SPEAKER_06: In the past three weeks, we've lit three candles, one for hope, one for peace, and one for joy.
SPEAKER_06: Today we light the fourth candle, the candle of love.
SPEAKER_06: With this flame, we signify the love of God that surrounds and fills us at all times, but that we recognize in a special way in the Christmas story.
SPEAKER_06: There is no greater power than love.
SPEAKER_06: It is stronger than rulers and empires, stronger than grief or despair, stronger even than death.
SPEAKER_06: We love because God loves us.
SPEAKER_06: Loving God, we open ourselves to you, trusting you that this is how you made us.
SPEAKER_06: You create us for joyful hearts and hearts.
SPEAKER_06: Show us the creative power of hope.
SPEAKER_06: Teach us the peace that comes from justice.
SPEAKER_06: Fill us the kind of joy that cannot be contained.
SPEAKER_06: But let us share.
SPEAKER_06: Prepare our hearts to be transformed by you that we may walk in the Living Christ.
SPEAKER_06: Amen.
SPEAKER_06: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_04: Blessed be usually prayer.
SPEAKER_04: Amen.
SPEAKER_06: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_06: Almighty God.
SPEAKER_04: To you all hearts are open.
SPEAKER_06: All desires are known.
SPEAKER_06: And from you know the secret star.
SPEAKER_04: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_04: That we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name.
SPEAKER_06: Through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_06: Amen.
SPEAKER_06: Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith.
SPEAKER_06: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind.
SPEAKER_06: This is the first and greatest commitment.
SPEAKER_06: And the second is like unto it.
SPEAKER_06: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
SPEAKER_06: On these two commitments hang all the law and the prophets.
SPEAKER_06: Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and mortal one, have compassion upon us.
SPEAKER_06: The Lord be with you.
SPEAKER_04: And the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_06: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_06: Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation.
SPEAKER_06: That your Son Jesus Christ at his coming may find in us a mansion prepared for himself, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.
SPEAKER_06: As you're being seated, our children are invited to children's church with Mr.
SPEAKER_06: Alex in the back.
SPEAKER_02: Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she is in labor, is brought forth.
SPEAKER_02: Then the rest of his kindred shall return.
SPEAKER_02: Excuse me, return to the people of Israel.
SPEAKER_02: And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
SPEAKER_02: And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_02: And he shall be the one of peace.
SPEAKER_02: Hear what the Spirit says to God's people.
SPEAKER_00: Then I said, See, God, I have come to do your will, O God.
SPEAKER_00: In the scroll of the book, it is written of me.
SPEAKER_00: Then he said above, You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings.
SPEAKER_00: These are offered according to the law.
SPEAKER_00: Then he added, See, I have come to do your will.
SPEAKER_00: He abolishes the first order to establish the second.
SPEAKER_00: And it is by God's will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.
SPEAKER_06: In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
SPEAKER_06: When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
SPEAKER_06: And why has this happened to me?
SPEAKER_06: But the mother of my Lord comes to me.
SPEAKER_06: For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy.
SPEAKER_06: Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.
SPEAKER_06: The gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: In the name of one God, invisible, made visible through the womb of the Virgin Mary.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: I love you.
SPEAKER_03: I've been waiting all week to say those words because it was last week when Father Mike was preaching about joy that I realized how significant this relationship is to me.
SPEAKER_03: You see, the week before I had been absent.
SPEAKER_03: I was at Iona studying.
SPEAKER_03: And that caused a separation in this relationship.
SPEAKER_03: And so when I returned last week, I was able to experience putting that relationship back together.
SPEAKER_03: So thank you.
SPEAKER_03: And I've been looking forward all week.
SPEAKER_03: I've been enjoying waiting on saying those words.
SPEAKER_03: Just like we now have a week or so in preparation for that next great day.
SPEAKER_03: The coming of our Lord.
SPEAKER_03: As a quick recap, week one of Advent was hope, week two was peace, week three is joy, and today, this week, we now celebrate and practice love.
SPEAKER_03: So what is love?
SPEAKER_03: Well, love is relationship.
SPEAKER_03: And if you've ever been to a wedding, you probably heard those well-used lines from the Corinthians.
SPEAKER_03: As things come to pass, hope, love, they remain, and above those, all is love.
SPEAKER_03: There are five love languages if you study relationships.
SPEAKER_03: In tennis, love is zero.
SPEAKER_03: It means nothing.
SPEAKER_03: It means you haven't square points.
SPEAKER_03: In the Episcopal Church, there is a practice for living called the way of love, a way of living a Christ-centered life.
SPEAKER_03: And at the dawn of the 21st century, the band Foreigner had a hit with the words that you may remember.
SPEAKER_03: I want to know what love is.
SPEAKER_03: I want you to show me.
SPEAKER_03: I want to feel what love is.
SPEAKER_03: I know you can show it.
SPEAKER_03: So let's talk about love.
SPEAKER_03: Love is about relationships.
SPEAKER_03: Our gospel reading today is about relationships.
SPEAKER_03: You have the relationship of Mary and Elizabeth.
SPEAKER_03: You have the relationship of Mary and her child.
SPEAKER_03: You have the relationship of Mary and God.
SPEAKER_03: And then you have the relationship, the family relationship, the family lineage that is described in this creation myth of John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_03: His mother Elizabeth from the Levite priest line of Aaron and Moses.
SPEAKER_03: And his father, Zachariah, Elizabeth's husband, in the eighth order of priests, anointed by King David.
SPEAKER_03: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_03: It means John the Baptist has authority.
SPEAKER_03: He is a powerful earthly human being by all evaluated standards of the first century.
SPEAKER_03: And yet, when he encounters that child in the womb, in the innermost heart of Mary, he realizes there is a superior authority.
SPEAKER_03: That's what he leaps.
SPEAKER_03: And in the Greek, leaping for joy means recognizing or acknowledging the divinity of God.
SPEAKER_03: God's grace that is present in that innermost heart of Mary.
SPEAKER_03: You see, Mary, the words that are used in Greek to describe this moment, it is about Mary's heart, the center of her spiritual being, that vessel that Mary is that allows God to enter into his creation through her as a vessel, as an instrument.
SPEAKER_03: So with these relationships, now we have Elizabeth, who, recognizing this, says, yo, Mary, this is great, and I want to bless you.
SPEAKER_03: I want to bless you as a woman, because in the first century you see a woman wasn't just a lady.
SPEAKER_03: A woman was a marginalized person with no agency.
SPEAKER_03: And in the Gospel of Luke, Luke focuses on what St.
SPEAKER_03: Paul does in his ministry as he goes to the edges, to the fringe of the Roman Empire, the dark, quiet corners of society where the marginalized, the poor, the hungry, the oppressed, the non-Jewish, the Gentiles, even tax collectors are.
SPEAKER_03: So in this passage in Luke, when Elizabeth says, Blessed are you among women, she is speaking not just to the women in the room, the women in the world, she's speaking to all who are left out or who feel left out.
SPEAKER_03: She then continues to say, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
SPEAKER_03: Remember that womb is an innermost heart of Mary.
SPEAKER_03: And fruit may be the key to unlocking the scripture.
SPEAKER_03: Karpos is the Greek word for fruit.
SPEAKER_03: And it means it means a partnership with Christ.
SPEAKER_03: That means a partnership with God.
SPEAKER_03: It is said to be two life streams that become unified.
SPEAKER_03: I want you to think about the imagery of a stream for a moment.
SPEAKER_03: It is endless.
SPEAKER_03: There is no beginning and no end of water flowing through that stream.
SPEAKER_03: In this case, these two streams united as one, super abundantly.
SPEAKER_03: This is what Elizabeth is blessing in Mary.
SPEAKER_03: And when she does, she then identifies that it is the soul of Mary that she speaks to.
SPEAKER_03: The soul in Greek is the breath of God that is creation.
SPEAKER_03: It is what God breathes into every single one of us that makes us unique and special and divine.
SPEAKER_03: There's nothing else like it in the world.
SPEAKER_03: The words again in this passage, take Mary and separate her, sanctify her, put her above all else because she is holding the God within her.
SPEAKER_03: Mary answers this in the magnificat.
SPEAKER_03: Last week Father Mike pointed out that the magnificat, which means magnify in Latin, so it sounds really cool, but it just means magnify.
SPEAKER_03: I had to color that up because I didn't know what I was going to talk about.
SPEAKER_03: So magnify is the magnificat is exclusive to Luke.
SPEAKER_03: It's one of the five or seven or so things that happen in Luke that don't happen in the other gospels.
SPEAKER_03: Remember, Luke is a one-off apostle, or Paul is a one-off apostle.
SPEAKER_03: He wasn't there in the original group.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus came to him through divine revelation, through a spiritual birth in Paul that called him to change his name and go out into the world, into the edges of society.
SPEAKER_03: And so, as Mary expresses this magnification of her soul, that God breath that begins her life, she says, it now is magnified within me.
SPEAKER_03: It continues to reverberate.
SPEAKER_03: That breath continues to resonate.
SPEAKER_03: It's what happens when a flute player blows across the pipe and initiates that note with a breath.
SPEAKER_03: And then that breath carries that note on out through the end of the flute and into the sanctuary, reverberating, echoing, and then continuing out into the world, and each and every one of you felt like you said.
SPEAKER_03: This is what the passage is inviting us to feel and to consider and to think about in this week of life.
SPEAKER_03: Mary concludes the magnificat by saying, all of this wonderfulness is available to everybody.
SPEAKER_03: Everybody who is willing to surrender to God's will.
SPEAKER_03: The passage that we will read says fear, and you had me right up until that point.
SPEAKER_03: Because I read fear and I push back.
SPEAKER_03: I don't like fear.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know about y'all.
SPEAKER_03: I'm fear-averse.
SPEAKER_03: Last week, Father Mike pointed out that fear is the opposite of joy, and it is.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, in this passage, fear means to revere.
SPEAKER_03: It means to honor.
SPEAKER_03: It means to adore, to love, to surrender, and to obey.
SPEAKER_03: So what Mary is really saying after Elizabeth gives her this wonderful blessing, acknowledging the fruit that intertwined life stream, Mary says, all of this is available to you too.
SPEAKER_03: It's available today.
SPEAKER_03: All you have to do is choose to surrender to God's will.
SPEAKER_03: To become a vessel to allow God to enter into your life.
SPEAKER_03: Into your womb, into your inner being from the center of your spiritual being, and then be magnified into this world.
SPEAKER_03: This is what this practice of love this week offers and invites us to do.
SPEAKER_03: So, what is love?
SPEAKER_03: It's the opportunity that is translated through the gift that Jesus gives us the gift of compassion and understanding.
SPEAKER_03: It is then transfigured within us from the center of our spiritual being as we allow our Creator to enter into his creation and be brought into the world.
SPEAKER_03: This is Christ alive in us.
SPEAKER_03: This is Christ alive in this room, from the choir, through all of you, and then out into the world to love.
SPEAKER_03: With the hope that you had three weeks ago, with the peace that you enjoyed two weeks ago, with the joy that you lived in this last week, and now in this week, we are invited to seek opportunities in the world, in the fringes, in the edges, in the corners.
SPEAKER_03: Those people that seem like they are poor in the spirit.
SPEAKER_03: And to invite them, to give them, to offer them this magnification of the love that is in.
SPEAKER_03: What God means to me, what Jesus means to me is love.
SPEAKER_03: Many years ago I tried to figure out what God was.
SPEAKER_03: It was a really easy job.
SPEAKER_03: Just kidding.
SPEAKER_03: And I decided that God was love because when I thought about it, to me, when I was in love with something, when I felt that feeling, that was God present in this world.
SPEAKER_03: And so to me, God is love.
SPEAKER_03: And then I thought about that and I thought I had it wrong.
SPEAKER_03: I forgot whether love was God or God was love, and I started dealing with this, saying it back and forth, and I decided, you know what, it's both.
SPEAKER_03: It's the unification of those two life streams.
SPEAKER_03: The fruit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the fruit that is in the inner being of every single one of us that God has wreathed into us.
SPEAKER_03: That is love.
SPEAKER_03: The theologian Carl Barth says of love, Advent love this way.
SPEAKER_03: Advent love is a promise that's expected.
SPEAKER_03: And it's a promise of a gift, two things.
SPEAKER_03: The gift is the love that Jesus gives us, the sacrifice that Jesus makes for us.
SPEAKER_03: The promise, the expectation of that promise, is what that then brings to us, and that expectation is hope.
SPEAKER_03: Because hope is the knowledge of that love.
SPEAKER_03: So what do we accomplish in adventure we created a space?
SPEAKER_03: A space for love.
SPEAKER_03: For that love to be nurtured.
SPEAKER_03: To allow that love to grow.
SPEAKER_03: And then to magnify that love into the world.
SPEAKER_03: So I offer to you, if you are able to be Marian like this week, to surrender to God's will, to allow God to play you like an instrument.
SPEAKER_03: To let him breathe into you, and then let that breath be magnified out into the world.
SPEAKER_03: So that we can take that offering and that sacrifice and return it in hope, and peace and joy.
SPEAKER_03: And love.
SPEAKER_04: We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of earth.
SPEAKER_04: All that is seen and unseen.
SPEAKER_04: We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Father, the eternal begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God.
SPEAKER_04: God in one day, of one name with the Father.
SPEAKER_04: Through him all things are made.
SPEAKER_04: For us our salvation, he came down from heaven, out of the power of the Holy Spirit, he became heart of the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
unknown: For our sake he was responsible for the Father.
unknown: He suffered death and was buried.
unknown: On the third day he rose again, Lord was to the scriptures.
SPEAKER_04: He ascended into heaven, is seated at the right hand of the Father.
SPEAKER_04: He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no man.
SPEAKER_04: We believe in the Holy Spirit, Lord and your life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
SPEAKER_04: With the Father and the Son, he is worshiped and glorified.
SPEAKER_04: He is spoken through the prophets.
SPEAKER_04: We believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
SPEAKER_04: We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
unknown: We look for the resurrection of the dead and the light of the world to come.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: For the holy church of God, that it may be filled with truth and love and be found without fault at the day of your coming.
SPEAKER_01: We pray to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: For all the holy people of God, for all bishops and other ministers, for Andy, Hector, Jeff, and Kay, our bishops.
SPEAKER_01: In the diocesan cycle of prayer, St.
SPEAKER_01: John the Divine Houston and St.
SPEAKER_01: Martin's Houston.
SPEAKER_01: For Michael, our presiding bishop.
SPEAKER_01: For Mike, Jim, Craig, Bill and Lillian, and the priests in our community, we pray to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Lord have confession.
SPEAKER_01: For all who fear God and believe in you, Lord Christ, that our divisions may cease, and that all may be one as you and the Father are one, we pray to you, O Lord.
unknown: Lord have compassion.
SPEAKER_01: For the mission of the Church, that in faithful witness it may preach the gospel to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: We pray to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, have compassion.
SPEAKER_01: For the peace of the world, that the spirit of respect and forbearance may grow among nations and peoples.
SPEAKER_01: We pray to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Lord have compassion.
SPEAKER_01: For those in position of public trust, especially Joe, our president, and Greg, our governor, that they may serve justice and promote the dignity and freedom of every person.
SPEAKER_01: We pray to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: For the poor, the persecuted, the sick, and all who suffer.
SPEAKER_01: For refugees, prisoners, and all who are in danger, that they may be relieved and protected, we pray to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, have compassion.
SPEAKER_01: For this congregation, that we may be delivered from hardness of heart and show forth your glory in all that we do.
SPEAKER_01: We pray to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: For our enemies and those who wish us harm, and for all whom we have injured or offended, for ourselves, for the forgiveness of our sins and for the grace of the Holy Spirit to amend our lives, we pray to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: For all who have commended themselves to our prayers, for our families, friends, and neighbors, especially Chris, Sean, Ken, Nancy, Amber, and those the congregation wishes to name at this time, silently or aloud, we pray to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: O Lord, have compassion.
SPEAKER_01: For all who have died in the communion of your church, and those whose faith is known to you alone, that with all the saints they may have rest in that place where there is no pain or grief, but life eternal.
SPEAKER_01: We pray to you, O Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Rejoicing in the fellowship of all the saints, let us commend ourselves and one another and all our life to Christ our God.
SPEAKER_01: To you, O Lord, our God.
SPEAKER_01: For yours is the majesty of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, now and forever.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_06: From time to time I make a mistake when I edit the bulletin.
SPEAKER_06: We've already prayed for forgiveness of our sins and the grace to amend our lives, and God heard us the first time.
SPEAKER_06: The peace of the Lord be always with you.
SPEAKER_04: And I prefer it.
SPEAKER_06: If you're new to this or haven't done this before in the room right behind this one, it's called the Narfix.
SPEAKER_06: But these little cards that say welcome, and we'd be tremendously grateful if you would fill one of those out so we have a record of your visit today.
SPEAKER_06: And thanks for worshiping with us.
SPEAKER_06: You know, unlike uh the last several years, we actually have five days to practice love before it's Christmas.
SPEAKER_06: So I hope you will take that as a spiritual discipline, as Eric pointed out.
SPEAKER_06: We don't always feel like love.
SPEAKER_06: And of course, it's the practice of love that we're meant to cultivate this week.
SPEAKER_06: So practice that with one another.
SPEAKER_06: Um, a few opportunities that I want to uh call to attention.
SPEAKER_06: The first is our service schedule.
SPEAKER_06: So before I talk a bit Christmas Eve, I want to mention that today at 4 30 is a service called the Longest Night.
SPEAKER_06: And it's an opportunity, quite honestly, for those of us who are in the middle of things like grief or anxiety or just honestly not feeling in the holiday spirit to name that in a holy place before God and with one another and go out nourished by the Eucharist.
SPEAKER_06: So that'll be at 4:30.
SPEAKER_06: It'll last about 45 minutes.
SPEAKER_06: It includes uh Eucharist in a short sermon.
SPEAKER_06: Um, and again, that opportunity is not for everybody, but it is an open invitation for the community.
SPEAKER_06: Friday is Christmas Eve, and there are the following opportunities to worship here on Christmas Eve.
SPEAKER_06: The first is our family service that begins at 3.30.
SPEAKER_06: It's a spontaneous Christmas pageant, which means if you come by 3.15, you can get a costume and you can sort of come up when your park's call.
SPEAKER_06: The great thing is there's no lines.
SPEAKER_06: Now, sometimes shepherds fight each other.
SPEAKER_06: This has happened.
SPEAKER_06: Uh sometimes shepherds chase their siblings around who are sheep, uh, which is why we do this thing.
SPEAKER_06: It's like joyful and lovely.
SPEAKER_06: I do have adult costumes too, so if you want to be in the thing, you can come at 3.15, although most of our people in costume are kids.
SPEAKER_06: So that's the first opportunity.
SPEAKER_06: It has a Eucharist, it's like 45 minutes start to finish, and it's a really lovely spirit in the room.
SPEAKER_06: 5 o'clock is a more traditional Christmas uh service, and you'll have uh not only the excellence of our choir, but we'll have a harpist at 5 o'clock as well.
SPEAKER_06: Um, another opportunity is at 9 o'clock p.m.
SPEAKER_06: We'll do a carol sing led by uh some choral solos, some harp solos.
SPEAKER_06: We'll join in and the service will begin at 9.30.
SPEAKER_06: It is midnight somewhere, so midnight mass is at 9.30 here.
SPEAKER_06: If you come to that service, there's champagne and chocolate afterward in the hallway, sending us sort of forward into Christmas Day.
SPEAKER_06: So those are the three opportunities.
SPEAKER_06: Some people do more than one of them, that's up to you.
SPEAKER_06: Uh there are no services Christmas Day, and on Christmas uh the 26th, which is the second day of Christmas, it turns out, in the church, right?
SPEAKER_06: There's 12 days.
SPEAKER_06: Second day of Christmas, one service at 9 a.m.
SPEAKER_06: So it's really important.
SPEAKER_06: If you come at 10:30, probably everybody's gone.
SPEAKER_06: So next Sunday is 9 a.m.
SPEAKER_06: only.
SPEAKER_06: Uh yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_06: A couple other things to raise to your attention.
SPEAKER_06: Um there's a shipping container out there in the parking lot.
SPEAKER_06: That's on purpose.
SPEAKER_06: A couple of our parishioners are going to help us reside the front of the building and ask us there to store supplies.
SPEAKER_06: So a few people asked today, and that's just temporary storage for materials.
SPEAKER_06: By the way, thank you guys for doing that.
SPEAKER_06: Um there's some uh envelopes here, you might have noticed.
SPEAKER_06: It's our last week that we're doing flower dedications for Christmas.
SPEAKER_06: So it's an opportunity to dedicate flowers that'll be up here next week in memory or Thanksgiving for somebody in your life or a gift that God has given you in your life.
SPEAKER_06: Um, and then uh somebody asked me this morning about the pipe orbit.
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I mentioned to you about two months ago, a couple parishioners put together a matching pool of funds of$25,000 that they'll match dollar for dollar to help us get the chambers built sort of towards the end of January, is what we're hyping.
SPEAKER_06: Really happy to tell you that we're like close to close to fulfilling that match.
SPEAKER_06: I want to say like 22,500 have been given against the match.
SPEAKER_06: So thank you.
SPEAKER_06: It's because of your generosity that we're gonna get this thing done ahead of schedule and wind down with our capital funds code.
SPEAKER_06: So again, thank you.
SPEAKER_06: Uh we we had quite a year between redoing the floor and paying off the mortgage, and this is the last thing left, is is the Piper.
SPEAKER_06: So thank you.
SPEAKER_06: You know, in the middle of what can be a busy week, I I do pray, I do pray that you will make some time this week with me to really practice hope instead of wishing, to practice making peace instead of keeping the peace.
SPEAKER_06: To cultivate some joy instead of just focusing on momentary happiness and of course.
SPEAKER_06: To practice love.
SPEAKER_06: Walking love.
SPEAKER_06: This is the table not of the church, but of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_06: It is made ready for those who love him and those who want to love him more.
SPEAKER_06: So come.
SPEAKER_06: You who have much faith and you who have little, you who have been here often, and you who have not been for a long time or ever before.
SPEAKER_06: You who have tried to follow and you who have failed, come.
SPEAKER_06: Not because the church invites you is Christ, he invites you to meet him here.
SPEAKER_05: The Lord be he with you.
SPEAKER_06: It is very meet right in our bounding duty that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father Almighty, everlasting God, because thou didst send thy beloved Son to redeem us from sin and death, and make us heirs in him of everlasting life, that when he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing.
SPEAKER_06: And therefore, with angels and archangels, with all the company of heaven, especially David Henson, we laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee and singing.
SPEAKER_06: All glory be to thee, O Lord our God, for that thou didst create heaven and earth and didst make us in thine own image.
SPEAKER_06: With thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to take our nature upon him and to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption.
SPEAKER_06: He made there a full and perfect sacrifice for the whole world, and did institute, and in his holy gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that, his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again.
SPEAKER_06: For in the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took bread.
SPEAKER_06: And when he given thanks to me, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, Take, eat.
SPEAKER_06: This is my body which is given for you.
SPEAKER_06: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_06: Likewise, after supper, Jesus took the cup of wine.
SPEAKER_06: And when he given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, Drink this all of you.
SPEAKER_06: This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins.
SPEAKER_06: Do this as often you shall drink it in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_06: Wherefore, O Lord and Heavenly Father, we thy people do celebrate and make with these our holy gifts which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy son hath commanded us to make.
SPEAKER_06: Having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, and looking for his coming again with power and great glory.
SPEAKER_06: I most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us, with thy word and Holy Spirit to bless and sanctify these gifts of bread and wine, that they may be unto us the body and blood of thy dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_06: We earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness to accept this, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, whereby we offer and present unto thee, O Lord ourselves, our souls and bodies.
SPEAKER_06: Grant we beseech thee that all who partake of this holy communion may worthily receive the most precious body and blood of thy Son, Jesus Christ, and be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction.
SPEAKER_06: And also that we and all thy whole church may be made one body with him, that may dwell in us and we in him, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_06: By whom and with whom and in whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, our honor and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end.
SPEAKER_06: Amen.
SPEAKER_06: Now as our Savior Christ hath taught us, we are bold to pray.
SPEAKER_06: Our Father, who art in heaven.
SPEAKER_04: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_04: And forgive us our trespasses.
SPEAKER_04: As we forgive us to trespass against us.
SPEAKER_04: And give us not the temptation.
unknown: Deliver us from evil.
SPEAKER_06: Hallelujah, Christ, our Passover is sacrificed for us.
SPEAKER_06: These are the gifts of God for you, the family of God.
SPEAKER_06: You sent Jesus to be the bread of life.
SPEAKER_06: We thank you for bringing us the first bread.
SPEAKER_06: May it strengthen us, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we may embody your desire and be renewed for your service through Jesus Christ our Savior.
SPEAKER_06: Amen.
SPEAKER_06: Depart in peace and take with you the certain knowledge that God is always coming into the world.
SPEAKER_04: We will save God.
SPEAKER_04: And that's our hearts.
SPEAKER_06: May the blessings of Advent and Christmas make you a blessing to others.
SPEAKER_06: May the peace of the season pervade all that you do.
SPEAKER_04: We will welcome the challenge of the service.
SPEAKER_04: We will offer ourselves to God.
SPEAKER_04: We will go forth and go in the destroyed.
SPEAKER_06: And the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be with you this day and remain with you always.