Proper 18
Christ Jesus
Has Paid the Cost of Discipleship for You
Prayer for
Proper 18: O merciful Lord, You did not spare Your only Son but delivered Him up for
us all. Grant us courage and strength to take up the cross and follow Him;
Prayer for
Pentecost 13: Merciful Father, since You have given Your only Son as the sacrifice for
our sin, also give us grace to receive with thanksgiving the fruits of His
redeeming work and daily follow in His ways;
Prayer for
Christian vocation: Heavenly Father, grant Your mercy and grace to
Your people in their many and various callings. Give them patience, and
strengthen them in their Christian vocation of witness to the world and of
service to their neighbor in Christ's name; through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
Prayer for likeness
to Christ: O God, by the patient suffering of Your only-begotten
Son You have beaten down the pride of the old enemy. Now help us, we humbly
pray, rightly to treasure in our hearts all that our Lord has of His goodness
borne for our sake that following His blessed example we may bear with all
patience all that is adverse to us; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Prayer for
agriculture: Almighty God, You bless the earth to make it fruitful,
bringing forth in abundance whatever is needed for the support of our lives.
Prosper the work of farmers and all those who labor to bring food to our table.
Grant them seasonable weather that they may gather in the fruits of the earth
in abundance and proclaim Your goodness with thanksgiving; through Jesus Christ,
our Lord. Amen.
Prayer for
industry and commerce: Lord Jesus Christ, as once You shared in our
human toil and thus hallowed the work of our hands, bless and prosper those who
maintain the industries and service sectors of this land. Give them a right regard
for their labors, and grant them the just reward for their work that they may
find joy in serving You and in supplying our needs; for You live and reign with
the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
A disciple of Jesus Christ will “carry his own cross” (Luke 14:27)
and follow the Lord through death into life. Discipleship is costly because it
crucifies the old man with “all his own possessions” (Luke 14:33), in
order to raise up the new man in Christ. The disciple disavows “his own
father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even
his own life” (Luke 14:26), in deference to Christ. That way of the cross
is impossible, except that Christ Jesus has already paid the cost. His cross is
set before you as “life and prosperity, and death and adversity” (Deut. 30:15).
Taking up His cross is to “choose life in order that you may live, you and
your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by
holding fast to Him” (Deut. 30:19–20). To live that life in Christ is also
to bear His cross in love, “that your goodness should not be as it were by
compulsion, but of your own free will” (Philemon 14).
Monday, 29 August 2022—Psalm
119:28–32; antiphon, Psalm 119:27—The readings for Sunday reflect the theme
of discipleship. Whose disciples shall we be? That is, in whom shall we place
our trust? Let us be like the psalmist, who boldly pronounces, I have
chosen the way of faithfulness . . . I cling to your testimonies, O Lord.
This he can say with confidence, not because of anything in
him, but because he prays, Make me understand the way of your precepts, and the
LORD answers.
Tuesday, 30
August 2022—Psalm 1—The contrast between the righteous and the
wicked is brought into sharp contrast in this, the first of the psalms. We know
that we are not righteous in ourselves, but, since we are in Christ, His
righteousness is our righteousness. Those who are in Christ are fit the
description of the description of the blessed man, the righteous man, in the
psalm.
Wednesday, 31 August 2022—Deuteronomy
30:15–20—In Moab (Deut 29:1), before they entered the Promised Land, Moses
re-iterated the covenant between the LORD and His people, the Children of
Israel. He reminded them of how the LORD led them out of bondage in Egypt and
cared for them throughout their sojourn in the wilderness. Then, Moses tells
the Israelites that they must follow one of two paths: to continue as God’s
Chosen People or to turn their backs on the One who chose them, made them His
own, preserved them, and promised to take them into a land where He would
continue to shower blessings upon them. It seems that the decision would be
easy to make: Choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the
LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life
and length of days, yet we know that most people, including most of the Jews,
the descendants of the Children of Israel, have chosen instead the way that
leads away from God, and into death, eternal death. Let us ever remain faithful
to the One who provides life through His Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Thursday, 01 September 2022—Philemon
1–21—During the summer months, our epistle readings make their way through
some of the letters (epistles) in the New Testament. This summer, we read
through Galatians, the first half of Colossians, and, last Sunday, we finished
the latter portion of Hebrews.
Sunday’s
reading is from Philemon, but it is the only reading we shall have from that
book, as it is only 25 verses long.
Philemon is a
personal letter from St Paul to a man named Philemon. Paul intercedes for
Philemon’s runaway slave, Onesimus, who had stolen from his master, but
subsequently became a Christian. In what is a model of Christian
reconciliation, Paul pleads on behalf of Onesimus, just as Christ pleads to His
father on our behalf. “We are Christ’s Onesimi,” wrote Luther, “restored by
Christ, who, by giving up his rights, compelled the Father to lay aside his
wrath.”
Friday, 02
September 2022—Luke 14:25–35—We are told that great crowds
accompanied Jesus, but accompanying Him is not enough. A person must be ready
and willing to turn his back on the things of this world: his family, his life,
indeed, all he has. The things of this life must never stand in the way of our
discipleship with Christ, that is, our faith in Him as the sole procurer of our
salvation, and the only thing that matters.
Saturday,
03 September 2022—Sunday’s Hymn of the Day is Oh, That the Lord
Would Guide My Ways(LSB #707). Our readings speak of the necessity of being
Christ’s faithful disciples, shunning the things and ways of this world. This,
we can only do when the Lord guides our ways: He grants us grace to know and do
His will.
Prayers from
Lutheran Service Book © 2006 Concordia Publishing House
Woodcut by Baron
Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld, 1794-1872, a distinguished German artist known
especially for his book, Das Buch der Bücher in Bilden [The Book of Books in
Pictures]) ©WELS
