Sun. morning Nov. 30

First Sunday of Advent

Opening response

O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.

Reveal among us the light of your presence
that we may behold your power and glory.

Prayer of thanksgiving

Blessed are you, Sovereign God of all, to you be praise and glory forever. In your tender compassion, the dawn from on high is breaking upon us to dispel the lingering shadows of light. As we look for your coming among us this day, open our eyes to behold your presence and strengthen our hands to do your will, that the world may rejoice and give you praise. Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Blessed be God forever.

The night has passed, and the day lies open before us; let us pray with one heart and mind.

Silence is kept.

As we rejoice in the gift of this new day, so may the light of your presence, O God, set our hearts on fire with love for you; now and forever.
Amen.

Hymn

Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus

Music: Reawaken Hymns
Lyrics: Charles Wesley
           
Come thou long expected Jesus
Born to set Thy people free;
From our fears and sins release us,
Let us find our rest in Thee.

Israel’s strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art;
Dear desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.

Born Thy people to deliver,
Born a child and yet a King,
Born to reign in us forever,
Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.

By Thine own eternal Spirit
Rule in all our hearts alone;
By Thine all sufficient merit,
Raise us to Thy glorious throne.

Confession of Sin

Seek the LORD while He may be found,
call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
and let him return to the LORD, and He will have mercy upon him,
and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.

cf Isaiah 55

A time of silence and self-examination may be kept.

Lord God, I have sinned against you; I have done what is evil in your sight. I am sorry and repent. Have mercy on me according to your lovingkindness. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Renew a right spirit within me, and restore unto me the joy of your salvation, through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.

cf Psalm 51

May the Father of all mercies cleanse us from our sins, and restore us in his image to the praise and glory of his name, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Blessed be the LORD,
because He has heard the voice of my supplications.
Therefore my heart rejoices,
and with my song I will thank Him.

cf Psalm 28:7,9

Psalm 44

𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.

We have heard with our ears, O God;
our fathers have told us
what deeds You performed in their days,
in the days of old:
You drove out the nations with Your hand,
but them You planted;
You afflicted the peoples,
but them You set free.
For they did not take possession of the land by their own sword,
nor did their own arm save them;
but it was Your right hand, and Your arm,
and the light of Your countenance, because You favored them.

𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.

You are my King, O God;
command victories for Jacob.
Through You we will push down our enemies;
through Your name we will trample those who rise up against us.
For I will not trust in my bow,
nor can my sword save me.
But You have saved us from our enemies,
and have put to shame those who hate us.
In God we have boasted continually,
and we will give thanks to Your name forever.

𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.

But You have rejected us and put us to shame,
and you do not go out with our armies.
You make us turn back from the enemy,
and those who hate us have taken spoil for themselves.
You have given us up like sheep for slaughter,
and have scattered us among the nations.
You sell Your people for a low price,
and do not increase Your wealth by their sale.

You make us a reproach to our neighbors,
a scorn and a derision to those around us.
You make us a byword among the nations,
a shaking of the head among the peoples.

𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.

My disgrace is continually before me,
and shame has covered my face
at the voice of him who reproaches and reviles,
at the presence of the enemy and avenger.

All this has come upon us;
yet we have not forgotten You,
nor have we dealt falsely with Your covenant.
Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from Your way;
Yet You have broken us in the place of jackals
and covered us with the shadow of death.

If we had forgotten the name of our God
or stretched out our hands to a foreign god,
would not God search this out?
For He knows the secrets of the heart.
Yet for Your sake we are killed all day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.

Awake! Why do You sleep, O Lord?
Arise! Do not cast us off forever!
Why do You hide Your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and our oppression?

For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
our body clings to the ground.
Arise, be our help.
Redeem us for the sake of Your lovingkindness!

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.

𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.

Psalm prayer

In the darkness of unknowing, when your love seems absent, draw near to us, O God, in Christ forsaken, in Christ risen, our Redeemer and our Lord.

Old Testament reading

Micah 4:1-7

Then it will be that in the latter days,

the mountain of the house of the LORD will be established
as head of the mountains,
and will be lifted up above the hills;
and people will stream to it.

And many nations will come and say,

“Come, that we might go up to the mountain of the LORD,
and to the house of the God of Jacob,
that He might teach us His ways,
and that we might walk in His paths.”
For from Zion will go forth the law,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
Then He will judge between many peoples
and mediate for mighty nations far and wide;
they will beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
and they will no longer train for war.
Then each man will sit under his vine
and under his fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid;
for the mouth of the LORD of Hosts has spoken.
For all the peoples walk,
each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the LORD
our God forever and ever.

In that day, declares the LORD,

I will assemble the lame
and gather the banished
and those whom I have afflicted;
and I will make the lame into a remnant,
and the banished into a mighty nation;
and the LORD will reign over them on Mount Zion
from this time forth and forevermore.

Silence may be kept.

New Testament reading

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need that I write to you. For you know perfectly that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape.

But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all the sons of light and the sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep as others do. But let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation. For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we should live together with Him. So comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, just as you are doing.

Silence may be kept.

The Benedictus (The Song of Zechariah)

Luke 1:68-79

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for He has visited and redeemed His people,
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of His servant David,
as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets of long ago,
that we should be saved from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us,
to perform the mercy promised to our fathers
and to remember His holy covenant,
the oath which He swore to our father Abraham,
to grant us that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies,
might serve Him without fear,
in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our lives.

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest;
for you will go before the presence of the Lord to prepare His ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to His people
by the remission of their sins,
through the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise from on high has visited us;
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.

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.    

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.
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He 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,
and is seated at the
right hand of the Father.
He 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.

Intercession and thanksgiving

Prayers may be offered for:

the day and its tasks
the world and its needs
the Church and her life

Prayers may include the following concerns:

The Church, that she may be ready for the coming of Christ
The leaders of the Church
The nations, that they may be subject to the rule of God
Those who are working for justice in the world
The broken, that they may find God’s healing

Other intercessions and supplications may be offered as the Holy Spirit leads.

Response

Father, hear our prayer,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Silence may be kept.

Collect of the day

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility; that on the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.      
Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer

Awaiting his coming in glory, as our Savior taught us, so we pray

Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
forever. Amen.

Conclusion

May the Lord, when he comes, find us watching and waiting.
Amen.