Book of Common Prayer

137 Weeping, we sat beside the rivers of Babylon thinking of Jerusalem. ² We have put away our lyres, hanging them upon the branches of the willow trees, ^3-4 for how can we sing? Yet our captors, our tormentors, demand that we sing for them the happy songs of Zion! ^5-6 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill upon the harp. If I fail to love her more than my highest joy, let me never sing again.

⁷ O Jehovah, do not forget what these Edomites did on that day when the armies of Babylon captured Jerusalem. “Raze her to the ground!” they yelled. ⁸ O Babylon, evil beast, you shall be destroyed. Blessed is the man who destroys you as you have destroyed us. ⁹ Blessed is the man who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks!^[a]

144 Bless the Lord who is my immovable Rock. He gives me strength and skill in battle. ² He is always kind and loving to me; he is my fortress, my tower of strength and safety, my deliverer. He stands before me as a shield. He subdues my people under me.

³ O Lord, what is man that you even notice him? Why bother at all with the human race?^{[a] 4} For man is but a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.

⁵ Bend down the heavens, Lord, and come. The mountains smoke beneath your touch.

⁶ Let loose your lightning bolts, your arrows, Lord, upon your enemies, and scatter them.

⁷ Reach down from heaven and rescue me; deliver me from deep waters, from the power of my enemies. ⁸ Their mouths are filled with lies; they swear to the truth of what is false.

⁹ I will sing you a new song, O God, with a ten-stringed harp. ¹⁰ For you grant victory to kings! You are the one who will rescue your servant David from the fatal sword. ¹¹ Save me! Deliver me from these enemies, these liars, these treacherous men.

^12-15 Here is my description of^[b] a truly happy land where Jehovah is God:

104 ^1-2 I bless the Lord: O Lord my God, how great you are! You are robed with honor and with majesty and light! You stretched out the starry curtain of the heavens, ³ and hollowed out the surface of the earth to form the seas. The clouds are his chariots. He rides upon the wings of the wind. ⁴ The angels^[a] are his messengers—his servants of fire!

⁵ You bound the world together so that it would never fall apart. ⁶ You clothed the earth with floods of waters covering up the mountains. ^7-8 You spoke, and at the sound of your shout the water collected into its vast ocean beds, and mountains rose and valleys sank to the levels you decreed. ⁹ And then you set a boundary for the seas so that they would never again cover the earth.

¹⁰ He placed springs in the valleys and streams that gush from the mountains. ¹¹ They give water for all the animals to drink. There the wild donkeys quench their thirst, ¹² and the birds nest beside the streams and sing among the branches of the trees. ¹³ He sends rain upon the mountains and fills the earth with fruit. ¹⁴ The tender grass grows up at his command to feed the cattle, and there are fruit trees, vegetables, and grain for man to cultivate, ¹⁵ and wine to make him glad, and olive oil as lotion for his skin, and bread to give him strength. ¹⁶ The Lord planted the cedars of Lebanon. They are tall and flourishing. ¹⁷ There the birds make their nests, the storks in the firs. ¹⁸ High in the mountains are pastures for the wild goats, and rock badgers burrow in among the rocks and find protection there.

¹⁹ He assigned the moon to mark the months and the sun to mark the days. ²⁰ He sends the night and darkness, when all the forest folk come out. ²¹ Then the young lions roar for their food, but they are dependent on the Lord. ²² At dawn they slink back into their dens to rest, ²³ and men go off to work until the evening shadows fall again. ²⁴ O Lord, what a variety you have made! And in wisdom you have made them all! The earth is full of your riches.

²⁵ There before me lies the mighty ocean, teeming with life of every kind, both great and small. ²⁶ And look! See the ships! And over there, the whale you made to play in the sea. ²⁷ Every one of these depends on you to give them daily food. ²⁸ You supply it, and they gather it. You open wide your hand to feed them, and they are satisfied with all your bountiful provision.

²⁹ But if you turn away from them, then all is lost. And when you gather up their breath, they die and turn again to dust.

³⁰ Then you send your Spirit, and new life is born^[b] to replenish all the living of the earth. ³¹ Praise God forever! How he must rejoice in all his work! ³² The earth trembles at his glance; the mountains burst into flame at his touch.

³³ I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will praise God to my last breath! ³⁴ May he be pleased by all these thoughts about him, for he is the source of all my joy. ³⁵ Let all sinners perish—all who refuse to praise him. But I will praise him. Hallelujah!

35 This is the message the Lord gave Jeremiah when Jehoiakim (son of Josiah) was the king of Judah:^[a]

² Go to the settlement where the families of the Rechabites live and invite them to the Temple. Take them into one of the inner rooms and offer them a drink of wine.

³ So I went over to see Jaazaniah (son of Jeremiah, who was the son of Habazziniah) and brought him and all his brothers and sons—representing all the Rechab families— ⁴ to the Temple, into the room assigned for the use of the sons of Hanan the prophet (the son of Igdaliah). This room was located next to the one used by the palace official, directly above the room of Maaseiah (son of Shallum), who was the Temple doorman. ⁵ I set cups and jugs of wine before them and invited them to have a drink, ⁶ but they refused.

“No,” they said. “We don’t drink, for Jonadab our father (son of Rechab) commanded that none of us should ever drink, neither we nor our children forever. ⁷ He also told us not to build houses or plant crops or vineyards and not to own farms, but always to live in tents; and that if we obeyed, we would live long, good lives in our own land. ⁸ And we have obeyed him in all these things. We have never had a drink of wine since then, nor have our wives or our sons or daughters either. ⁹ We haven’t built houses or owned farms or planted crops. ¹⁰ We have lived in tents and have fully obeyed everything that Jonadab our father commanded us. ¹¹ But when Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, arrived in this country, we were afraid and decided to move to Jerusalem. That’s why we are here.”

¹² Then the Lord gave this message to Jeremiah:

¹³ The Lord, the God of Israel, says: Go and say to Judah and Jerusalem, Won’t you learn a lesson from the families of Rechab? ¹⁴ They don’t drink because their father told them not to. But I have spoken to you again and again, and you won’t listen or obey. ¹⁵ I have sent you prophet after prophet to tell you to turn back from your wicked ways and to stop worshiping other gods, and that if you obeyed, then I would let you live in peace here in the land I gave to you and your fathers. But you wouldn’t listen or obey. ¹⁶ The families of Rechab have obeyed their father completely, but you have refused to listen to me. ¹⁷ Therefore, the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Because you refuse to listen or answer when I call, I will send upon Judah and Jerusalem all the evil I have ever threatened.

^18-19 Then Jeremiah turned to the Rechabites and said: “The Lord, the God of Israel, says that because you have obeyed your father in every respect, he shall always have descendants who will worship me.”

²⁷ Now here is what I am trying to say: All of you together are the one body of Christ, and each one of you is a separate and necessary part of it. ²⁸ Here is a list of some of the parts he has placed in his Church, which is his body:

²⁹ Is everyone an apostle? Of course not. Is everyone a preacher? No. Are all teachers? Does everyone have the power to do miracles? ³⁰ Can everyone heal the sick? Of course not. Does God give all of us the ability to speak in languages we’ve never learned? Can just anyone understand and translate what those are saying who have that gift of foreign speech? ³¹ No, but try your best to have the more important of these gifts.

First, however, let me tell you about something else that is better than any of them!

13 If I had the gift of being able to speak in other languages without learning them and could speak in every language there is in all of heaven and earth, but didn’t love others, I would only be making noise. ² If I had the gift of prophecy and knew all about what is going to happen in the future, knew everything about everything, but didn’t love others, what good would it do? Even if I had the gift of faith so that I could speak to a mountain and make it move, I would still be worth nothing at all without love. ³ If I gave everything I have to poor people, and if I were burned alive for preaching the Gospel but didn’t love others, it would be of no value whatever.

³⁵ Jesus traveled around through all the cities and villages of that area, teaching in the Jewish synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And wherever he went he healed people of every sort of illness. ³⁶ And what pity he felt for the crowds that came, because their problems were so great and they didn’t know what to do or where to go for help. They were like sheep without a shepherd.

³⁷ “The harvest is so great, and the workers are so few,” he told his disciples. ³⁸ “So pray to the one in charge of the harvesting, and ask him to recruit more workers for his harvest fields.”

10 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to cast out evil spirits and to heal every kind of sickness and disease.

^2-4 Here are the names of his twelve disciples: Simon (also called Peter), Andrew (Peter’s brother), James (Zebedee’s son), John (James’s brother), Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew (the tax collector), James (Alphaeus’s son), Thaddaeus, Simon (a member of “The Zealots,” a subversive political party), Judas Iscariot (the one who betrayed him).