we’re involved in, and by accepting that sometimes we are wrong and other people are allowed to point that out to us without it causing an argument, or causing us to go into a sulk and refusing to do anything in the church again, or to throw a hissy fit and stop going to church completely. And if people aren’t happy about that then, I’m sorry, but it’s all part and parcel of being a Christian. It’s part and parcel of what it means to reveal Jesus to the world, and to glorify him in the world because isn’t this exactly what Jesus told us to do when he said,

“If anyone would be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”?

Amen.

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Propers for the 7th Sunday of Easter, 21st May 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Lord, hear my voice when I call to you.
My heart has prompted me to seek your face;
I seek it, Lord; do not hide it from me, alleluia!

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.

The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)      
Acts 1:12-14
Psalm 27:1, 4, 7-8
1 Peter 4:13-16
John 17:1-11

RCL (St Gabriel’s)         
Acts 1:6-14
Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11

If you were to ask a Christian, any Christian, ‘Do you love Jesus?’, the answer would almost certainly be, ‘Yes’. In fact, it would be a surprise if the answer was anything other than yes. But if you were to ask, ‘Do you keep his commandments?’, and they were to answer honestly, I think the answer, at best, would be, ’I do my best’. We know that’s the honest answer because we all know that sometimes we do keep Jesus’ commandments and sometimes we don’t; and we know we don’t. And yet, in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus says that the one who loves him will keep his commandments. So how can we say we love Jesus when we know that we don’t do what he says those who love him will do?

In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus links love of him with reception of the Holy Spirit, and that’s understandable. Jesus says that those who love him will keep his commandments and, if we read on a little further in St John’s Gospel, Jesus goes on to say,

“… the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

So the Holy Spirit reminds us of what we need to do to love Jesus. And, as Christians, we believe that we have received the Holy Spirit, so we can’t plead ignorance about this. We know what Jesus said, we know what we need to do to love him, so why do we so often fail to do what Jesus told us we need to do?

In this morning’s reading from the First Letter of St Peter, the Apostle urges us to live ‘a good life in Christ’ so that anyone who slanders us may ‘be proved wrong’. But we know that  the vast majority of criticism levelled at Christians is for their hypocrisy, for not practicing what they preach. Christians are criticised for speaking about what the good life in Christ is, but not living that life themselves. They’re criticised for proclaiming Christ’s commandments but not keeping those commandments. We might not like being accused of hypocrisy, but we can’t deny that we do sometimes fail, if not often fail, to keep Jesus’ commandments. And if we do deny that, or are ever tempted to deny it, we can soon put ourselves straight by recalling those words from the First Letter of St John;

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Jesus’ word is in us because we have received the Holy Spirit, and to sin is to fail to keep Jesus’ commandments which the Spirit reminds us of; and yet we are all sinners. So what do we mean when we say we love Jesus?

I’m sure most, if not all of us, will know the saying, ‘You always hurt the one you love’. That is often true in life generally, and it’s just as true in our Christian lives too. In his Letter to the Ephesians, St Paul tells us something of what living the good life in Christ entails and among the things he says, he gives a warning not to ‘grieve the Holy Spirit of God.’ The word we translate as ‘grieve’ can also mean to cause pain, distress or sorrow. So we could translate this as do not hurt the Holy Spirit of God. And what does grieve, or hurt, the Holy Spirit is sin. What hurts the Holy Spirit is not living the good life in Christ; the Holy Spirit is hurt when we don’t keep Jesus’ commandments. And if we hurt the Holy Spirit then we must surely also hurt the Father who sent the Spirit to us, and the Son whose words the Spirit was sent to remind us of. And so, in grieving the Spirit through not keeping the commandments, we hurt the one we love, Jesus, who gave us the commandments.

If we think about why and how we hurt Jesus, it’s not too hard to see we do that in the same way and for the same reasons that we hurt the ones we love in general. We hurt the ones we love because we don’t listen to them. We don’t do what they want us to do because we want to do what we want to do. Sometimes, of course, what they want us to do isn’t the right thing to do, and then we’re right not to do that. But how often do we do our own thing for purely selfish reasons? How often do we hurt the ones we love by not listening to them and not doing what they want us to do simply because we want to do what we want to do, regardless of whether we’re right or not? And how often do we hurt Jesus because we don’t listen to either him or the Spirit for the same reason, simply because we want to do what we want to do rather than do what the Spirit is calling us to do and what Jesus’ commandments tell us we should do?

Life, as we all know, can be hard and stressful at times. Life can make us irritable, impatient and angry and because of that, life can lead us to acting in ways that hurt the ones we love.

How often, for example, have we had a bad day, perhaps at work, and we’ve come home and been irritable and impatient with our family or friends? How aften have we taken out our anger on our family and friends by being angry with them, and for no fault of theirs?

We do these things to our loved ones, and hurt them, very often simply because they are the ones we love, and because they are, they’re the ones who are there when we’re being irritable and impatient and angry. But when we do these things to others, we do them to Jesus too.

In speaking of the good life in Christ, in his Letter to the Ephesians, St Paul says,

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

But we can be selfish, we can be irritable and impatient and angry with others and so, when we are these things and do these things, we don’t show humility, gentleness and patience. We don’t bear with one another in love, and we the lose the bond of peace. And we don’t only lose the bond of peace  between us, our neighbours, and our loved ones, we lose that bond between ourselves and the Spirit, ourselves and Jesus, and between ourselves and God. We lose that because we stop living the good life in Christ by failing to keep his commandments, the words of the Father than he was sent to speak to us and which the Father sent the Holy Spirit to remind us of. We grieve the Holy Spirit of God and we hurt Jesus, the one we claim to love above all others. 

Perhaps, to some extent at least, we can’t help having these feelings and emotions because they are part and parcel of being human. Indeed, we actually see these things in Jesus himself. We see them in his arguments with the Pharisees, and other religious leaders of the day. We see them in his exasperation at people’s hardness of heart, slowness of understanding and lack of faith. We see them in his cleansing of the temple. But in Jesus, these feelings and emotions were very targeted, they were aimed at the people who were hard of heart and slow of understanding and lacking in faith. They were aimed at those who were at least resisting, if not actually obstructing or rejecting the Gospel and the kingdom of God.

And in Jesus these feelings and emotions had a purpose, they were meant to admonish, certainly, but also to teach and to draw people to faith. With us, on the other hand, these feelings and emotions, whilst they may be caused by the same hardness of heart and slowness of understanding and lack of faith that gave rise to them in Jesus, whilst they may be caused by the evil and un-Godliness of the world, when we give vent to them, we tend to just blow our top at whoever happens to be around us at the time. We often take a scattergun approach, there’s no focus or point to our explosion of irritability, impatience and anger, we’re simply letting off steam, having a rant and rave about whatever we’re unhappy about at the time and if our loved ones happen to be the ones around at the time and we hurt them by what we do and say, that’s just too bad. We might not mean to do that, but they know what we’re like; they’ll get over it.

We might not be able to help ourselves at times because we are only human after all, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about hurting those we love, or anybody else if it comes to that. If we blow our top about something and somebody gets hurt in the process, we can always say, ‘I’m sorry, please forgive me.’ can’t we? But how often are we willing to do that? How often are we willing to accept our faults and failings, to own up to them and to the consequences of our words and actions and ask for forgiveness from those we’ve hurt by them? That’s what we should do, as Christians, and not only with our neighbours and our loved ones, but with God too.

When we hurt others, we grieve the Spirit, we hurt Jesus and damage our relationship with God too. We do these things and fail to show our love of God and Jesus, but they always love us so we can always restore our relationship with them simply by being honest about our sins, the times when we don’t keep Jesus’ commandments, confessing them, and asking for God’s forgiveness. If we’re willing and able to do that then, as those words of St John remind us, we will be forgiven and restored to righteousness, to a right relationship with God.

It would be nice to be able to say that we love Jesus and show it by always keeping his commandments, but it’s more truthful to say that we try to love Jesus to the best of our ability by trying to keep his commandments to the same extent. But let’s make sure that we do try to do these things to the best of our ability and to be honest, and humble enough to confess our failures and ask for forgiveness when our best isn’t quite good enough.

Amen.  

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Propers for the 6th Sunday of Easter, 14th May 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Speak out with a voice of joy;
let it be heard to the ends of the earth:
the Lord has set his people free, alleluia!

The Collect
God our redeemer,
you have delivered us from the power of darkness,
and brought us into the kingdom of your Son:
grant, that as by his death he has recalled us to life,
so by his continual presence in us he may raise us to eternal joy;
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)       
Acts 8:5-8, 14-17
Psalm 66:1-7, 16, 20
1 Peter 3:15-18
John 14:15-21

RCL (St Gabriel’s)         
Acts 17:22-31
Psalm 66:7-18
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21

Christians are often called an ‘Easter People,’ or a ‘Resurrection  People’ and I don’t think it’s too hard to understand why that should be. Easter, and the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ that we celebrate at Easter are the very foundation of our faith. If there was no Resurrection, why would we have any faith in Jesus? If there was no Resurrection, why should we believe in anything he said or did? In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus says,

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

But, if there was no Resurrection, why should we believe that his way is better than another way, that there is any more truth in his words than in any other words, or that the way of life he advocated is better than any other way of life? If there was no Resurrection, who and what was Jesus other than a good man who had the guts to call out those in power for their hypocrisy, and was done away with by those people to shut him up, a good man who called for change and was done away with by those with a vested interest in things staying as they were? In fact, if there was no Resurrection, apart from a few people who study first Century Jewish history, it’s doubtful if anyone would have even heard of Jesus, let alone acclaimed him as their Lord and Saviour.

So we are an Easter People, a Resurrection People, a people who believe that through the death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the greatest dread of human beings, the knowledge of their own mortality and the fear of death, has been put to flight because, through his death and Resurrection, Jesus has conquered death. Our faith in Jesus assures us that, even though we will all die, that is not the end of life for us but rather the beginning of a new and eternal life with Jesus in God’s heavenly home. So, as well as making us an Easter People, our faith should make us the most joyful of all people. And on the whole, perhaps it does. But I think our faith also gives us a bit of a problem. The problem is, how do we deal with death when we’re faced with it? As Christians, should we think of death as ‘nothing at all’ as a very well-known, though often mis-quoted and mis-understood poem tells us we should, or should we grieve in the same way perhaps as those who have no faith might? If we don’t grieve, are we being callous or, if we do grieve, are we showing a lack of faith? And I have met Christians who have thought in these ways and really struggled with trying to understand how they should feel and act when they’ve been faced with death.

Obviously, as a priest I’m called upon to conduct funerals and to meet and speak to bereaved people on a fairly regular basis. In fact, in the past week, I’ve conducted three funerals and also spoken to two other bereaved families about the funerals of one of their departed loved ones. And so I know that this morning’s Gospel, or at least the first half of it, is a reading that’s very often used at funerals. So what can this morning’s Gospel tell us about how we should deal with death?

This morning’s Gospel is the start of what we call the ‘Farewell Discourse’ in St John’s Gospel. The Farewell Discourse is the last teaching and instruction Jesus gave to his disciples before his death and, in part, they’re words of comfort and reassurance for the disciples that Jesus spoke because he knew that what they’d soon have to go through would be a very difficult and traumatic time for them. So let’s look at this from the disciples point of view.

Jesus’ disciples had been with him, almost every day it seems, for three years. They’d built their whole world on and around Jesus and his teaching. They thought he was the Messiah, as the disciples said on the road to Emmaus shortly after Jesus’ Resurrection, that he was,

“… a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, … we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

But Jesus was very shortly going to go to his death, he would be leaving them and this time, they wouldn’t be able to follow him. The disciples’ were going to be devastated, heartbroken. I’ve spoken before about the ancient understanding of the heart, that it was the very core of a human being so, it was in their hearts that the disciples would have built this world based on and around Jesus and his teaching. So, when Jesus died, they would have, quite literally, been heartbroken because their world view would have been smashed to pieces.

Even though we don’t think of the heart in the same way that the disciples would have done, we do know what it means to be heartbroken don’t we? When someone we know and love dies, our world changes, it can’t help but change because someone who’s been part of our lives, and often a very big and important part of our lives, isn’t there anymore and we have to get used to life without them. So, to some extent at least, we can understand what the disciples were going to be faced with and what they were going to have to go through, and why Jesus wanted to comfort and reassure them.

But what are we to make of what Jesus’ words when he began to speak?

“Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.”

Does that mean we shouldn’t be troubled by death? Does it mean that because of our faith and our hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, we shouldn’t grieve or be upset when someone we know and love dies? No, that’s not what Jesus means here at all, and if he did then we could, quite honestly, accuse Jesus of being a hypocrite because didn’t he weep at the grave when his friend, Lazarus, died?

The word in this morning’s Gospel that we translate as ‘troubled’ is the same word used to describe Jesus’ own feeling when Lazarus died and also when he was betrayed by Judas. We translate it here as ‘troubled,’ but it really means to be stirred up or agitated. Later in the Farewell Discourse Jesus tells the disciples that their hearts will be full of sorrow, but it’s for their own good that he’s leaving them because if he doesn’t, he can’t send the ‘Helper’ the Holy Spirit to them. And he tells them that, while they will be sorrowful, they will see him again and know a heartfelt joy that will never be taken away from them. Given the ancient understanding of the heart, what Jesus seems to be saying to his disciples then, isn’t that they won’t or shouldn’t grieve when he dies, but that his death shouldn’t trouble, stir up, agitate or destroy their deeper, heartfelt understanding of things. He will die and they will be hurt and upset, they will be full of sorrow and grieve, but that shouldn’t trouble or break their faith. What Jesus is saying is that, whilst in an emotional sense they can be, and will be heartbroken, in that deeper sense of feeling and knowing in their hearts, don’t be. His death can and will upset them on one level but at a deeper level, don’t let that shake or break your faith in what you believe to be the way the truth and life because his death doesn’t change that and, in fact, his Resurrection will confirm their faith in those things and in him.

And we can apply these words to ourselves when we have to face up to and deal with death. One of the things I always say during a funeral sermon is that faith isn’t an anaesthetic to the pain of loss and bereavement. Faith doesn’t take that pain away. So we can be upset when someone we know and love dies. We can grieve their, and our, loss, regardless of our faith. And if anyone still isn’t convinced about that, think of it in this way.

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus wept at Lazarus’ grave, so why should we think that our faith means that we can’t or shouldn’t be upset and grieve when someone we know and love dies; do we think that we have more or greater faith than Jesus?

I have met many good and faithful Christians who don’t deal with death very well. I have met some who’ve actually said, death means nothing at all. I’ve met some who have been heartbroken by death and questioned their faith, either because of the death itself or because it has upset them so much it’s caused them to question the depth or even reality of their own faith; as death has troubled them so much, they’ve questioned whether they really do believe in the resurrection to eternal life. But Jesus’ words in the Farewell Discourse, and his own example, tell us that we can be upset and grieve when a loved one dies, regardless of our faith or the depth of our faith. But what Jesus’ words and example also tell us is that death shouldn’t trouble us at heart in that deeper understanding of the heart that ancient people had. Death shouldn’t cause us to doubt or to lose faith because Jesus’ Resurrection, which is the foundation of our faith, is also the confirmation and vindication of our faith.

Jesus said,

“Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.”

Death does trouble us, though. But Jesus doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t trouble us in an emotional sense. He doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be upset and sad when someone we know and love dies. He doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t grieve. He doesn’t mean that death shouldn’t break our hearts in that sense. What he does mean is that we shouldn’t let death break our faith. We are an Easter People, a Resurrection People, a people who’ve been given a cause for joy that can never be taken away and we shouldn’t let anything take it away from us. Not even death.

Amen.

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Propers for the 5th Sunday of Easter, 7th May 2023

Entrance Antiphon
Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvellous deeds;
he has revealed to the nations his saving power, alleluia!

The Collect
Almighty God,
who through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ,
have overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life:
grant that, as by your grace going before us,
you put into our minds good desires,
so by your continual help we may bring them to good effect;
through Jesus Christ our risen 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)        
Acts 6:1-7
Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 18-19
1 Peter 2:4-9
John 14:1-12

RCL (St Gabriel’s)          
Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14