Sunday, July 22, 2012: The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Celebrant: The Rev. Stephanie Shockley, visiting minister

Deacon and homilist: The Rev. Clive Oscar Sang

Click here to listen to the Gospel reading and the sermon by our Deacon, Clive Sang. Or, click on any of the hyperlinks for more information.

Organist/Choirmaster: James Lenney

• Prelude: “Benedictus” (Max Reger)
• Postlude: Prelude & fugue in Bb Major (J.S. Bach)

The Collect of the Day

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son 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 Second book of Samuel

Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.” But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.

A Reading from Paul’s letter to the Church in Ephesus

Remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands—remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

The Holy Gospel according to Mark

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Notes on the readings

Today’s gospel reading follows the first mission of preaching and healing that Jesus sent the apostles out to do. They return and he takes them away for rest and reflection. Then they return to the crowds and Jesus has compassion on the people, who are like sheep without a shepherd. This image of Jesus as shepherd comes originally from David, the Shepherd King, and is a consistent image of God in the Old Testament.

In the first reading, the prophet Nathan brings God’s promise to David that he who was taken from shepherding sheep will now be the shepherd of God’s people. God promises that David’s descendants will establish God’s kingdom forever. Christians see this promise as having been fulfilled in Jesus.

In today’s reading from Ephesians we find a reflection of the Jewish-Christian joining of the personal and the social aspects of the life of God’s People, extended now to the entire human family through the dying and rising of Christ.

We are called by God as individuals into a community of persons. Again and again in the sacred story the promise of God coming in person to care for the people is made. God will make all people into one flock, one community. In the liturgy, the tension between the personal and the communal is expressed and resolved. In Holy Communion, it is our selves that are offered, blessed, and broken, that we may be given as signs of Christ to the world.

Notes from The Rite Light: Reflections on the Sunday Readings and Seasons of the Church Year. Copyright © 2007 by Michael W. Merriman. Church Publishing Incorporated, New York.