Readings for May 21

Seventh Sunday of Easter

PSALM 89:1-4, 24-37

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever; with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.

For I said, “Steadfast love will be built up forever; in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.”

You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn to David my servant:

‘I will establish your offspring forever, and build your throne for all generations.’”

My faithfulness and my steadfast love shall be with him, and in my name shall his horn be exalted.

I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers.

He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’

And I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.

My steadfast love I will keep for him forever, and my covenant will stand firm for him.

I will establish his offspring forever and his throne as the days of the heavens.

If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules,

if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments,

then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes,

but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness.

I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips.

Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David.

His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me.

Like the moon it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies.” 

JEREMIAH 31:31-34

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

ACTS 20:17-18, 32-38

Now from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. And when they came to him, he said to them:

“You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia,

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And there was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship.

 Picture credit: Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Die Bibel in Bildern, Paul Leaves Ephesus. (1850).