Preparing for the Tenth
Sunday after Pentecost

Year A

Prayer

Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21

You open wide your hand

 

The Lord is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

The Lord is good to all,

and his compassion is over all that he has made.

The Lord upholds all who are falling,

and raises up all who are bowed down.

The eyes of all look to you,

and you give them their food in due season.

You open your hand,

satisfying the desire of every living thing.

The Lord is just in all his ways,

and kind in all his doings.

The Lord is near to all who call on him,

to all who call on him in truth.

He fulfills the desire of all who fear him;

he also hears their cry, and saves them.

The Lord watches over all who love him,

but all the wicked he will destroy.

My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord,

and all flesh will bless his holy name forever and ever.

 

Isaiah 51:17-23

Drink no more from the bowl of wrath

 

Rouse yourself, rouse yourself!

Stand up, O Jerusalem,

you who have drunk at the hand of the Lord

the cup of his wrath,

who have drunk to the dregs

the bowl of staggering.

There is no one to guide her

among all the children she has borne;

there is no one to take her by the hand

among all the children she has brought up.

These two things have befallen you

—who will grieve with you?—

devastation and destruction, famine and sword—

who will comfort you?

Your children have fainted,

they lie at the head of every street

like an antelope in a net;

they are full of the wrath of the Lord,

the rebuke of your God.

Therefore hear this, you who are wounded,

who are drunk, but not with wine:

Thus says your Sovereign, the Lord,

your God who pleads the cause of his people:

See, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering;

you shall drink no more

from the bowl of my wrath.

And I will put it into the hand of your tormentors,

who have said to you,

“Bow down, that we may walk on you”;

and you have made your back like the ground

and like the street for them to walk on.

 

Romans 9:6-13

True descendants of Abraham

 

It is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all Israelites truly belong to Israel, and not all of Abraham’s children are his true descendants; but “It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as descendants. For this is what the promise said, “About this time I will return and Sarah shall have a son.” Nor is that all; something similar happened to Rebecca when she had conceived children by one husband, our ancestor Isaac. Even before they had been born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose of election might continue, not by works but by his call) she was told, “The elder shall serve the younger.” As it is written,

 

“I have loved Jacob,

but I have hated Esau.”