Cycle A Lectionary 30 Proper 25

10/26/2014 Confession

Sunday Title: Authority Sunday

Sermon Title: “Why are we good?”

Previously:

Sunday Title: Law Sunday

Sermon Title: “Too Many Laws”

Scripture Cuttings:

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

Psalm 1 Happy are those… but their delight is in the law of the Lord,  and on his law they meditate day and night.

1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts.

Matthew 22:34-46 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Confession:

All may make the sign of the cross in remembrance of baptism

as the presiding minister begins:

P:  In the Name of the Father, and the Son, + and the Holy Spirit.

C: Amen

P  Our Lord God is holy and just and good,

and our Lord God requires us to be holy and just and good. (pause)

  O Lord...

C: your list of laws is too great,

we can not remember them all:

  no vengeance, no grudge,

    no hate, no partiality in justice, no slander....

Books and books of your law,

  not even counting all our special cases and exceptions.

Yet in our freedom we encroach upon your will.

  It is our nature to do so.

Forgive us Lord for the sins we know in our hearts.

Save us Lord from the sins we hide.

   (pause for reflection and self-examination)

P:  God holds our relationship with God above even God’s own stiff requirements of us. It is in this love that God gave Jesus Christ as a sacrifice to pay the price of our sinfulness. Our sins are forgiven. Calling us in love to repentance. We have even been given the power of the Holy Spirit that we might seek to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind, and even our neighbor as our self. In the name of Father, and the Son, + and the Holy Spirit.

C: Amen. -wjw

P:  The peace of the Lord be with you always!

C: And also with you!