Readings for Sunday 1 September 2024

Trinity 14 Year B

Collect Almighty God,

whose only Son has opened for us a new and living way into your presence: give us pure hearts and steadfast wills to worship you in spirit and in truth; 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.

Deuteronomy 4.1-2, 6-9

So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you.   2 You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you.  

6. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!’   
7. For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?  
8. And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today? 
9. But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children—

James 1.17-end

17. Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.  
18. In fulfilment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures. 
19. You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger;  
20. for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.   
21. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. 
22. But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.  
23. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror;  
24. for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.  

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Readings for Sunday 1 September 2024

Season

25. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing. 
26. If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.  
27. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him,  

2. they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them.  
3. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders;  
4. and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.)  
5. So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’   
6. He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

 “This people honours me with their lips,    but their hearts are far from me;   7  in vain do they worship me,

   teaching human precepts as doctrines.”  

 8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’  

14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand:   15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’   

21. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder,  
22. adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.   23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’

Post Communion Prayer

Father of light,

in whom is no change or shadow of turning, you give us every good and perfect gift and have brought us to birth by your word of truth: may we be a living sign of that kingdom where your whole creation will be made perfect in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.