Blessing of the Animals October 4, 2015

This Sunday, October 21, 2018

~Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 24-Year B.

~8:00 AM – Holy Eucharist, Rite I in the Chapel.

~9:30 AM – Chancel Choir Rehearsal in the Chancel.

~9:30 AM – Informal Adult Forum in the Guild Room.

~10:15 AM – Holy Eucharist, Rite II in the Main Sanctuary.

~11:45 AM – Family Choir Rehearsal in the Chancel.

~4:00 PM – Youth Group.

Your Sunday’s Weekly Reflection

A Note on Today’s Readings Proper 24—Year B

Welcome to our All Saints’ Parish! The liturgy today centers on two themes of the Christian message about Jesus. Both are found in today’s Gospel: Jesus’ messiahship is revealed not in his power but in his life of serving others and his suffering and death, and he calls us to a like ministry of self-giving love.

The Old Testament reading is one of Isaiah’s poems of the suffering servant of God. In this passage, from about the sixth century B.C., the growing understanding of suffering as redemptive—implied by the Hebrew Scriptures in the stories of Moses and David, among others—is given its fullest expression. God is intimately involved in the suffering of his faithful servants and gives that suffering redemptive value when it is offered in obedience for the redemption of God’s people. This passage, of course, was understood by the earliest Christians as foretelling Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Today’s passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews expresses the redemptive suffering of Christ as his eternal priestly sacrifice, which replaces the sacrifices of the temple. We are assured that our own suffering and our own self-giving ministry receive redemptive value by virtue of our baptismal union with Jesus’ own sacrifice.

We, the people of God, gather to celebrate the Eucharist, which is one aspect of our work. In song, story, Word, and Sacrament, the dying and rising of Jesus and his ministry to us are revealed and made present. We become sharers in his life by our participation, and are prepared and enabled to carry out the other aspect of our work in sacrificial, servant ministry to others.