Twenty Second Sunday after Pentecost

6th November 2022

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Year C

3rd Sunday before Advent

Proper 28

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ORDER OF SERVICE

You can click to expand or minimize the order of service below.

All are requested to join in wherever text is GREEN or when instructed by Fr. David.

Where the is shown, all are encouraged to make the sign of the cross.

Where the is shown all are encouraged to strike their breast with a closed hand following the actions of Fr. David.

Where the is shown all are encouraged to tap their breast with an open hand following the actions of Fr. David.

Greetings to you all to our Eucharist Service on the (proper)

A particular welcome to you if you are joining us on the internet either now on the Livestream or later on the replay.

You are very welcome; we are very delighted to have you.

Please bring your own petitions, cares and concerns to God and offer them alongside ours.

As usual, you will find all the spoken and sung material for today’s service on our Facebook page and also on our website.

Remember please, the link to donate or the donate button.  We are very much in need of money to assist with our Ministry.

Now, if you are able, please will you stand as we sing

Lord, thy word abideth,
And our footsteps guideth;
Who its truth believeth,
Light and joy receiveth,

When our foes are near us,
Then thy word doth cheer us,
Word of consolation,
Message of salvation.

Who can tell the pleasure,
Who recount the treasure
By thy word imparted
To the simple-hearted?

O that we discerning
Its most holy learning,
Lord, may love and fear thee,
Evermore be near thee!

Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And blessed be his kingdom, now and forever. Amen

 

From Easter to Pentecost:

Allelulia. Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia

 

In Lent and other penitential occasions:

Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins;

His mercy endures for ever.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

 

Let us pray:

Almighty God, to whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

This prayer is omitted during Lent and Advent:

Glory to God in the highest, and peace to God’s people on earth.  Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father, we worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory.  Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us; you are seated at the right hand of the Father: receive our prayer. For you alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father.  Amen.

 Holy God, holy and mighty , holy and immortal, have mercy on us.

O God, whose blessed Son came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life: Grant that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves as he is pure; that, when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A reading from the book of

Job

Job said,

“O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!

O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;

and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God,

whom I shall see on my side,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God

Psalm 17:1-9

1 Hear my plea of innocence, O Lord;
give heed to my cry; *
listen to my prayer, which does not come from lying lips.

2 Let my vindication come forth from your presence; *
let your eyes be fixed on justice.

3 Weigh my heart, summon me by night, *
melt me down; you will find no impurity in me.

4 I give no offence with my mouth as others do; *
I have heeded the words of your lips.

5 My footsteps hold fast to the ways of your law; *
in your paths my feet shall not stumble.

6 I call upon you, O God, for you will answer me; *
incline your ear to me and hear my words.

7 Show me your marvellous loving-kindness, *
O Savior of those who take refuge at your right hand
from those who rise up against them.

8 Keep me as the apple of your eye; *
hide me under the shadow of your wings,

9 From the wicked who assault me, *
from my deadly enemies who surround me.

A reading from the 2nd letter of Paul to the

Thessalonians

As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction. He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you?

But we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. For this purpose, he called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter.

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God

All stand for the Acclamation and Gospel reading.

Alleluia!  Alleluia!

Jesus Christ is the First-born from the dead;

To him be glory and power for ever and ever.

Alleluia!

The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to:

Luke

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

After the Gospel reading

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ

Here is our Homily, delivered 6th November:
In our gospel for this Sunday, we encounter the Sadducees. And I think it is fair to say they were the materialists of their day. They denied the possibility of resurrection. For them, to die was to die forever. We may find it easy to cast them as villains. After all, it is because we believe in resurrection that we gather here every Sunday, and if there is no resurrection, we gather in vain, and the Eucharist is just a meal with portions that are far too small, the priest merely an overdressed waiter who in insists on making long prayers before serving us—poor service indeed. And so, we know that the Sadducees are mistaken.
But at the end of the day, the difference between us and them is not so great. There is a Sadducee in all of us. It is not that we deny the possibility of an afterlife or the empty tomb; it is what we often feel that Christ has abandoned us, and when this happens, we are tempted to believe that His presence is gone forever. In a sense, we feel that He has died again, this time for good. We fall into seasons of doubt, and then we deny what I call “the resurrection of presence.”
All of us have passed through lovely seasons of life. The honeymoon after a wedding. The birth of a child. A memorable holiday. A job with fulfilling work and pleasant co-workers. Days shot through with grace. But the problem with life is that it moves on, and the problem with time is that it flows. Friendships form and are dissolved. Children are born and leave the nest. Jobs are gained and lost. The Beatles find their stride and then break up. (This trauma was especially great for me, although I was a child just about to complete my fourth year on this earth.) And it is that the point of transition from one season to the next that the doubt arises. Maybe a deep friendship has given us a taste of eternal love, but the friend moves across the world, and then our evenings are free, and we ask, “What’s next?” But we are really asking, “Is there a resurrection of presence? Will the days ever shimmer with grace again?”
And so, the Christian life confronts us with a troubling paradox: the better we are at finding God in our circumstances, the fiercer the temptation becomes to cling to the past and to bygone days. It feels unfair. It seems that we are punished for being sensitive to God’s presence in our lives. After all, it is precisely because we found God in friendship, the job, the year of travelling, that we are condemned to feel a greater loss when circumstances change. If we are able find God in the present, it seems that we must always pay later. And so, disengagement becomes a real temptation—to seal ourselves off from the world seems wise, to step back from the flow of time and simply let it flow indifferently. But this is way of denying resurrection—the resurrection of presence.
But think of the disciples. They were faced with the same paradox, the same trial. They knew Christ on earth… for a mere three years, and then He was spirited away at the ascension. One day they were eating with Him, drinking with Him, walking behind Him on the road, and the next He was gone. They ate the Last Supper, and it was just that: their last meal with Him. It seems that they were set up for disappointment. And perhaps later John, James, or Peter dared to ask, “Would it have been better to decline Christ’s invitation?” Had they never set out on the road, they would never have experienced the trauma of Golgotha or the shock of the ascension.
If they had only let Christ pass by…
And yet if we look deeper, they were never abandoned. Christ was always with them, it is just that he was always changing the form of His manifestation. The Last Supper disappeared, but it reappeared later as the Eucharist. Christ ascended, but the church was born, and this is His mystical body. He was always there. But He was always changing the form of His manifestation. And so, the disciples never knew Him as a stable object: He was Jesus of Nazareth, and then a suffering criminal, and then a wise stranger on the way to Emmaus, then the risen Lord. And yet behind the turbulence of change there was a single manifestation of love.
And so, perhaps with a change of perspective, we can overcome the doubt of the Sadducees—or at least resist it. It is not that time is always sweeping away the good days, it is that Christ is always coming to us in new ways. We are not thrown from one season into the next; we are carried into deeper and deeper revelations of God. It is good to remember the old days, for they were a grace. But we should also remember that grace is here now and that time flows on because there is always more of God to know, and with new experiences and seasons comes new intimacies. I am not saying that God causes friendships to end or marriages to dissolve, I am only saying that one experience gives way to another, and that we can learn the art of finding grace even in change, of expecting Christ to visit us in new ways, this will ease our passage through the seasons.
Here we are in Thailand, a Buddhist country. And in their meditation, Buddhist monks aim to experience the impermanence of life. They believe that suffering arises whenever we cling to impermanent things and fleeting experiences and try to make them last. And so, they lean into the flow of change, and they seek to loosen their grip on the present moment. This is wise, and I think we can add that impermanence is merely Christ changing the form of His gracious manifestation. If we can let the moment be instead of trying to extract happiness from experience by force, we can see Christ in all things, and all things in Christ.
There is a resurrection of presence. It is just that God’s presence is like a flame—the light of Christ’s love is constant because its shape is always changing.
Amen.

Please stand for the Nicene Creed.

Let us together affirm the faith of the Church. 

We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven:

was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,

and became truly human.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again

in accordance with the Scriptures;

he ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified,

who has spoken through the prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead,

 and the life of the world to come.  Amen.

To follow

THE CONFESSION:

God is steadfast in love and infinite in mercy, welcoming sinners and inviting them to the Lord’s table.

Let us confess our sins in penitence and faith, confident in God’s forgiveness.

Merciful God, our maker and our judge, we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed, and in what we have failed to do: we have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbours as ourselves; we repent and are sorry for all our sins , Father forgive us, strengthen us to love and obey you in newness of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen

**(Note: all are encouraged to strike their breast 3 times following the lead of Fr. David as he utters the words: ‘sorry for all our sins’)**

THE PEACE:

The congregation stands.

We are the Body of Christ.

His Spirit is with us.

 

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

And also with you.

Please greet each other with a sign of peace.

Ye than know the Lord is gracious,
Ye for whom a corner-stone
Stands, of God elect and precious,
Laid that ye may build thereon.
See that on that sure foundation
Ye a living temple raise,
Towers that may tell forth salvation,
Walls that may re-echo praise.

Living stones, by God appointed
Each to his allotted place,
Kings and priests, by God anointed,
Shall ye not declare his grace?
Ye, a royal generation,
Tell the tidings of your birth,
Tidings of a new creation
To an old and weary earth.

Tell the praise of him who called you
Out of darkness into light,
Broke the fetters that enthralled you,
Gave you freedom, peace and sight:
Tell the tale of sins forgiven,
Strength renewed and hope restored,
Till the earth, in tune with heaven,
Praise and magnify the Lord.

THE OFFERTORY

Blessed are you, God of all creation. Through your goodness we have these gifts to share. Accept and use our offerings for your glory and the service of your kingdom.

Blessed be God forever.

 Let us pray

We do not presume to come to your table, merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies.  We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table, but you are the same Lord whose nature is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us.  Amen.

The Lord be with you.

and also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give thanks and praise.

Father, we give you thanks and praise through your beloved Son Jesus Christ, your living Word, through whom you have created all things; who was sent by you in your great goodness to be our Saviour.

By the power of the Holy Spirit he took flesh; as your Son, born of the blessed Virgin, he lived on earth and went about among us; he opened wide his arms for us on the cross; he put an end to death by dying for us; and revealed the resurrection by rising to new life; so he fulfilled your will and won for you a holy people.

Proper Preface

Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we proclaim your great and glorious name, for ever praising you and saying:

Holy, holy, holy Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.   Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.  Hosanna in the highest.

Lord, you are holy indeed, the source of all holiness; grant that by the power of your Holy Spirit, and according to your holy will, these gifts of bread and wine may be to us the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; who, in the same night that he was betrayed, took bread and gave you thanks; he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take, eat; this is my body  which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way, after supper he took the cup and gave you thanks; he gave it to them, saying: Drink this, all of you; this is my blood of the new covenant,

which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this, as often as you drink it,

in remembrance of me.

Great is the mystery of faith:

Christ has died:

Christ is risen:

Christ will come again.

And so, Father, calling to mind his death on the cross, his perfect sacrifice, made once for the sins of the whole world; rejoicing in his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, and looking for his coming in glory, we celebrate this memorial of our redemption.

As we offer you this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, we bring before you this bread and this cup and we thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you. Send the Holy Spirit on your people and gather into one in your kingdom all who share this one bread and one cup, so that we, in the company of [N and] all the saints, may praise and glorify you for ever, through Jesus Christ our Lord; by whom, and with whom, and in whom, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honour and glory be yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever.

Amen.

Let us pray with confidence to the Father, as our Saviour 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. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

O Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.  

O Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

O Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

**(Note:  All are encouraged to tap their breast three times following the example of Fr. David as he utters the words ‘…have mercy, …have mercy and …grant us peace’)**

We break this bread to share in the body of Christ.

Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread.

This is the Lamb of God , who takes away the sins of the world;

Happy are those who are called to his supper.

Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

**(Note:  All are encouraged to strike breast following the example of Fr. David as all utter the words ‘not worthy’)** 

After Communion the celebrant and the congregation say

 

Let us pray.

Father of all we give you thanks and praise that when we were still far off you met us in your Son and brought us home. Dying and living, he declared your love, gave us grace, and opened the gate of glory. May we who share Christ’s body live his risen life; we who drink his cup bring life to others; we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world. 

Keep us in this hope that we have grasped; so we and all your children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise your name.

Father, we offer ourselves to you as a living sacrifice through Jesus Christ our Lord. Send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord: and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit , be amongst you and remain with you always.

Amen.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord:

In the name of Christ.  Amen.

Thank you all for being with us today, either here in the chapel or scattered around the world.  We are delighted to have you, to share our worship with you.

We hope that you will join us again in future weeks.

You remember please that as a Mission Church we are in need of your support to enable our ministry and you will find details of how to donate on our website StGeorgesPattaya.com

Now, if you are able please, will you stand as we sing;

(First line of last hymn)

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The sword of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.

Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exaltation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to thee.

CONTRIBUTE TO OUR WORK

Music

Here is the music for this week’s hymns, if you would like to practice beforehand.

Performed by Fr. David Price

NOTE: The introductory music is Trumpet Tune – Stanley