Monday evening February 22
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Preparation
Opening response
O God, make speed to save us.
O Lord, make haste to help us.
Hear our voice, O Lord, according to your faithful love,
according to your judgment give us life.
Prayer of thanksgiving
Blessed are you, Lord God of our salvation,
to you be glory and praise forever.
In the darkness of our sin you have shone in our hearts
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Jesus Christ.
Open our eyes to acknowledge your presence,
that freed from the misery of sin and shame
we may grow into your likeness from glory to glory.
Blessed be God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Blessed be God forever.
Hymn
Stupendous Height of Heavenly Love
Charles Wesley
Stupendous height of heavenly love,
Of pitying tenderness divine;
It brought the Saviour from above,
It caused the springing day to shine;
The Sun of Righteousness to appear,
And gild our gloomy hemisphere.
God did in Christ himself reveal,
To chase our darkness by his light,
Our sin and ignorance dispel,
Direct our wandering feet, aright:
And bring our souls, with pardon blest,
To realms of everlasting rest.
Come, then, O Lord, thy light impart,
The faith that bids our terrors cease;
Into thy love direct our heart,
Into thy way of perfect peace:
And cheer the souls, of death afraid,
And guide them through the dreadful shade.
Answer thy mercy's whole design,
My God incarnated for me.
My spirit make thy radiant shrine,
My Light and full Salvation be;
And through the shades of death unknown,
Conduct me to thy dazzling throne.
Confession of sin
Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.
Silence may be kept.
Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your name. Amen.
Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us all our sins
through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen us in all
goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep us in
eternal life.
Amen.
The Word of God
Psalm 70
Refrain:
Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you.
Hurry, God, to deliver me;
hurry, Lord, to help me!
Let those who seek my life be ashamed and humiliated!
Let them fall back and be disgraced—
those people who delight in my downfall!
Let those who say, “Aha! Aha!”
stop because of their shameful behavior.
But let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you,
and let those who love your saving help say again and again:
“God is great!”
But me? I’m poor and needy.
Hurry to me, God!
You are my helper and my deliverer.
Oh, Lord, don’t delay!
Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and will be forever. Amen.
Refrain:
Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you.
Psalm prayer
O God, our helper and defender,
deliver us in our weakness,
answer our longings
and vindicate our faith,
that we may see your glory
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Psalm 74
God, why have you abandoned us forever?
Why does your anger smolder
at the sheep of your own pasture?
Remember your congregation
that you took as your own long ago,
that you redeemed to be the tribe of your own possession—
remember Mount Zion, where you dwell.
March to the unending ruins,
to all that the enemy destroyed in the sanctuary.
Your enemies roared in your own meeting place;
they set up their own signs there!
It looked like axes raised
against a thicket of trees.
And then all its carvings
they hacked down with hatchet and pick.
They set fire to your sanctuary, burned it to the ground;
they defiled the dwelling place of your name.
They said in their hearts, We’ll kill all of them together!
They burned all of God’s meeting places in the land.
We don’t see our own signs anymore.
No prophet is left.
And none of us know how long it will last.
How long, God, will foes insult you?
Are enemies going to abuse your name forever?
Why do you pull your hand back?
Why do you hold your strong hand close to your chest?
Yet God has been my king from ancient days—
God, who makes salvation happen in the heart of the earth!
You split the sea with your power.
You shattered the heads of the sea monsters on the water.
You crushed Leviathan’s heads.
You gave it to the desert dwellers for food!
You split open springs and streams;
you made strong-flowing rivers dry right up.
The day belongs to you! The night too!
You established both the moon and the sun.
You set all the boundaries of the earth in place.
Summer and winter? You made them!
So remember this, Lord:
how enemies have insulted you,
how unbelieving fools have abused your name.
Don’t deliver the life of your dove to wild animals!
Don’t forget the lives of your afflicted people forever!
Consider the covenant!
Because the land’s dark places are full of violence.
Don’t let the oppressed live in shame.
No, let the poor and needy praise your name!
God, rise up! Make your case!
Remember how unbelieving fools insult you all day long.
Don’t forget the voices of your enemies,
the racket of your adversaries that never quits.
Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and will be forever. Amen.
Psalm prayer
Redeeming God,
renew your broken people
with your Holy Spirit,
that they may walk your narrow way,
and greet your coming dawn
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Old Testament reading
Jeremiah 7:21-34
This is what the Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, says: Add your entirely burned offerings to your sacrifices and eat them yourselves! On the day I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I didn’t say a thing—I gave no instructions—about entirely burned offerings or sacrifices. Rather, this is what I required of them: Obey me so that I may become your God and you may become my people. Follow the path I mark out for you so that it may go well with you. But they didn’t listen or pay attention. They followed their willful and evil hearts and went backward rather than forward. From the moment your ancestors left the land of Egypt to this day, I have sent you all my servants the prophets—day after day. But they didn’t listen to me or pay attention; they were stubborn and did more harm than their ancestors. When you tell them all this, they won’t listen to you. When you call to them, they won’t respond. Therefore, say to them: This nation neither obeys the Lord its God nor accepts correction; truth has disappeared; it has vanished from their lips.
Cut off your hair and cast it away;
grieve on the well-traveled paths.
The Lord has rejected you
and has cast off a generation that provokes his anger.
The people of Judah have done what displeases me, declares the Lord. They have corrupted the temple that bears my name by setting up their disgusting idols. They have built shrines at Topheth in the Ben-hinnom Valley to burn their sons and daughters in the fire, although I never commanded such a thing, nor did it ever cross my mind. So now the time is coming, declares the Lord, when people will no longer speak of Topheth or the Ben-hinnom Valley, but the Carnage Valley. They will bury in Topheth until no space is left. The corpses of this people will be food for birds and wild animals, with no one to drive them off. I will silence the sound of joy and delight as well as the voice of bride and bridegroom in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, for the country will be reduced to a wasteland.
Silence may be kept.
New Testament reading
John 6:41-51
The Jewish opposition grumbled about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”
They asked, “Isn’t this Jesus, Joseph’s son, whose mother and father we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
Jesus responded, “Don’t grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless they are drawn to me by the Father who sent me, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets, And they will all be taught by God. Everyone who has listened to the Father and learned from him comes to me. No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God. He has seen the Father. I assure you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that whoever eats from it will never die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
Silence may be kept.
Gospel canticle
The Magnificat (The Song of Mary)
Refrain:
Come, let us return to the Lord, for our God will richly pardon.
With all my heart I glorify the Lord!
In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior.
He has looked with favor on the low status of his servant.
Look! From now on, everyone will consider me highly favored
because the mighty one has done great things for me.
Holy is his name.
He shows mercy to everyone,
from one generation to the next,
who honors him as God.
He has shown strength with his arm.
He has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations.
He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones
and lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things
and sent the rich away empty-handed.
He has come to the aid of his servant Israel,
remembering his mercy,
just as he promised to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to Abraham’s descendants forever.
Luke 1:46-55
Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning is now
and will be forever. Amen.
Refrain:
Come, let us return to the Lord, for our God will richly pardon.
Brief silence
The Apostle’s Creed
Let us unite in this historic confession of the Christian faith:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
Prayers
Thanksgiving and intercession
Thanksgiving may be made for the day.
Intercessions are offered
for peace
for individuals and their needs
Response
Lord of life
In your mercy, hear us.
Silence may be kept.
Collect of the day
Almighty God,
you show to those who are in error the light of your truth,
that they may return to the way of righteousness:
grant to all those who are admitted
into the fellowship of Christ's religion,
that they may reject those things
that are contrary to their profession,
and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same;
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.
Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer
Trusting in the compassion of God,
as our Savior taught us, so we pray
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and forever.
Amen.
Conclusion
May God our Redeemer show us compassion and love.
Amen.