Our Father in heaven, may your name be most feared and loved in the eyes of your people. You come from your heavenly throne to your beloved and chosen ones and give yourself to them. You reign among your creation for the sake of your glory. So may you be sanctified by those who are near you and glorified among all the people.

You give us your life in the creation of our being and formed our souls in the mystery of your plan. You seek us when we are, wandering from the love of your communion and setting up the abomination of ourselves in your place. We not only reject you as our God, but reject what you put in us that makes us people. We flee sacrifice of the self, loath love that has eyes only for the beloved, hoard what is not ours rather than giving what has been lavished on us by your grace.

But by your mercy your forgiveness is unending. You seek us not as the master of a runaway slave–though master you are and slave is all we will ever be, be it slave to the freedom to love, or slave to the death of our sin. Nor do you pursue us with the veangance of wronged lover–though love is what you are and wrong is all that we have repaid you with.

Rather your veangance and justice are poured out on the Most Beloved that the Beloved might love the hater and thus consume both the hatred and the its death in one mighty act by the power of him who is all in all, the first born of all creation, and the first born of the dead, the one who is an all consuming fire, becoming that which the fire consumes so that in all things he might be preeminent and thus making peace by the blood of his cross.

For Nadab and Abihu, priests unto God and representatives of your people, offered unto God that which did not come from God. They offered the pride and arrogance, the folly and insult of human nothingness to the eternal God who is the author of all things. In a mockery of the sacrifice that God desires–the sacrifice of his own self given to and for us–they gave what was godless and empty; their religiosity and false piety. And for this they were consumed. As their souls were already consumned by the death of human self-governance so their bodies were consumned by the eyes of him who seeks the glory of his governing Word. What they offered was not a sacrifice but a rebellion and an abomination to the very word sacrifice. The incense they gave, meant to be the prayers of a people wholy given up to their maker, was used as an expression of a people consumned with their own naked selves.

But praise be to you oh God, we have a greater priest who goes before our God and father offering the blood of his own life to you who are the author of that same life. And the incense he burns is the prayers of his Holy Spirit, the holy power of God for the humble repentance and patient perseverence of his people. He is the seal of our inheritance in Jesus Christ until we acquire possession of it in eternal dependence of him through whom and for whom all things were made.

So now give us this spirit of worship, that our sacrifices might be pleasing to you as we grow in the knowledge and spiritual insight, understanding the depths of your will that has been revealed to us who believe in Jesus. May our prayers to you be the humble and contrite spirit of those who have been consumed by the eternal fire and been purged of all pride and guile in order that they might be raise by the power of the Holy One to be presented before you blameless and above reproach. And may our lives be those of complete sacrifice unto you who demand nothing less our all and give nothing less than your own self. For in this is your glory known.