When our Hearts Change, our Words and Actions Follow.

Welcome to your online Sunday worship from St. George’s, Georgetown for Sunday, August 29, 2021.

We are back to our online pattern of worship this week. Preparation are underway to add in-person worship to our services starting Sunday, Sept. 12 at 10am. 

Please know that St. George’s plans to continue to offer online worship so that folks continue to have the safest option to worship during this ongoing pandemic. 

Family Ministry

Our family ministry resources this week continues its focus on the reading from the Letter of James, chapter 1, verses 17 to 27, which upholds the important relationship between the Good Works we do and the Faith that we have.

Please sign up for our weekly emails to get those links to these great resources to use together with your family.  

Opening Music

For our hymn singers, I am recommending we sing “All things bright and beautiful” for beginning our Sunday worship.

The Gospel Reading (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, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; 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.) 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?”

He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,

‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their hearts are far from me;

in vain do they worship me,

teaching human precepts as doctrines.’

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

For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”1

Online Worship

Here is your Sunday prayers and message:

Prayers of the People

We pray for all medical staff, all essential frontline workers and their families, for those living and working at Long Term Care and seniors residences, and for those that are helping to distribute the vaccine: that God will be their strength and support.  Let us pray to the Lord. Lord, have mercy.

We pray for all those unfairly discriminated against in our society, praying especially for justice and reconciliation for our continent’s indigenous people.  Let us pray to the Lord. Lord, have mercy.

We pray for all who are facing trials and difficulties and for those who are sick. Show them your kindness, mercy, and healing.  Let us pray to the Lord. Lord, have mercy.

(To find the list of those we are praying for in our parish please sign up for our Parish email. To add a name to our prayers please contact me.)

Closing Music

In keeping with the theme of keeping our hearts in line with God’s will, I suggest “Blest Are the Pure in Heart” for a traditional closing hymn. 

For our contemporary song this week, I am suggesting this smooth swinging version of “Purify My Heart (Refiner’s Fire).”  

As always, I wish you all a blessed and safe Sunday and week.

Thank you for your continued support of the ministry and mission of St. George’s.

Be Well and God Bless.

Peace,

The Rev’d Canon Rob Park

  1. Scripture quotation is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.