Day of
Pentecost
**Please note this service is based on
the format of the Anglican Church of Canada. Unless otherwise indicated, all
prayers come from the Book of Alternative Services (BAS) and the hymns from the
Book of Common Praise (BCP). Other hymns and prayers have been sourced to give
appropriate credit.
**NRSV translation used for the
readings, unless otherwise stated.
**This is for
personal use at home as the church is unable to gather in our houses of worship
but together we can worship in our own homes.
Opening Prayer
Come, Holy
Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful; and kindle in us the fire of your
love.
Opening Hymn – Wind Who Makes All Winds That Blow (BCP #249)
The grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit be with you all.
And also with you.
Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
May his grace
and peace be with you.
May he fill our hearts with joy.
Collect for Purity
The Gloria
Collect of the Day
Let us pray.
Almighty and
everliving God, who fulfilled the promises of Easter by sending us your Holy
Spirit and opening to every race and nation the way of life eternal, keep us in
the unity of your Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
The Readings
A reading from
the Book of Acts 2:1-21
When
the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And
suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it
filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire,
appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were
filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the
Spirit gave them ability.
Now
there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And
at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard
them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they
asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we
hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and
residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and
Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from
Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear
them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed,
saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They
are filled with new wine.”
But
Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of
Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to
what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine
o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
‘In
the last days it will be, God declares,
that
I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and
your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even
upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And
I will show portents in the heaven above
and
signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The
sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great
and glorious day.
Then
everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’
The word of
the Lord.
Thanks be the God.
Yonder is the
sea, great and wide,
creeping things innumerable are there,
living things both small and great.
There go the
ships,
and Leviathan that you formed to sport in
it.
These all look
to you
to give them their food in due season;
when you give
to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled
with good things.
When you hide
your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die
and return to their dust.
When you send
forth your spirit, they are created;
and you renew the face of the ground.
May the glory
of the Lord endure forever;
may the Lord rejoice in his works—
who looks on
the earth and it trembles,
who touches the mountains and they smoke.
I will sing to
the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praise to my God while I have
being.
May my
meditation be pleasing to him,
for I rejoice in the Lord.
Let sinners be
consumed from the earth,
and let the wicked be no more.
Bless the
Lord, O my soul.
Praise the
Lord!
A reading from
the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians 12:3b-13
Therefore
I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says
“Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy
Spirit.
Now
there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of
services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is
the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the
manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the
Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge
according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another
gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to
another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various
kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are
activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just
as the Spirit chooses.
For
just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body,
though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were
all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made
to drink of one Spirit.
The word of
the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Gradual Hymn –
The Lord be
with you.
And also with you.
The Holy
Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John. 20:19-23
Glory to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
When
it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the
house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came
and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he
showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw
the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent
me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to
them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are
forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
The Gospel of
Christ.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Sermon
Guest preacher - Rev Dr Tim Sale, St Paul's Fort Garry
If I had preached a
sermon in November, 2019, warning you that in three months, you would be separated
from your family, banned from church, and worried about toilet paper, would I
have been:
1. Referred
for counselling
2.
Ignored
and laughed at
3.
Taken
absolutely seriously as you rushed out for toilet paper?
My hunch is that a
majority would opt for (2), a worried few for (1) and no one at all for (3).
But that’s what
happened, isn’t it? One of our neighbours, a single person, ordered her 30 rolls
of toilet paper from Costco… now that’s a lot of TP!
But no one saw this
pandemic coming, even though epidemiologists have for years warned us that one
would, and that the world was no where near prepared.
On Tuesday, September
11, 2001, I was in my office doing a press conference when suddenly all the
media were packing up and rushing out. Was it something I said? Of course not,
it was when the planes struck the World Trade Centre. No one saw that coming
either, although there were plenty of warnings about terrorism threats.
Driving through the
South Island of New Zealand after lunch on February 22nd, 2011, heading for
Christchurch, we stopped for gas and learned of the devastation of Christchurch
at 11:51 that morning. No one saw it coming.
It is clear that none
of the disciples saw what was coming either. They ignored the signs of the
times; they ignored three years of Jesus’ teaching, and at first, they even
ignored the amazed excitement of the women running from the tomb. They did not
recognize Jesus until the breaking of the bread and the giving of the Holy
Spirit.
Yet immediately around
each of these unforeseen and usually unwelcome events, there came a fork in the
road of human behaviour.
In every one of them,
many, many people rallied. Firefighters ran INTO the World Trade Centre, and
some gave their lives to save others. In our current pandemic, nurses and
care-givers, doctors, emergency responders, truck drivers, grocery store
workers, shelter givers put themselves in harm’s way. Most political leaders
left their usual behaviours behind. On September 11th, planes landed in Gander
and passengers became welcomed guests; the same happened in a less dramatic way
in Winnipeg too. In the Christchurch earthquake, a wonderful Mayor gave calm,
clear and compassionate advice, just as the current Prime Minister, Ms. Ardern
has done in 2020. Citizens banded together and cared for each other. Many took
complete strangers into their homes.
And in Jerusalem,
crowds heard the in-breaking of the spirit. Those who were “other”, minorities,
strangers, even the “unclean” understood each other in amazement. The
disciples, once fearful and fleeing suddenly became bold and believing,
preaching, taking chances, sharing and witnessing to the teachings of Jesus.
I have often struggled
to comprehend what is meant by the Holy Spirit/Wisdom/Sophia. What did it mean
when Jesus “breathed on them and told them to receive the Holy Spirit, the
Spirit of Wisdom and Truth”? What does it mean to say that “The Father is in
you and I am in the Father, and I am in you?”
We speak of Jesus as
“God Incarnate” What does that mean? We say that all life is Holy; not just
human life, but all life, life of the creatures, the forest, the earth itself,
all creation.
These are enormous
questions; libraries are full of our attempts to discern answers. Angels have
danced on the heads of many, many pins! But what if we changed a few words. And
said instead; “I am in the Holy, and the Holy is in me, and I am in you, and
you are in me. That the Holy is right there beside us, inside us, around us. It
is the deep meaning of every living thing, every relationship, every face we
meet, the Ground of our Being. The question always, are we open to hear and
bear witness to that holiness?
Tragedies, times of
great trouble, pandemics provide a chance for those openings, a thin place as
Celtic spirituality says. A chance for the deep holiness, the incarnational
holiness of Christ that Christ says is already deeply embedded in us all to be
revealed. Our “real” self comes forth, sometimes from the tombs of our own
making, and shines brightly for all the world to see.
That is what Pentecost
is all about. It is the sudden sense of a community of diverse souls, who used
to be strangers, all suddenly making sense to each other. It is the caregivers
acting selflessly. It is the compassion, generosity and justice-seeking
breaking forth against the iron rules of the “economy” of selfishness and
presumed scarcity. It is our deepest, truest nature, becoming real.
My prayer is that this
Pentecost will last much longer than usual!
Amen, so be it.
Affirmation of Faith
Let us confess
the faith of our baptism, as we say the Apostles’ Creed:
The Prayers of the
People
In the power of the Spirit who aids us
in our weakness and teaches us to pray, let us offer to God our intercessions,
thanksgivings, and the deep yearnings of our hearts, saying: Come, Holy Spirit.
For the church, for bishops, for clergy,
and for all the people of God, that they may be made whole and free by the
Spirit, and bear witness in every aspect of life to the full force of Christ’s
resurrection, we pray:
Come,
Holy Spirit.
For our world in its brokenness, that
the peace of the risen Christ heal the wounds of all victims of injustice and
exploitation, and transform the hearts of those who lead the nations and who
make public policy, that they may truly become makers of peace, we pray:
Come,
Holy Spirit.
That liberal and conservative may be
drawn together in truth by the Spirit and come to rejoice in their different
gifts and points of view, we pray:
Come,
Holy Spirit.
For those weighed down by despair,
suffering from addiction, for burdened by illness (take time now to name aloud those known to us and acknowledge those
known only to God), that they may experience the freedom which the Spirit
gives to the children of God, we pray:
Come,
Holy Spirit.
In thanksgiving for the departed, and
for all who witnessed to us of God’s love poured into our hearts by the Spirit,
and for the grace to be faithful to all they have been for us, we pray:
Come,
Holy Spirit.
Gracious God, receive our prayer; hear
our hearts’ deep yearnings, yet to be formed into words. Give us the courage to
yield ourselves, all that we are and have yet to become, to the transforming
motion of your holy Spirit, and carry out in us and through us your work of new
creation. This we pray in the name of Jesus Christ, the risen and living one.
Amen. (Intercessions
for the Christian People)
Gathering our
prayers together, let us pray as Christ has taught us,
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.
Save us from the time of trial,
And deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever. Amen.
Confession and Absolution
Dear friends
in Christ,
God is
steadfast in love and infinite in mercy; God welcomes sinners and invites them
to the table. Let us confess our sins, confident in God’s forgiveness.
(Silence)
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
neighbour 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 might
delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your name. Amen.
Almighty God,
have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and
strengthen you in all goodness, and keep you in eternal life; through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.
The peace of
the Lord be always with you.
And also with you.
Prayer over the Gifts
**Although not physically at our church buildings to share
our offering together I would encourage you to set your offering of money aside
so that it can be dropped off or placed in the church once services resume, to
mail your offering to the church, or to make donations online. Please remember
ministry is still taking place.
Let us pray.
Giver of life,
receive all we offer you this day. Let the Spirit you bestow on your Church
continue to work in the world through the hearts of all who believe. We ask
this is the name of Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen.
Doxology
Glory to God,
Whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we
can ask or imagine. Glory to God from generation to generation, in the Church
and in Christ Jesus, for ever and ever. Amen.
Blessing
Holy One,
For all of the
ways you speak to us – in rushing wind, in dancing flames, in words we
understand, and in all that transcends language, we give thanks. Give us
courage to speak your love, everywhere we go, to everyone we meet. Amen. (written
by Joanna Harader, and posted on Practicing Families. http://practicingfamilies.com/)
Closing Hymn – Tongues of Fire (written by Gord Johnson, performed by Tom Buxton)
Dismissal
Go forth into the world, rejoicing in
the power of the Spirit. Alleluia!
Thanks be
to God. Alleluia!
