SUNDAY (May 17, 2020)
Sixth Sunday of Easter
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Gospel Sentence
“Baptism…now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” (1 Peter 3:21)
Reading
“Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.” (Acts 17:16–21)
Meditation
Is this episode from Acts 17 from the first century or the twenty-first century? Our ears long for something new. We want things to be new on our phones and computers, on TV or the radio (the Internet?). We want new books and movies. If it is not new, it must not be that good. But what God gives to us in His Son is the only truly new thing in the whole world. Forgiveness is new. Life in Him is new. All the rest is just a rehashing of the same old temptations put into a new wrapper. Don’t be taken in by the temptation for the new. Receive Christ, and the rest will come in His time.
Silence
Prayer for Holy Cross Member
Let your grace be upon Wyatt, O Lord, and teach him to hope in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Prayer of the Week
O God, the giver of all that is good, by Your holy inspiration grant that we may think those things that are right and by Your merciful guiding accomplish them; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Lord’s Prayer