April 1 Lenten Worship
Lenten Midweek Service – April 1, 2020
Theme: Loving Our Neighbor (The sixth in our series “Lent for All Nations” – based on messages prepared by Rev. Ben Haupt, Concordia Seminary, St Louis)
THE LITURGY OF EVENING PRAYER
Jesus Christ is the Light of the world; the light no darkness can overcome.
Stay with us, Lord, for it is evening, and the day is almost over.
Let Your light scatter the darkness and illumine your Church.
Joyous light of glory… of the immortal Father; heavenly, holy, blessed Jesus Christ. We have come to the setting of the sun, and we look to the evening light. We sing to God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You are worthy of being praised with pure voices forever. O Son of God, O Giver of life: the universe proclaims Your glory.
Blessed are You, O Lord our God, king of the universe, who led your people Israel by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Enlighten our darkness by the light of Your Christ; may His Word be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path; for You are merciful, and You love Your whole creation and we, Your creatures, glorify You, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let my prayer rise before You as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
O Lord, I call to You; come to me quickly; hear my voice when I cry to You.
Let my prayer rise before You as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
Set a watch before my mouth, O Lord, and guard the door of my lips. Let not my heart incline to any evil thing; let me not be occupied in wickedness with evildoers. But my eyes are turned to You, O God; in You I take refuge. Strip me not of my life.
Glory be 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.
Let my prayer rise before You as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
Let us pray. Silence for individual prayer.
Let the incense of our repentant prayer ascend before You, O Lord, and let Your loving-kindness descend on us, that with purified minds we may sing Your praises with the church on earth and the whole heavenly host, and may glorify You forever. Amen.
A READING from Isaiah 61, verses 8–11
For I the LORD love justice;
I hate robbery and wrong;
I will faithfully give them their recompense,
and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
Their offspring shall be known among the nations,
and their descendants in the midst of the peoples;
all who see them shall acknowledge them,
that they are an offspring the LORD has blessed.
I will greatly rejoice in the LORD;
my soul shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,
and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up,
so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise
to sprout up before all the nations. (ESV)
CANTICLE – MAGNIFICAT (The Song of Mary, Luke 1:46-55)
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.” (ESV)
Glory be 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.
A READING from Luke 10, verses 25-37
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”
But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.” (ESV)
SERMON
Lord God, use our lives to touch the world with Your love. Stir us, by Your Spirit, to be neighbor to those in need, serving them with willing hearts; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Of all the stories in the Bible, the Good Samaritan story is among the most widely known and quoted. A number of our states have “Good Samaritan” laws to protect the person who helps another in need, especially from lawsuits if something goes wrong. But nothing in the Biblical story is about something going wrong, except for the man who was attacked, robbed, and critically wounded. It is all about turning the noun “neighbor” into an action verb: “neighboring!” But it does have a secondary implication: not even the priestly class nor the ritual piety laws are exempt from Jesus’ command to “neighbor.”
However, we need to begin where this Gospel story begins, with the questions of a lawyer about his salvation. “Teacher, what must I do to gain eternal life?” He asked the question the way human society has been asking it for centuries. What must I do to placate an angry God? What deeds keep me on the right side of His judgment? That God is angry and hard to please is still widely believed. Our own father in faith, Martin Luther, asked that question often, and despaired of ever doing enough to please God. But Jesus doesn’t present to us an angry God. Jesus turned the lawyer to God Himself for his answer: “What does God Himself say?” “Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” This lawyer knew the teaching of the Torah, and Jesus affirmed that he gave the right answer. But the issue was more than an answer to a question; it was obedience to God’s will and design: “Go and live like that!”
The lawyer and 1st century Jewish society were pretty satisfied with how well they did this “all my heart, soul, mind and strength” love of God, as are very many in the mainstream of our society – satisfied the way the lawyer was, giving himself high marks for the way he loved. We give ourselves high marks for loving God and neighbor because we assume the right to define “my way of loving” as what God has in mind. And probably we give ourselves high marks because we also compare how we do things to others who we think do it poorly. As a season, Lent calls us to reject trying to win salvation by telling God how we will do things. Instead we admit that our deeds fall far short of His commands, and that our feet often stray far from His path, through our own choices. As His people, we cling to the journey Christ made for us, and the cross on which He gave Himself for our redemption. In Jesus’ passion and death, we see how awful are the consequences of our sin, so awful that only His precious life can redeem us.
But unlike my long interruption of the Gospel text to offer you this mini-sermon on love for God, Jesus didn’t stop the lawyer or challenge his answer. He affirmed his answer and gently told him to get on with God’s command. But the lawyer was not satisfied with letting the law go uninterpreted. After all, that’s what Rabbis did, they interpreted the law. So the lawyer asked his real question, the one with which he would challenge Jesus’ own words and actions. Luke told us in his background notes that this dialog with Jesus was a test. When folks like this lawyer came to test Jesus, they were trying to trip Him up and prove Him guilty of some great sin. The lawyer’s testing question was, “Who is my neighbor?”
In 1st century Palestine “my neighbor” was a member of my clan who lived nearby, or more broadly he was a member of my tribe. Sinners, those whose bodies were diseased – like lepers – and foreigners, like Romans, and Samaritans – were not my neighbor. The lawyers interpreted the law this way to limit their obligations. They removed from the “love your neighbor” category almost everyone society looked down on or despised. A couple of Sundays ago our gospel was from John 4, centered on a woman at Jacob’s well in southern Samaria. In his background material, St. John said that Jews have virtually nothing to do with Samaritans. A righteous Jew would avoid the shortest route to Galilee because it forced him to walk on Samaritan soil. It is no accident the hero this story was a Samaritan. And it was no accident that this Samaritan was generous like God Himself. Jesus saw the Kingdom alive in every place under heaven where men and women serve God with heart, soul, mind and strength.
There are people in this world that are hard to love. As one who grew up in the Cold War it was just a fact of life that I learned to distrust, belittle and even hate Russians. It was also like that for Jewish boys who grew up in Capernaum, near Jesus’ hometown. It was almost like drawing breath and being a good son to hate Romans and despise Samaritans. Not so long ago we felt that way about people who had HIV/AIDS. Now refugees fit that bill, even though most of us have grandparents or great-grandparents who were refugees. Who are the people society excuses you from loving? Who is your Russian, Roman soldier or Samaritan?
Society finds it easy to draw lines and teach its children categories and classes of people to look down on and minimize. Almost all of us have some version of “them” in our minds who are not in our neighbor class!! In the midst of a pandemic a whole new danger is before us, as are limitless possibilities to responsibly and lovingly neighbor.
Jesus makes that Roman soldier, that Russian merchant, the hero of His stories, the very ones who embody the life that is part of the Kingdom of God. Every wall we build to keep people away from us gets pulled down by the mercies of the God Who set His face to go to Jerusalem. Lent calls on us to admit our lostness, to beg for mercy, and to love all the people the way Jesus loves us. It is not possible, John so aptly says in his 1st letter, “…not possible for us to love God Whom we have not seen and then despise our neighbor and brother or sister whom we can see as plain a day.”
On this day see yourself as the man put upon by thieves, beaten, then left for dead. See yourself in that frail space between death and life. Which of the people in this story models the Kingdom of God as you know it? Surely the One Who stopped, did CPR and got you to a life-saving trauma center. And if this is the One who saved you, regardless of how you thought of him before, regard him now as agent of God and as bearer of the Gospel. Go and do likewise.
HYMN
O God of mercy, God of might, in love and pity infinite, Teach us as ever in Thy sight, to live our lives in Thee.
And Thou, Who cam’st on earth to die, that our lost world might live thereby, O hear us, for to Thee we cry, In hope, O Lord to Thee.
All are redeemed, both far and wide, since Thou, O Lord, for all has died. Grant us the will and grace provide, to love them all in Thee.
In sickness, sorrow, want or care, may we each other’s burdens share; may we, where help is needed, there give help as unto Thee. (Hymn LSB 852, public domain)
LITANY
In peace let us pray to the Lord: (Each petition concludes: Lord, have mercy)
For the peace from above and for our salvation, let us pray to the Lord:
For the peace of the whole world, for the well-being of the Church of God, and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord:
For this holy house and for all who offer here their worship and praise, let us pray to the Lord:
For Matthew our Synodical President, John our District President, for all pastors in Christ, for all servants of the Church, and for all the people, let us pray to the Lord:
For Donald our President, Ralph our Governor, for all public servants, for the government and those who protect us, that they may be upheld and strengthened in every good deed, let us pray to the Lord:
For those who work to bring peace, justice, health and protection in this and every place, let us pray to the Lord:
For those who bring offerings, those who do good works in this congregation, those who toil, those who sing, and all the people here present who await from the Lord great and abundant mercy, let us pray to the Lord:
For favorable weather, for an abundance of the fruits of the earth, and for peaceful times, let us pray to the Lord:
For our deliverance from all affliction, wrath, danger and need, let us pray to the Lord:
For those in our congregation who are enduring illness or injury – that they may be strengthened and healed; for protection against the Coronavirus for all throughout the world; and for the maintaining of order and peace among us, let us pray to the Lord:
For the faithful who have gone before us and are with Christ, let us give thanks to the Lord: Thanks be to God.
Help, save, comfort and defend us, gracious Lord.
Silence for individual prayer.
Rejoicing in the fellowship of all the saints, let us commend ourselves, one another, and our whole life to Christ our Lord: To you, O Lord.
O God, from whom come all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works, give to us, Your servants, that peace which the world cannot give, that our hearts may be set to obey Your commandments and also that we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may live in peace and quietness; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
Taught by our Lord and trusting His promises, we are bold to 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 and ever. Amen.
Let us bless the Lord. Thanks be to God.
The almighty and merciful Lord, the Father, the + Son, and the Holy Spirit, bless and preserve us. Amen.
