These are resources for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost) on Sunday, September 20, 2020. The resources are gathered from a variety of sources and, while assembled mainly for The Anglican Church of St Thomas the Apostle, Kefalas, on the island of Crete in Greece, others may find them useful.

Read

I was planning on having a Blessing of the Animals on this day, transferring readings from the Feast of St Francis, but it looks like restrictions will remain in place in the Chania Prefecture, and we will still be on Zoom. Ah, well. You can find a copy of the service we will be using here:

So, let us use some of the Readings appointed for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (known as the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost outside of the Church of England). These are: Exodus 16:2-15, Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45, Philippians 1:21-30, and Matthew 20:1-16. We will omit the passage from Philippians.

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It looks as thogh the restrictions are continuing in the Prefecture of Chania (which includes Apokoronas and Kefalas). This means that gatherings of more than nine (9) persons are still forbidden. As we have for the past tthree Sundays, we will not be meeting in person.

BUT, you can join us via Zoom!

Click this link, or enter the information at right into your Zoom app: Meeting ID: 850 4483 9927 Password: 010209. My thanks to Frances Bryant-Scott for being the Zoom host last Sunday. It is possible that we will be having electrical storms during the morning, in which case I may try to reconvene later.

If you do not want to join us via Zoom, then you can simply do it all yourself – read the lessons and pray the prayers below, and intersperse it all by clicking on the links to the hymns.

Reflect

I will do my best to post the sermon soon after the service (I know, I haven’t posted last week’s yet . . .).

In the meantime, you could always read this sermon by John Donne (Sermon LXVI, Preached at Old St Paul’s in London, January 29, 1625 (1625/1626) which he begins by stating, “The psalms are the manna of the church.”

Pray

Collect
God, who in generous mercy sent the Holy Spirit
upon your Church in the burning fire of your love:
grant that your people may be fervent
in the fellowship of the gospel
that, always abiding in you,
they may be found steadfast in faith and active in service;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

(or)

Lord God,
defend your Church from all false teaching
and give to your people knowledge of your truth,
that we may enjoy eternal life
in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Intercessions
That this day may be holy, good and joyful:
All  we pray to you, O Lord.

That we may offer to you our worship and our work:
All  we pray to you, O Lord.

That we may strive for the well-being of all creation:
All  we pray to you, O Lord.

That in the pleasures and pains of life,
we may know the love of Christ and be thankful:
All  we pray to you, O Lord.

That we may be bound together by your Holy Spirit,
in communion with Thomas our patron and all the disciples,
with Patrick and Brigid of Ireland,
Bede and Hilda of England,
David and Adwen of Wales,
Ninian and Margaret of Scotland,
and with Mary Magdalene, and Mary the Mother of God, and all your saints,
entrusting one another and all our life to Christ:
All  we pray to you, O Lord.

Let us commend ourselves, and all for whom we pray,
to the mercy and protection of God.

I bed your prayers for the Church:

• for Robert Innes & David Hamid, our bishops;
• for Justin Welby our archbishop, Stephen Cottrell the Archbishop of York, and the General Synod of the Church of England;
• for the churches and peoples of Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Peru (World Council of Churches Ecumenical Prayer Cycle);
• for the Province of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and the leadership of The Most Revd Justin Badi Arama, Bishop of Juba and Archbishop of the Province of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan (Anglican Cycle of Prayer); and
• (from the Prayer Diary of the Diocese in Europe) give thanks for:
  • the Russian Orthodox Church,
  • for Malcolm Rogers as The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Apokrisiarios to the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russ.
  • and remember the Persecuted Church worldwide and the role of Open Doors in providing information about this.

I bid your prayers for the leaders of the nations; especially

• Katerini Sakellaropoulou, President of Greece, and
  • Kyriakos Mitsotakis the Prime Minister of Greece;
• Elizabeth, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and her other realms, and also in her role as Governor of the Church of England;
  • and Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of her British government;
• In the European Union,
  • Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission;
  • Charles Michel, President of the European Council; and
  • Josep Borrell, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy;
• the peoples of Belarus as they demonstrate for democracy;
• for the people across the world marching for fair treatment from security forces and police;
• for the peoples of the United States as they enter the last couple of months before their elections;
• for advocates of Indigenous rights and the adoption and implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;
• prisoners and captives, especially the over one million Uigers being held in detention in China;
• and the people of Lebanon, as they recover from the massive explosion in Beirut and the collapse of the government in that country;
• for a lessening of tensions between Turkey and Greece; and
• for peace in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, and between Palestinians and Israelis.

I bid your prayers for the sick and suffering and all who minister to their needs;

• remembering the over 7.4 million active cases of the novel coronavirus, and mourning with the families of the over 950,000 who have died in the pandemic;
• and also remembering those ill with other diseases, and those whose operations have been postponed;
• the over 79.5 million refugees and nearly 4 million stateless person, remembering especially the crucial situation of Greece.

Sing

This great hymn picks up on a few themes in the reading from Exodus.

This hymn was written by Suzanne Toolan, a Roman Catholic Sister of Mercy, for an event in the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco in 1964. This version has a Spanish verse in the middle.