The Fellowship of Suffering: A Responsive Reading

 

The Fellowship of Suffering

A Responsive Reading

 Reader One: The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 

 Congregation: This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel.  I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.

 Reader One: Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things.

 Reader Two: His intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 Congregation: I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.  Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.

 Reader One: For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of a procession, like men condemned to die in the arena.  We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men.

 Congregation: A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master.  It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master.  If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household.

 Reader One: We are fools for Christ...to this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless.  We work hard with our own hands.  When we are cursed, we bless.  When we are persecuted, we endure it.  When we are slandered, we speak kindly.  Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.

 Congregation: All men will hate you because of me.  If the world hates you keep in mind that it hated me first.  If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own.  As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.

 Reader One: But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him.  For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.  To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.  And who is equal to such a task?

 Reader Two: Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

 All: For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.