A Joint Worship Service between St. Paul’s Anglican and Fort Garry UC. Join us in person at St. Paul's or live-streamed at 10:15AM or find our recorded service at your convenience. Additional details on our Worship page.
How to join online:
This service will be live streamed from to St. Paul’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/St-Pauls-Fort-Garry-Anglican-Church-163274787036804/ ). The video will open in your internet browser (no need to have a Facebook account). The video can also be viewed on the same Facebook page at any time after the live stream.
The worship video will also be uploaded to St. Paul’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1PjLywZrpISPEHLiyTEiVQ) later in the afternoon, where the video can be viewed at any time.
Welcome to St. Paul’s Fort Garry
July 17, 2022
Acknowledgement of the land
Welcome
Gathering Hymn: 575 CP Let Streams of Living Justice
Let streams of living justice flow down upon the earth; give freedom’s light to captives, let all the poor have worth. The hungry’s hands are pleading, the workers claim their rights,
the mourners long for laughter, the blinded seek for sight. Make liberty a beacon, strike down the iron power; abolish ancient vengeance: proclaim your people’s hour.
For healing of the nations, for peace that will not end,
for love that makes us lovers, God grant us grace to mend. Weave our varied gifts together; knit our lives as they are spun;
on your loom of life enroll us till the thread of life is run. O great Weaver of our fabric, bind church and world in one; dye our texture with your radiance, light our colours with your sun.
Your city’s built to music: we are the stones you seek; your harmony is language: we are the words you speak. Our faith we find in service, our hope in other’s dreams,
our love in hand of neighbour: our homeland brightly gleams. Inscribe our hearts with justice; your way – the path untried; your truth – the heart of stranger; your life – the Crucified.
Gathering of the Community
We worship the God who inhabits our world and indwells our lives.
We need not look up to find God, we need only to look around:
within ourselves, beyond ourselves, into the eyes of another.
We need not listen for a distant thunder to find God, we need only
listen to the music of life, the words of children, the questions of the
curious the rhythm of a heartbeat.
We worship the God who inhabits our world and who indwells our lives.
Prayer of the Day together
Loving God, you surround us, and we are grateful. No matter where we find ourselves, you are there: we are never abandoned but are kept in your loving arms. Even when we fear the cold of night you embrace us, for darkness and light are both safe places so long as we are in your care. Search us, know our hearts, and lead us in ways that are everlasting. Amen
The Invitatory
Alleluia! The Spirit of the Lord renews the face of the earth; O come let us worship!
Jubilate Deo by Fred Dunn Jubilate everybody serve the Lord in all your ways and come before His presence singing Enter now His courts with praise For the Lord our God is gracious and His mercy’s everlasting. Jubilate, jubilate, jubilate Deo
Jubilate everybody serve the Lord in all your ways and come before His presence singing Enter now His courts with praise
For the Lord our God is gracious and His mercy’s everlasting. Jubilate, jubilate, jubilate Deo
Proclamation of the Word
Psalm 52
You tyrant, why do you boast of wickedness against the godly all day long?
You plot ruin; your tongue is like a sharpened razor, O worker of deception.
You love evil more than good and lying more than speaking the truth. You love all words that hurt, O you deceitful tongue.
Oh, that God would demolish you utterly, topple you, and snatch you from your dwelling, and root you out of the land of the living!
The righteous shall see and tremble, and they shall laugh at you, saying, “This is the one who did not take God for a refuge, but trusted in great wealth and relied upon wickedness.”
But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.
I will give you thanks for what you have done and declare the goodness of your name in the presence of the godly.
A Reading from the prophet, Amos 8.1–12
This is what the Lord God showed me—a basket of summer fruit. He said, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A basket of summer fruit.’ Then the Lord said to me, ‘The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by. The songs of the temple shall become wailings on that day,’ says the Lord God; ‘the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in every place. Be silent!’
Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, ‘When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.’
The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?
On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon,
and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day.
The time is surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
The Word of the Lord Thanks be to God
Responsory # 2
My life is in your hand, deliver me; shine on your servant with the light of your love.
My life is in your hand, deliver me; shine on your servant with the light of your love.
In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge; let me never be put to shame.
Shine on your servant with the light of your love.
Incline your ear to me; make haste to deliver me.
Shine on your servant with the light of your love.
Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe; for the sake of your name, lead me and guide me.
Shine on your servant with the light of your love.
I put my trust in the Lord; I will rejoice and be glad because of your mercy.
Shine on your servant with the light of your love.
Glory to the Creator, and to the Redeemer and to the Sustainer.
My life is in your hand, deliver me; shine on your servant with the light of your love.
A Reading from the letter of Paul to the Colossians 1.15–28
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him—
provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.
I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.
The Word of the Lord Thanks be to God
Gradual Hymn: 177 CP A Spendthrift Lover Is the Lord
A spendthrift lover is the Lord who never counts the cost or asks if heaven can afford to woo a world that's lost. Our lover tosses coins of gold across the midnight skies and stokes the sun against the cold to warm us when we rise. Still more is spent in blood and tears to win the human heart, to overcome the violent fears that drive the world apart. Behold the bruised and thorn-crowned face of one who bears our scars and empties out the wealth of grace that's hinted by the stars. How shall we love this heart-strong God who gives us everything, whose ways to us are strange and odd: what can we give or bring? Acceptance of the matchless gift is gift enough to give. The very act will shake and shift the way we love and live.
The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to St. Luke 10.38–42
Glory to you Lord Jesus Christ
Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’
The Gospel of Christ Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
The Homily
Offertory Hymn: 354 CP Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Come, thou Font of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious measure, sung by flaming tongues above;
O the vast, the boundless treasure of my God’s unchanging love.
Here I make faith’s affirmation; thus far by thy help I’ve come,
And I hope, by the compassion, safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger; wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood
O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be! Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave God I love Take my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.
Prayer over the Gifts
O God, accept our praise and thanksgiving.
Help us in all we do to offer ourselves as a true and living sacrifice; through Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen
Affirmation of Faith
We believe in God whose love is the source of all life and the desire of our lives, whose love was given a human face in Jesus of Nazareth, whose love was crucified by the evil that waits to enslave us all and whose love, defeating even death, is our glorious promise of freedom. Therefore, though we are sometimes fearful and full of doubt, in God we trust; and, in the name of Jesus Christ, we commit ourselves, in the service of others, to seek justice and to live in peace, to care for the earth and to share the commonwealth of God’s goodness, to live in the freedom of forgiveness and the power of the spirit of love, and in the company of the faithful so to be the Church, for the glory of God. Amen.
Prayers of the People
Circle us, Lord Circle us with the light of your presence within this dark world Enable us to be overcomers of fear and temptation Enable us to be victors over sin and despair Enable us to become that which you would desire
(Silent prayer) Lord of creation, Lord of Salvation Circle us with the light of your presence
Circle us, Lord Circle our family within the shelter of your outstretched arms Protect them in each moment of their daily lives Protect them in the decisions that they face Protect their homes and relationships
(Silent prayer)
Lord of creation, Lord of Salvation Circle our families with the light of your presence
Circle us, Lord Circle this world with the joy of your Salvation Where there is sickness and disease bring healing Where there is hunger and despair bring hope Where there is torture and oppression bring release
(Silent prayer)
Lord of creation, Lord of Salvation Circle this world with the light of your presence
— written by John Birch, and posted on his Faith and Worship website.
Collect of the Day
Almighty God, your Son has opened for us a new and living way into your presence. Give us pure hearts and constant wills to worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen
The Lord's Prayer
Closing Hymn: 577 CP God of Grace and God of Glory
God of grace and God of glory, on your people pour your power; now fulfil your church's story; bring its bud to glorious flower. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the facing of this hour, for the facing of this hour. Lo! The hosts of evil round us scorn your Christ, assail his ways. Fears and doubts too long have bound us; free our hearts to work and praise. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the living of these days, for the living of these days. Cure your children's warring madness. Bend our pride to your control. Shame our wanton, selfish gladness, rich in goods and poor in soul. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, lest we miss your kingdom's goal, lest we miss your kingdom's goal.
Set our feet on lofty places; gird our lives that they may be armoured with all Christ like graces in the fight for liberty. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage lest we fail ourselves and thee, lest we fail ourselves and thee.
The Blessing
As you go from here into the week ahead, with whatever joys and challenges it holds, do not be discouraged or disheartened. Remember the glory that awaits you as a child of God. Hold on to that truth; live in that hope. And may the peace of God, the blessing of Jesus Christ, and the presence of the Holy Spirit be with you and among you. Amen.
The Dismissal
Go into the world to plant seeds of kindness and love.
We go to serve our God!
Go into the world to nurture all aspects of God’s creation, caring for them, and helping them to grow in love.
We go to serve our God!
Go into the world to blossom and grow the way God wants.
We go to serve our God! Thanks be to God Amen. Alleluia!
Comments