May

May 1    6^th Sunday after Easter – Confirmation Sunday – Special Communion Service

                Isaiah 40:31 “But those who wait upon the Lord”

May 5    Ascension – Special Order of Service with Communion

Luke 24:44-53 “An Ascension Message of Joy”

May 8    7^th Sunday after Easter – Prayer and Preaching

John 17:20-26 “A model of unity”

May 15 Pentecost – Divine Service Setting 3

Seminarian Joshua Rolston guest speaker

May 22 Trinity Sunday – Divine Service Setting 3 w/o communion

John 8:48-59 – “The Trinity in Your life”

May 29 Pentecost 2 –   Divine Service Setting 1

Proper 4 Luke 7:1-10 “For statements concerning great faith”

In the month of May we witness a transition. We close out the Festival Season of the Church year as we move into the Pentecost Season, often referred to as the Non-Festival portion of the Church year the last Sunday of May.

May is a critical time of the year. As fields are prepared in spring, we anticipate a harvest in fall. Seeds sown in May produce a harvest in October and November. In the church, the seed of faith planted in baptism is confessed at confirmation, and then is given opportunity to bear witness throughout a persons’ life. This same Jesus who is risen has ascended. He has given His church His Spirit and rules in the hearts of His followers to this day. 

As we anticipate gathering for worship, read through the readings and prayers appointed for each Sunday. Come, anticipating God affirming to you the very life that He offers through the appearing of His resurrected Son Jesus. As He works in the lives of His people remember that He continues to shape and mold your life. He gives structure to your day. He orders your path and directs your life.

Easter – 6 - O God, the giver of all that is good, by Hour holy inspiration grant that we may think those things that are right and by Your merciful guiding accomplish them;

Christians pray in Jesus’ name.  “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Jesus has opened the way to the Father, so that “whatever you ask of the Father” in Jesus’ name, “he will give it to you” (John 16:23).

We pray, therefore, in the confidence that we will be heard and answered, that our “joy may be full” (John 16:24). We pray because the Gospel has been preached to us, and the Lord has opened our hearts to believe the Gospel (Acts 16:10, 14).

We pray in the name of Jesus because we have been baptized into Him, as Lydia and her household were baptized (Acts 16:15). We have been healed, and we live and walk and pray in newness of life (John 5:8–9).

Ascension – Almighty God, as Your only-begotten Son, our lord Jesus Christ, ascended into the heavens, so may we also asce4nd in heart and mind and continually dwell there with Him,

Christ Ascended Is with You Always

In His resurrection, the Lord Jesus presented Himself alive to the apostles, “appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). Then He ascended to the right hand of the Father, not orphaning His Church, but filling all things in heaven and on earth, and giving gifts to His disciples. So today, He continues to preach “repentance and forgiveness of sins” (Luke 24:47) through “the apostles whom he had chosen” (Acts 1:2), even “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Jesus comes among us today by His Word and Spirit, whom He pours out upon “the church, which is his body” (Eph. 1:23). In His Church, He blesses us with forgiveness, lifts us up in His hands, and seats us with Himself “in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:20).

Easter 7 – O King of glory, Lord of hosts, uplifted in triumph far above the heavens, leave us not without consolation but send us the Spirit of truth whom You promised from the Father,

Jesus Is with Us in His Holy Christian Church - On the night when He was betrayed, Jesus interceded for His Church — for His apostles and all who believe in Him through their word — that all of His disciples “may become perfectly one” in the Father and the Son (John 17:21–23). For Jesus became flesh and dwells among us in order to reveal the Father and His name, to share with us the glory of His righteousness, and to bring us to the Father in Himself. As the Father loved the Son from “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24), so He loves the whole world (John 17:23, 26). Through the apostolic witness to the baptism, cross and resurrection of Jesus (Acts 1:21–22), the Lord gathers His disciples throughout the world “with one accord,” as one body in Christ (Acts 1:14). And so with one voice and by one Spirit, His Bride prays, “Come!” (Rev. 22:17). And He comes to us. He gives us “the water of life without price” to wash our robes and quench our thirst (Rev. 22:17); and He feeds us from “the tree of life.”

Pentecost – O God, on this day You once taught the hearts of Your faithful people by sending them the light of Your Holy Spirit. Grant us in our day by the same Spirit to have a right understanding in all things and evermore to rejoice in His holy consolation;

The Holy Spirit Gives Peace - Following the flood, Noah’s descendants failed to spread out and fill the earth as God had spoken. Rather, they exalted themselves; with “one language and the same words” (Gen. 11:1) they spoke proudly and arrogantly. The Lord humbled them by confusing “the language of all the earth,” dividing and dispersing the people.” (Gen. 11:9). That dispersal was reversed on Pentecost Day (the fiftieth day of Easter), when God caused the one Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to be preached in a multitude of languages. “At this sound the multitude came together” (Acts 2:6), for the preaching of Christ is the primary work of the Holy Spirit, whereby He gathers people from all nations into one Church.

The Holy Spirit teaches and brings to our remembrance the words of Jesus, which are the words of the Father who sent Him. These words bestow forgiveness and peace to those who keep and hold on to them in love for Jesus. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:27).

Trinity –  Almighty and everlasting God, You have given us grace to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity by the confession of a true faith and to worship the Unity in the power of the Divine Majesty. Keep us steadfast in this faith and def3nd us from all adversities;

The Triune God Reveals Himself in Christ Jesus -The divine Word of the Father is also the holy Wisdom who “was beside him, like a master workman,” who “was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always” (Prov. 8:30). This Word became flesh and suffered death, in order to bestow life by the preaching of His Gospel “to the children of man” (Prov. 8:4). He honors the Father, and the Father glorifies Him by raising Him from the dead, so that all who keep His Word “will never see death” (John 8:51).

Long ago, “father Abraham rejoiced” in the day of Christ, for “he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56). Though Christ was “crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men,” “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death” (Acts 2:23, 24). As He “received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:33), so it is by and through the Son that God the Father pours out the Holy Spirit upon His Church.

Proper 4 -   O God, by Your almighty Word You set in order all things in heaven and on earth. Put away from us all things hurtful, and give us those things that are beneficial for us;

Faith Receives Good Gifts from God in the flesh - There is only one source of life, revealed in only one saving Gospel. Corrupting that Gospel is serious business. Thus, St. Paul is amazed when the Galatians “are turning to a different gospel” (Gal. 1:6–7). He insists that he is not trying to “please man” but be a true “servant of Christ” as he calls down a curse on any “gospel contrary to the one you received” (Gal. 1:9–10), for that Gospel alone saves. It saves as it reveals God, whose kindness is manifested in Christ and who reckons among His people all who share the miraculous faith of the centurion in God’s Son: “Lord … I am not worthy to have you come under my roof … but say the word and let my servant be healed” (Luke 7:1-10). For indeed, though as Solomon admits “the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built?” (1 Kings 8:27), nevertheless in our Lord Jesus’ flesh and blood, He whose mighty word is faithful to what He promises, comes to us even today in His Eucharist to dwell in us and bring to all who trust His promise the gift of everlasting life.