Sixth Sunday of Easter                                          May 17, 2020

Prayer of the Day
O God, all good things can come from you alone; generously consider then our humble prayers. Inspire us to consider what is true, and direct us to accomplish what is right; through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. He lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

First Reading: Acts 17:16-31
¹⁶Now while Paul was waiting for {Silas and Timothy} at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. ¹⁷So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. ¹⁸Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities” — because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. ¹⁹And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? ²⁰For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” ²¹Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. ²²So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. ²³For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. ²⁴The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, ²⁵nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. ²⁶And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, ²⁷that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, ²⁸for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ ²⁹Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. ³⁰The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, ³¹because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Psalm 66:7-18*
⁷Bless our | God, you peoples;*
     make the voice of his praise | to be heard;
⁸Who holds our | souls in life,*
     and will not allow our | feet to slip.
⁹For you, O | God, have proved us;*
     you have tried us just as sil- | ver is tried.
¹⁰You brought us in- | to the snare;*
     you laid heavy burdens up- | on our backs.
¹¹You let enemies ride over our heads; we went through | fire and water;*
      but you brought us out into a place | of refreshment.
¹²I will enter your house with burnt offerings and will pay | you my vows,*
      which I promised with my lips and spoke with my mouth when I | was in trouble.
¹³I will offer you sacrifices of fat beasts with the | smoke of rams;*
     I will give you ox- | en and goats.
¹⁴Come and listen, all you | who fear God,*
     and I will tell you what he has | done for me.
¹⁵I called out to him | with my mouth,*
     and his praise was | on my tongue.
¹⁶If I had found evil | in my heart,*
     the Lord would | not have heard me;
¹⁷But in truth | God has heard me;*
     he has attended to the voice | of my prayer.
¹⁸Blessed be God, who has not reject- | ed my prayer,*
     nor withheld his | love from me.

Second Reading: 1 Peter 3:13-22
¹³Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? ¹⁴But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, ¹⁵but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, ¹⁶having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. ¹⁷For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. ¹⁸For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, ¹⁹in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, ²⁰because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. ²¹Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ²²who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

Gospel: John 14:15-21
¹⁵{Jesus said,} “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, ¹⁷even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. ¹⁸I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ¹⁹Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. ²⁰In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

Lessons for Next Week:
Acts 1:12-26; Psalm 68:1-10; 1 Peter 4:12-19, 5:6-11; John 17:1-11
* — Some psalms within the Book of Common Prayer psalter, which the Sola lectionary uses, are numbered differently than the psalms in the psalter of the English Standard Version Bible, on which the lectionary calendar is based. To account for this difference, today’s psalm reading begins at verse 7 (the ESV reading will begin at verse 8) and ends at verse 18 (the ESV reading will end at verse 20.)