Reading
John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. (Revelation 1: 4-8) Reflection If I could have understood Revelation as a child (and I still don’t quite as an adult), I would have known what Amen meant. It’s right there in our text today. So it is to be. Amen. I remember as a child once asking, “What does ‘Amen’ mean?” Amen was said at the end of our family table grace, my bedtime prayer, the Lord’s Prayer in Sunday School and at the end of some hymns in worship. But what does it mean? I was told it means So be it or May it be so or Let it be which sounded a lot like a Beatles song my older brothers listened to so that was cool. But what I really realized was that prayer was me talking to God, God listening to me and it all ending with hope. God is great; God is good…From his hands we shall be fed…So be it. Now I lay me down to sleep…Angels guard me through the night and wake me in the morning light…May it be so. Our Father…forgive us our sins as we forgive…Let it be. I began to understand prayer as getting to the hopeful point of So it is to be. Then one day I asked the organist (I was a very inquisitive child) why he played the Amen at the end of some hymns but not others even if it was there? The organist explained if there was an Amen at the end of a hymn, he only played it if it was the last hymn of the service because that was when our worship was over and it was time for Amen. All that had been spoken, heard, prayed and sung…Let it be. Amen --Ruth Gates Prayer Dear God, all that we say and you hear and all that you say and we hear, with hope we respond, “So it is to be.” Amen Our devotions are based on this Sunday’s Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). The RCL is a three-year cycle of readings telling the story of our Christian faith and corresponding to the season church calendar. On any given Sunday, we are hearing and praying and examining the same Scripture with millions of Christians around the world. In our current Year C, the Old Testament readings progress through the Prophets and have the theme of the day that it is connected to the Gospel reading. The Psalm, a song the congregation sings in response to the Old Testament reading, most often corresponds to the theme of the Hebrew Lessons and/or that of the Gospel Lesson. The lesson from the Epistles or from Acts typifies the church’s focus on the meaning of Christ for today. The Gospel lesson is connected to the season of the Church Year. This year, our gospel readings are from Luke, who writes that Jesus is the universal Savior and the perfect Son of Man. The current season of Easter brings the liturgical and biblical past into the present.
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