Sue Lepp | The Irreverent Reverend

Trinity 6: The Lord’s Prayer

July 27th, 2025

Colossians 2:6–15, 16–19
Luke 11:1-13

School is finally out for summer! Yeah for the teachers, parents and children! However, the church is in a teaching season as we read and study the (hopefully) familiar gospel stories about Jesus. We are at summer school!

The lectionary spent the last three weeks in Luke 10. It started with Jesus sending out the 70 ahead of him to find labourers for the harvest. Next, Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan which challenges us on what it is to give and receive mercy and consider who our neighbour is. Luke 10 ends with Martha and Mary; that great lesson in balancing work and activity with the need to sit and listen at Jesus’ feet. Each of these encounters give us examples of the activity and instructions needed to spread the kingdom and show God’s love.

The start of Luke 11 takes us deeper into spending time with God. It starts with Jesus at prayer. This is the first and best way to get to know God; spending time with Him. There is obviously a quality about Jesus’ prayers and praying that provoked curiosity in the disciples. They would have seen and heard Jesus pray many times before. Finally someone is brave enough to ask Jesus to teach them how to pray.

Jesus’ gracious response is to teach them a prayer which we now recognise as the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus teaches the disciples to talk to God and to bring the whole mess and muddle of our lives, the mundane, the exciting, the big and small, to God.

That is what prayer is; talking to God. Talking. Not begging, pleading, negotiating, bargaining, hiding, pretending all is well when it is not. We have been shown work and activity, sitting and listening, and now we have a guide for talking to God.

Who taught or told you to pray? I remember as little girls, my sister and I being taught to pray by our Nana and our parents. The first prayer that we learned was the classic 18th century children’s prayer – ‘Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep’.

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take
If in the morning light I wake
Lay down my feet
That I may take the path of love
for thy dear sake
God Bless Mommy, Daddy, Susie, Jenny, etc.
And it always ended with ‘God bless all the little children in the world. Amen.’

I realise this is a combination of the many versions (thanks to Google) but this is the one that I know. For many of us, the Lord’s Prayer might be our default prayer. Much like ‘Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep’, the wording can be different and we can use it at different times.

My version of the Lord’s Prayer is said with ‘thy’ and ‘thine’ and ‘trespasses’ not sins. Again, family influence comes into play: my Mom’s upbringing on the old Anglican Book of Common Prayer and my Dad’s love of the King James’ Bible. The language of the Lord’s Prayer is simple and intimate as it affirms the fatherhood of God. We are cared for as his children; we are reminded that God is holy and we must reflect this in our words and worship. It ends with addressing our physical, spiritual and safety needs.

The simplicity of the wording makes it easy to slide in our own needs and requests as there is a space for every plea, cry and desire; without need of particularly eloquent language. It is talking to God and bringing our concerns, which I may remind you, He already fully knows about. You are not fooling Him by withholding! I often think that God uses our prayers to bring needs and issues to our attention.

Luke 11 also reminds us of the need for persistence in prayer. I have always found the ‘Parable of the Friend at Night’ in verses 5-8 rather annoying. Just get up and give him a loaf of bread.

Jesus uses this story of the irritating friend to get the disciples to see prayer as something basic, day-to-day. Prayer does not need to be carefully sanitised or scripted. Nor do we have to worry about bringing to God only what we think he will accept. Back to: God already knows.

Prayer can come with a great sense of frustration. Has this been true in your prayer life and in the situations that have required persistence? There is always ‘work in the wait’ and a sweetness to both the prayers that have been answered through persistence and those that still await an answer. As uncomfortable as it may be we are to persist.

Jesus is encouraging the disciples to bombard God with requests, tell him everything, talk constantly to him, involve him in every part of life. We are not to limit God and prayer to Sunday mornings in a particular pew with particular words. The more we communicate with God, the more we learn about him and the more we learn about ourselves in relation to God.

In verse 9, ‘so I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.’
These verses are not about the prayers we pray for the stuff, the answers, the problems that we want God to respond to. Many people feel misled when they read these verses and then ask God to heal their loved one dying of _____ (and nothing short of that), or for a million dollars or a million other things.

When these prayers are not answered in the way that is expected, it is all God’s fault. They then give up on God or turn away from faith as they have created a vision of God as a genie in the sky waiting to grant wishes. Their view of God is fundamentally flawed.

The asking, seeking, knocking that Jesus is talking about is in relation to pursuing God, talking to God, learning more about God and who we are in relation to Him. It is about seeking God’s will and not solely our convenience.
Ask for God to come into your life and He will be given to you.
Search for God and you will find Him.
Knock on the door of heaven and it will be opened for you.

Paul, in Colossians, is imploring that young community to live their lives in Christ. Stay rooted and grounded to be built up and get established. We all have needs, wants, struggles and desires, both secretly and publicly, in all areas of our lives that we (I hope) would want God to be our ever present help in trouble.
Paul goes on to warn them of all the empty deceit happening around them. That hasn’t changed! There is so much deceit and empty philosophy in the world today and it is so attractive. Ultimately it will fail. Jesus is the only one who will ever fill us. We can be alive together with him.

Finally, Luke reminds us that our Father in heaven will give us good gifts, more than we can ask or imagine. It is all for the asking.

How is your prayer life at the moment? Do you?
How is it going? Need a change or boost?
If not – why not?

Do you want to do anything about it?
Maybe you need to want to want to do something about it!

Talk to God. It is not eloquent or fancy, not just an activity for Sunday.

I am going to leave some space for a few minutes to do just that. You are not bound to your seats – get up. For some people sitting in a pew is not conducive to prayers. Kneel if you’ve got the knees for it.

Trinity 4: Neighbourhood Mercy

Vincent Van Gogh

13/7/25
Trinity 4

Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37 – Good Samaritan

The Gospel reading this morning should be rather well known to you! When the familiar is clung on to, the significance can get lost. Many of us might hold a simplistic view of this story. There is more to the Good Samaritan than simply being a good person who helps people.

The idea for the next few minutes is to look at points in the story that often go unnoticed.

Over three weeks we have Luke 10 as the set Gospel. Last week Jesus sent out the 70 to find more labourers for the harvest. They were to cure the sick and proclaim the coming of the kingdom. The disciples returned to Jesus with joy as they told him about all the amazing things they had seen and done. Jesus is overjoyed by their news and rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and prays to God the Father. Jesus blesses them for what they saw and did.

What are the disciples seeing and hearing? The answer is Jesus; they are seeing His works and hearing His words. The disciples had amazing experiences and saw the amazing power they were sent out with at work.

How is our seeing and hearing this morning? Are we missing out because we are blind and deaf to the works and words of Jesus? It happens sometimes; even to the best, most holy of us!

Many of the problems in our world and in our own lives (to some extent) stem from blindness and deafness to those around us. How can we love our neighbours as ourselves if we are blind and deaf? Many people are lonely, have no one to visit them. Some people can go for days or weeks without seeing or speaking to another person. Are we watching and listening out for those people? Are we one of those people? The priest and Levite demonstrated this kind of blindness as they passed by the beaten man. They saw but did not act; moved to the other side of the road.

I say this as much to myself as I say to you: how is our seeing and hearing? Do we need a check-up? Is there someone who this week we could practice on?

What is the Question?!

Immediately following Jesus’ comments the young lawyer stood up to test Him. What is the young lawyer really asking? His question is genuine, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus answers the question with a question, “what is written in the law?” The lawyer (no fool himself) gives Jesus a concise, A+ answer: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

Jesus provides an A++ answer: “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” The young lawyer wants more. Maybe the lawyer really means, “Who is not my neighbour?” As in: how much love are we talking here, Jesus? Can you be specific? Where should I draw the line? Outside my front door? At the edges of my neighbourhood? Along the religious and cultural boundaries I was raised with to keep me pure and holy? I mean, there are lines, aren’t there? There must be lines. We can’t be neighbours with everyone!”

We all have lines but are they in the right place?

The Good Samaritan was not blind or deaf that day on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. He was likely inconvenienced and out-of-pocket by helping the beaten man. He did it anyway.

The Good Samaritan would have not have been the good guy in the original telling of this story. If we put it in a modern context: An Israeli or Russian soldier is robbed, and a Ukrainian or Palestinian villager saves their life. A racist white cop is robbed, and an African-American teenager saves his life. A transgender woman is robbed, and an anti-LGBTQ activist saves her life. An outspoken atheist is robbed, and a Bible-thumping fundamentalist saves his life.

I am not for a moment trivialising the real and consequential differences that divide us politically, religiously, racially, or ideologically. I dare not do that — not when those differences are costing people their lives this very day.

The enmity between the Jews and the Samaritans in Jesus’s day was not theoretical; it was embodied and real. The differences between them were not easily negotiated; each was fully convinced that the other was wrong. Jesus deeming the Samaritan ‘good’ was radical and risky; it would have stunned his Jewish listeners.

The Beaten Man

The man at the centre of the story does not have a voice. Everything is done to him. His name and what his business was on that particular day is unknown. If he was unconscious he couldn’t have spoken. What might he have thought or felt about his situation?

We can assume that he was Jewish. That is how the people listening to Jesus tell this story. Yes, it is a story – Jesus made it up!

Given the great hatred between Samaritans and Jews, the beaten man may not have wanted to be ‘touched’ by an enemy. Not that he was not in any state to accept or decline help.

The Samaritan man would have had to change all his plans for that day and night as we are told that he spent the night with him. The Samaritan then ensured continued care and left him safely at the inn. His help cost him both time and money; two important resources. The man could not have done anything for himself; he was completely dependent on the Samaritan at that moment.

The final question

Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?
The young lawyer answers, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’

Mercy. Helping a neighbour, regardless of who they are or where they are from, shows mercy. God desires mercy and not sacrifice. How is our vision and hearing today? Are we looking for opportunities to show mercy? The obvious and the obscure.

Often those with no voice, like the beaten man, remind us of our own frailty and our burdensomeness. Remind us of our own need for mercy.

The story of the Good Samaritan is ultimately about mercy. Anyone who needs help, needs mercy is our neighbour. Let us not forget the times when we need mercy shown to us.

Trinity Sunday: Living in Relationship

Psalm 8

Romans 5:1-5

John 16:12-15

Today we are remembering Trinity Sunday. This is, of course, the first Sunday after Pentecost and we are meant to celebrate the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit. The three-person Godhead. Celebrating foundational Christian doctrine might not sound all that exciting, but it is!

The church year now opens up and rolls along until Advent as the big festivals are now complete. It is good, I think, to remind ourselves about the essence of our Christian faith after the events and activities of Lent, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost.

It has been good to remind myself of this after the events of this week at Gatwick with the crash of Air India 171. Where does our hope and help come from?

Psalm 8 is set for today which we just sung (St Nicholas); read at Emmanuel.

O Lord, our governor,
how glorious is your name in all the world!

Your majesty above the heavens is praised;

2 Out of the mouths of babes at the breast.

you have founded a stronghold against your foes, That you might still the enemy and the avenger.

3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have ordained,

4 what is man, that you should be mindful of him; The son of man, that you should seek him out?

5 You have made him little lower than the angels, and crown him with glory and honour.

6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet,

7 all sheep and oxen, even the wild beasts of the field,

8 the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, And whatsoever moves in the paths of the sea.

9 O Lord, our governor,
how glorious is your name in all the world!

Sadly for many people, the name of God is not exalted. Quite the opposite. Psalm 8 reminds us to consider the heavens, lift our eyes from our own small lives and issues, joys and sorrows. Consider the work of the moon and the stars, the work of God’s fingers. It is not a coincidence that Psalm 8 is the first hymn of praise in the Psalter (the book of Psalms).

Even in the deepest trauma and tragedy, we can praise God. When we are confused and lack understanding – praise God. Consider his works. To understand the Trinity, praise is a right place to start.

The Church has marked Trinity Sunday since the mid 800’s. It was instituted to speak against the heresies of the early church as they worked out how to understand the concept of one God in three elements. Three does in fact equal one!

Reference to the Trinity is woven through our services, every time I or we say ‘in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; the entire Christian story is retold in the Eucharist prayer before Communion, we repeat it each week in the Creeds.

Central to the Christian faith that God is Father, Son and Spirit; all in one. It is difficult to understand and at some point needs to be believed as part of the mystery of God. But don’t simply jump to that conclusion as tempting as it is!

In our Gospel reading this week, Jesus tells his disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. Read and understand this sentence with the utmost kindness and patience from Jesus. He knows what we do and do not understand. The Spirit was sent to guide us slowly, in forbearance to come to understand the deeper truth of all that Jesus said.

This is a safe place to start. God never burdens us with more than we can understand nor does He push us into belief or faith. The Spirit was sent to guide us as long as we are wanting to be led in seeking the truth.

The late Pope Francis wrote, “The Holy Spirit will never tell you that on your journey everything is going just fine. He will never tell you this, because it isn’t true. No, he corrects you; he makes you weep for your sins; he pushes you to change, to fight against your lies and deceptions, even when that calls for hard work, interior struggle and sacrifice… The Holy Spirit, correcting you along the way, never leaves you lying on the ground: He takes you by the hand, comforts you and constantly encourages you.”

In the work of the Trinity, we see that God is fluid, dynamic, never sitting still. Many people, young and old, believe and live like God is some distant and dusty old Man sitting on a cloud or living in a box or in a church building. There is something comforting in the idea that God is sitting still, containable but yet desperately boring.

God is on the move, always surprising and wanting us to join in with what he is doing. Unity is at the heart of the Trinity, but unity does not mean rigidity. Many Christians get it so wrong with holding on to ideas that God is mean or distant or it is just about the rules or even worse – irrelevant to life in this time and season.

God is diverse and thankfully not limited to our imaginations. We are all created in the image of God yet express ourselves differently. It follows then that God’s nature is diverse too. Jesus is the beloved Son, born of Mary and sent to us in human form. He consistently points to the Father who sent him to be with us. We see that the Holy Spirit was sent to journey with us, move with us every day and in every way.

Finally, we see that God is communal. We were made for relationships, for community. We were not hatched from eggs, like separate entities. We were born into families (for better or for worse), hopefully we have made friends along the way, got married or not, had children or not and have found community along the way and built relationships.

For those of you who are or have been married, imagine for a moment that after your marriage service, you went off on your separate ways.

You would still be married but you would never know the fullness of your marriage relationship while apart. If you want a full relationship with your spouse, then you need to be together, live in community with each other. The same goes for God, if you want a full relationship then you need to live together with him, He needs to be invited in. God also comes with roommates, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It is a full and glorious house.

St Paul wrote his letter to the Romans before he ever visited Rome. In this letter, Paul laid out the basic elements of Christian teaching. Paul had a dramatic encounter with Jesus after the resurrection and was blinded for a time. Through his blindness he came to see the Risen Jesus and was forever changed. Paul wants the Christians in Rome to know and believe they have everything they need in the grace and love of God through the Holy Spirit.

Endure, Paul says, go the distance, it is worth it. Often endurance means we need to forgo the right of convenience, the right to give up when it gets too much. At the centre of this endurance is love. God is love. At the heart of the Trinity is love; deep, unflinching, unfaltering, life-long and life-giving love between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that is extended to us.

Do not worry about what you cannot bear right now. Work at understanding that you are simply loved by God as you are. The Trinity tells us that there is more love and life to come, we are part of a bigger story. We are children of the Trinity, always invited and deeply loved. The power of the Trinity will change our lives, lead and guide us to become the people we were created to be, guide us to unity and community. May our lives reflect the beauty and truth of the Trinity.

Pentecost! Come Holy Spirit!

6/8/25
Pentecost

Acts 2:1-21
John 14:8-17, 25-27

Creator God, as your spirit moved over the face of the waters bringing light and life to your creation, pour out your Spirit on us today that we may walk as children of light and by your grace reveal your presence. Amen.

Today is a day of celebration in the Church! What an exciting day! After Jesus’ resurrection at Easter, he told the disciples to tell other people about what they had seen. Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to be with them once he left. At this point, the disciples are confused, sad, nothing seems to be happening, I bet they had lots of questions – when? How? What?

Then, in the quietness, they heard a new sound, like a strong wind, God’s presence was with them; like nothing they had ever experienced before. The Holy Spirit is the part of God and Jesus that is active in the world today. The Spirit was sent to help us and guide us along in our lives.

At Pentecost we are celebrating four things that all begin with P.

Party
We know that something astonishing is happening in Acts 2; barriers of culture and language are being broken down as the Spirit falls on those gathered that day. Luke, in his writing, is struggling to find the language to describe what is going on; things ‘seem like’ and ‘sound like’ which indicates he has never seen anything like what he is seeing before.

After all the trauma of Jesus’ death, the working out and waiting for what was to come next, the arrival of the Holy Spirit was a wave of relief. The mood of the people made others think they were drunk. I imagine it in that happy, celebratory drunk kind of way. They were hearing, Luke tells us, God’s deeds of power in their own languages.

This is what we are celebrating today – God’s power that brought about the birthday of the church. From this point, the people who gathered that day went out to tell the Good News of Jesus. If those who were there on that first Pentecost had just gone home after – none of us would be here today.

Punctuality
The timing of Pentecost is important. God was using a long-standing appointment on the kingdom calendar of the Jewish people. This is why Jerusalem was so crowded with Jewish people from across the known world. The Feast of Pentecost was meant to pour out the ‘old’ spirit in a ‘new and powerful way’.

For centuries, before the first Pentecost, the Jews had been celebrating the Feast of Weeks which happened 50 days after their Passover. The number 50 points to fullness, ripeness, to a time that is ready for something to happen.

At the Feast of Weeks, the Jews had to do three things. Firstly, remember the promises God had made and kept in the past and be thankful. Sometimes memories can be short during tough times.

Secondly, they had to be generous. The Jews were not allowed to come to the feast without a gift to say thank you to God. Thirdly, they were to celebrate the harvest, the first fruits. The people were to bring the first of the harvest as an offering to God. The best of the harvest and present it joyfully to the Lord. No rotten apples or mouldy wheat with a bad attitude would do.

Promises
The third thing to celebrate today is promises.

Who here is good at keeping promises? Ever break one? Or has someone made a promise to you and then broken it? Big or small, when a promise is broken, it breaks trust and can cause much grief. When we break promises we have to live with guilt or embarrassment and work to rebuild trust.

We sometimes get it right and sometimes not so much.

Do we believe in the promises of God? Do we take them seriously? It might take a long time for those promises to come through; often longer than we want. God’s promises might look different to what we think the promise should be. And God is faithful; far more faithful than we ever can be. Jesus promised that he would never leave us alone. That the Advocate, the Holy Spirit would come.

The other promise we see in Pentecost is found in Acts 2:21, ‘then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ This is the biggest and best promise of all. Salvation. This is what Jesus offers, gave his life for – that we could be saved for eternity with God.

People
Pentecost is about people experiencing God in new ways. You all look pretty good to me, nice, respectable people. I can see you from the outside and as I get to know you more and better, I get glimpses of the inside. I can hope and pray that the person you are on the inside matches the outside presentation.
Jesus came to save us, to heal us and change us from the inside out. We are not meant to be the same once we have met with Jesus. The Holy Spirit leads and guides us, it brings joy and peace beyond what we can imagine even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Abundant life is what Jesus came to bring. Not just a little but or enough but big and abundant.

In the Gospel reading, the disciples and Jesus are together for the last time at the Last Supper. They are still unsure of what is to come. Philip has an easy suggestion for Jesus, ‘just show us the Father!’ Come on already! It seems an easy solution; who does not want an easy answer to a difficult question?

Jesus rarely offers an easy solution. He says to his disciples, ‘if you love me, you will keep my commandments.’ Our love for God and the people around us should be a reflection of the love we have for God. We do not have to love under our own steam. It is the Holy Spirit that helps us – keeps our troubles hearts at rest and brings peace.

On this Feast of Pentecost we celebrate the party, the punctuality, the promises and the people. We thank God for all that he has done in the past and will do for us in the future; do not forget that! Especially when life is hard. Remember that He first loved us; our love is a response to that. We show our thanks for what He has done by being generous to others and to the church.

We take a moment to give thanks and ask for the Spirit to fill us again.

Easter 6: Loved to Action & Obedience

“St Paul Meeting Lydia of Thyatira” by Edward Irvine Halliday. (1902-84)

Acts 16:9-15

John 5:1-9

Easter 6

25/5/25

If you can remember back to last week, I ended my sermon with, ‘The old commandment is to love one another. The new commandment is to love one another as Jesus has loved you. It is by this that everyone will know that we are disciples. It is stunning to think that if the first disciples had not bothered to do this, then the church likely would have shrivelled and died on the vine 2000 years ago. This love came to make all things new.

The task remains the same – we are to love as we have been loved. Go into the world, into work or families and to neighbours and show them God’s love.’

In this week’s readings we see how love is shown by Paul and his companions to Lydia in the city of Philippi and by Jesus to the man laying at the Pool of Bethesda. We also see how these people respond to God’s love. Lydia and her family were baptised and the man picked up his mat and began to walk. This is the focus for today; how we respond to God’s love.

Lydia, the merchant from Thyratira, was on a business trip 300 miles from home. It is not clear if she sold purple dye or purple cloth or what exactly she did. Whatever it was, she was marketing a luxury product to the wealthy elite. Lydia was clearly a woman of means, agency and authority. There are no men in this story — no husband, father, son, or brother, for example. Maybe she was divorced or widowed. After her own conversion and baptism, Lydia commandeered her entire household to be baptised, meaning she employed servants. Perhaps her “household” also included extended family members.

Lydia had all the trappings of success. Yet she was found outside the city gate next to the river for a prayer meeting with a group of other women. She listened to what Paul was saying and the Lord opened her heart. The Lord only opens hearts that are ready to receive.

She then opened her home, a sign of wealth, as it was big enough to accommodate Paul and his companions (at least three are named). Immediately after Lydia’s conversion, Paul mentions other prominent women who came to believe. Lydia is honoured by being the first European convert to Christianity and her house was the first church in Europe.

What looks like a chance encounter on the river bank was a divine appointment between a woman with an open and seeking heart meeting a man whose life had been turned upside down by the resurrected Jesus.

In contrast to Lydia’s story, we have the man at the Pool. He is unnamed and of no significance to anyone. No family, no friends and this has taken a psychological and social toll as well as physical.

This is reflected in his non-answer to Jesus’ question; do you want to get well? I think the more pointed question that Jesus is asking is: do you really want to get well. Or are you happy with the way things are; sitting pool-side with the feeble excuse that someone always gets in before you.

We know that to be in any way physically or mentally flawed in 1st century Jerusalem was a bad thing. In the absence of family to care for you would be destitute and assigned to a life of poverty. Notice that Jesus does not wait for an improved answer from the man. He tells him to ‘stand up, take your mat and walk.’ He does and begins to walk.

There is no further mention of him in the Gospel which leaves us hanging. What happened to him? Where did he walk to? Was there anyone waiting for him anywhere?

Life off the mat was likely going to be much harder for him. Literally no more lying around and waiting for others to help him out. He was going to have to learn to live in a whole new way.

Both of these stories demonstrate that no one is beyond the reach of God’s love and healing. There is no one He will not go to and/but there needs to be a response. Lydia’s heart was open and she used her gifts and talents of hospitality to help Paul. The man was obedient to Jesus’ instruction to get up and off the mat. Both their lives were changed in their encounters.

How do we respond to God’s love? We are to have faith, belief that Jesus is the Risen Christ, the Son of God and that salvation comes through Him alone. We are also called to a life of service, of action and obedience that reflects that love. It might be a public life like Lydia with influence, wealth and authority; or maybe in obscurity like the man formerly of the Pool of Bethesda.

Either way, we are found and loved to action and obedience.

Eternal God, who gives good gifts to all people, and who grants the spirit of generosity: Give us, we pray you, hearts always open to hear your word, that, following the example of your servant Lydia, we may show hospitality to those who are in any need or trouble; through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.