Let your merciful ears, O Lord,
be open to the prayers of your humble servants;
and that they may obtain their petitions
make them to ask such things as shall please you;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for every.
'Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it.' (John 14.13,14)
'If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.' (John 15.7)
'You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.' (John 15.16)
'Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name. Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full.' (John 16.23,24)
These are some quotations from St. John's gospel which underline time and again what we read in the Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew's gospel - 'Ask, and it shall be given you'. These are words of Jesus, and so words of God, that are unequivocal. There is no doubt in Jesus' words here, no ifs, buts or maybes - ask and it shall be given you.
All of us at some time will have wondered whether or not God does answer our prayers. And all of us could probably give evidence that our prayers have been answered. Usually though we have to add a rider somewhere that what I've just quoted from St. Matthew's gospel and St. John's gospel doesn't seem to be so simple. It seems that we don't always get what we ask for. Although there'll be thousands more Wiganers this morning who should be joining us in church today thanking God for answered prayer yesterday afternoon!
It seems that we don't always get our prayers answered and sometimes when we do the answer isn't always as we'd expected. So this whole business of answers to prayer doesn't seem to be as straightforward as Jesus seems to suggest.
I think we need to come to all of our prayers in the way that our collect today suggests; because it says, in a different way what Jesus says about the conditions, if you like, in which we should make our prayers. Jesus outlines the context, if you like, of our prayer and our asking.
The collect, in the way it puts the requests admits that there's a shortcoming in our relationship with God and in the way we live our life. It acknowledges that we fall short of God's ideal for us. That to me is the unwritten part of the collect; because it's saying 'show us how to ask and what to ask for so that we'll ask rightly and get our prayers answered rightly'. I think that's where the collect is coming from. And so it's acknowledging that in order to get our prayers answered as we would wish, we need to pray with heart and mind set on God and His will for us.
And I think the collect also acknowledges that God's way isn't always necessarily our way. And that isn't a 'get out' clause for God. I'm sure God doesn't want us to let Him off so easily. God loves us and wants the best for us. Jesus wouldn't have promised anything and everything to us in the way He does in those quotations from St. John's gospel if God didn't love us.
But what we have to acknowledge again, is the context for our prayers and Jesus makes it quite plain, I think. To get our prayers answered rightly and as we would wish, we have to 'abide' in Jesus Christ as He abides in the Father. Heart, mind, body and soul have to be fully given to Him and His way. Only then will we understand what it's right to pray for and understand the answer we get when we get it. And that answer will either be a granting or refusing of our desire, our want or need. Our prayer will be answered on God's terms; but that's all right because when we abide in Him we understand the answer and can accept the answer. Because God's wisdom is far above human wisdom. And we can only grasp the meaning of that if we abide in Him.
Then secondly our answers to prayer have a particular rationale. The answers we receive are for one reason above all others. We have answers to our prayers not simply for our own good but that God will be glorified by us and by all who witness the answer. Miracles that seem to be answers to prayer might be few and far between but what they are for is that God might be glorified. And God doesn't do miracles simply for the sake of it. He doesn't do them to show that He's superhuman. He does them in times and places that people might turn to Him in humility and love.
So all along, what our prayer is meant to do, no matter what we ask for, is to put God right at the centre of all of our life. And our collect shows us that our prayer, in a sense, issues from God and returns to God. St. Paul says that when we come to God in prayer and we don't know what to ask for, the Holy Spirit will pray in us. God Himself is the initiator of our prayers and the one who answers them, for our good and for His glory.
So, our praying is very much a two way thing, or should I say a three way thing, because all our prayer is Trinitarian. We make our pray by the Holy Spirit to the Father through Jesus Christ. And so in our prayer we ourselves are caught up in that relationship of love that is the Holy Trinity. And it's in that love and through that love that our prayers are answered. And it's when we are firmly established in that relationship with God that we know what to ask for and how to ask; and we recognise and accept the answers to our prayers.
Saturday, 27 August 2011
Sunday, 21 August 2011
9th Sunday after Trinity
Almighty God,
who sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love and joy and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Today's collect is quite a simple request but goes right to the heart of how we live our lives as followers of Christ and people of God. And it's about the sort of person each of us is meant to become in our walk with God.
On reading this I'm reminded immediately about what St. Paul wrote to the Galatians about what he called 'living in the Spirit'. And by that I think he means that there's a sense in which our whole being is taken over by God, that we 'abide in the Him', as Jesus would put it, and that we are led and guided by Him, every moment of our lives.
For that to happen we need to do as the collect has us pray today; we need to 'open our hearts to the riches of (His) grace'. This is probably the hardest part. It's hardest because it demands faith. And faith as we've discovered before is about taking a step into the unknown, like stepping off the edge of a cliff. It means putting aside all our preconceived notions about how it's best to live life; and instead, living God's way. And we do that by keeping God's commandments and being and doing as Jesus taught. When we do that we open ourselves to the justice, mercy and love of God's Kingdom. We open ourselves to God's own Spirit working and moving in us. And then we find we are in a quite different place to the Kingdoms of this world. We are in the Kingdom of God.
There is no other way of opening ourselves to God. There are no shortcuts. The only way to having God work in our lives, of opening ourselves up to Him, is to obey God's commandments, to live the Sermon on the Mount and everything else Jesus taught. It's loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us, doing to others what you would have them do to you. It's turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, giving your shirt as well as your coat. It might sound cliched, or hackneyed, but that's the way to God's Kingdom and all the treasures and pleasures it holds. The way is by obeying His laws and His commandments. And Jesus told us just what to expect about getting on that road and how difficult it is; 'The way to life is narrow, and few there are that find it'.
And we don't find it because we are too consumed with living any way but the way God wants us to. Opening our hearts to the riches of His grace is the hardest thing in the world because of our falleness. Right at our heart is our own pride and ego. It's that that says 'I can live my life in any way I choose and in doing that I will get everything I want and need.' And that's the reason we who would follow Christ have to pray that God Himself will help us to live the way He wants us to, because we know we are infected with the outlook that pride and ego brings, and so we can't do it without Him. And specifically, in the words of this collect, we ask for God's help for a particluar reason, and that reason is that we might 'bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love and joy and peace'.
What more would we ask from life than love, joy and peace? You can have as much money and possessions in your life but none of it has more value than love, joy and peace. I wish we all had as much and more money than we could ever want or need. Our lives would be far more comfortable for it. But much, much more do I wish for love, joy and peace. And we all know you can't buy those. You can't buy love, joy and peace from anbody, anywhere. That doesn't mean we don't try even though it's impossible. Human nature really is so perverse. The only way to love, joy and peace is by living the way God has prescribed which we prayed for in last week's collect, that is, 'in the ways of His laws and the works of His commandments, all of which is summed up in the way that Jesus Himself lived.
And when we live that way we are actually putting into effect what St. Paul spelled out to the Galatians about the fruit of the Spirit. He said that we have to put off the 'works of the flesh' as he called them and as I said, he spelled them out: 'fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing and things like these'. Notice the catch-all there - 'things like these'. His list is open ended but we get his drift. All of these things stop the grace of God working in us. It need not be what we see as great sin that stands in our way, but seemingly simple, every day things like jealousy, anger, quarrels. They stand in the way of God's grace and because they are every day things to us then God's grace is blocked off from us every day, every hour, every minute.
But put those to one side, St. Paul says and see what the contrast is when we allow God's grace to work in us. Then we see the result of that grace working, we see it in what he called the 'fruit of the Spirit' and it's what we pray for today in this collect: 'love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.' And just these few. God's Spirit is seen in just these nine characteristics. Whereas the list of St. Paul's 'works of the flesh' has 15 characteristics and more because he leaves the list open. Just these few things mark our life in God, our life in Christ. You know the Holy Spirit is working in a person when you see these - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And that's what we pray for today for each one of us.
Whatever we might want in life, whatever we might think we need, it's the fruit of the Spirit that should be our real treasure. It's that that we really ought to grow in our lives because it's the fruit of the Spirit through which God's Kingdom comes on earth as in heaven.
who sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love and joy and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Today's collect is quite a simple request but goes right to the heart of how we live our lives as followers of Christ and people of God. And it's about the sort of person each of us is meant to become in our walk with God.
On reading this I'm reminded immediately about what St. Paul wrote to the Galatians about what he called 'living in the Spirit'. And by that I think he means that there's a sense in which our whole being is taken over by God, that we 'abide in the Him', as Jesus would put it, and that we are led and guided by Him, every moment of our lives.
For that to happen we need to do as the collect has us pray today; we need to 'open our hearts to the riches of (His) grace'. This is probably the hardest part. It's hardest because it demands faith. And faith as we've discovered before is about taking a step into the unknown, like stepping off the edge of a cliff. It means putting aside all our preconceived notions about how it's best to live life; and instead, living God's way. And we do that by keeping God's commandments and being and doing as Jesus taught. When we do that we open ourselves to the justice, mercy and love of God's Kingdom. We open ourselves to God's own Spirit working and moving in us. And then we find we are in a quite different place to the Kingdoms of this world. We are in the Kingdom of God.
There is no other way of opening ourselves to God. There are no shortcuts. The only way to having God work in our lives, of opening ourselves up to Him, is to obey God's commandments, to live the Sermon on the Mount and everything else Jesus taught. It's loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us, doing to others what you would have them do to you. It's turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, giving your shirt as well as your coat. It might sound cliched, or hackneyed, but that's the way to God's Kingdom and all the treasures and pleasures it holds. The way is by obeying His laws and His commandments. And Jesus told us just what to expect about getting on that road and how difficult it is; 'The way to life is narrow, and few there are that find it'.
And we don't find it because we are too consumed with living any way but the way God wants us to. Opening our hearts to the riches of His grace is the hardest thing in the world because of our falleness. Right at our heart is our own pride and ego. It's that that says 'I can live my life in any way I choose and in doing that I will get everything I want and need.' And that's the reason we who would follow Christ have to pray that God Himself will help us to live the way He wants us to, because we know we are infected with the outlook that pride and ego brings, and so we can't do it without Him. And specifically, in the words of this collect, we ask for God's help for a particluar reason, and that reason is that we might 'bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love and joy and peace'.
What more would we ask from life than love, joy and peace? You can have as much money and possessions in your life but none of it has more value than love, joy and peace. I wish we all had as much and more money than we could ever want or need. Our lives would be far more comfortable for it. But much, much more do I wish for love, joy and peace. And we all know you can't buy those. You can't buy love, joy and peace from anbody, anywhere. That doesn't mean we don't try even though it's impossible. Human nature really is so perverse. The only way to love, joy and peace is by living the way God has prescribed which we prayed for in last week's collect, that is, 'in the ways of His laws and the works of His commandments, all of which is summed up in the way that Jesus Himself lived.
And when we live that way we are actually putting into effect what St. Paul spelled out to the Galatians about the fruit of the Spirit. He said that we have to put off the 'works of the flesh' as he called them and as I said, he spelled them out: 'fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing and things like these'. Notice the catch-all there - 'things like these'. His list is open ended but we get his drift. All of these things stop the grace of God working in us. It need not be what we see as great sin that stands in our way, but seemingly simple, every day things like jealousy, anger, quarrels. They stand in the way of God's grace and because they are every day things to us then God's grace is blocked off from us every day, every hour, every minute.
But put those to one side, St. Paul says and see what the contrast is when we allow God's grace to work in us. Then we see the result of that grace working, we see it in what he called the 'fruit of the Spirit' and it's what we pray for today in this collect: 'love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.' And just these few. God's Spirit is seen in just these nine characteristics. Whereas the list of St. Paul's 'works of the flesh' has 15 characteristics and more because he leaves the list open. Just these few things mark our life in God, our life in Christ. You know the Holy Spirit is working in a person when you see these - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And that's what we pray for today for each one of us.
Whatever we might want in life, whatever we might think we need, it's the fruit of the Spirit that should be our real treasure. It's that that we really ought to grow in our lives because it's the fruit of the Spirit through which God's Kingdom comes on earth as in heaven.
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Eight Sunday after Trinity
Almight Lord and everlasting God,
we beseech you to direct, sanctify and govern
both our hearts and bodies
in the ways of your laws
and the works of your commandments;
that through your most mighty protection, both here and ever,
we may be preserved in body and soul;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
What gets you out of bed in a morning? What is it, day by day that keeps you going? Or, as a former vicar of mine asked me a long time ago, 'from where do you get your oxygen? I wonder if you've ever given much thought to those sorts of questions? One word that covers those questions is 'motivation'. What is it that motivates you, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year?
I do believe that we are all here for a purpose; a purpose known to God. And we are fortunate if we can tap into that and find the purpose for our own life. I think that the fundamental purpose for all of us is to get to know God; because it's through fulfilling that purpose that we find our natural place in creation. It's through getting to know God that we, as it were, fall into place in the jig-saw of life alongside others. It's how we fit into the great scheme of things.
Another way of thinking about what purpose we have in life is thinking about what our own mission is in life. Our church, St. Andrew's has a mission statement that was put together quite a long time ago now. And I think each one of us as part of St. Andrew's and simply as individual Christians, members of the Body of Christ, each of us has a mission. And if we thought about it long enough each one of us could put together our own mission statement in a sentence or two.
It's all about meaning and purpose in life. But to have meaning and purpose, to have a mission and to make that meaning, purpose and mission real to us and to others, we have to have the motivation. We have to find the 'oxygen' to breathe to move us forward. We have to have a foundation on which to build a meaningful, purposeful life.
I think the Collect today helps us in providing that foundation, and finding the wherewithal that helps us to be what God wants us to be, so that we can do what He wants us to do; to have a meaningful and purposeful life fulfilling our mission and indeed, as I was talking about last week, living up to our primary vocation, our calling to become Christ-like.
So we look first to the Almighty Lord and everlasting God - 'Almighty and everlasting'. God knows no boundaries of power and of time or space. He is a constant and always full, source of all we could ever need. In Him lies our meaning and purpose and our mission; and the wherewithal to see it and do it. And so it's to this God that we call to be built up and to be moved to be what God wants us to be. 'We beseech you to direct, sanctify and govern both our hearts and bodies in the ways of your laws and the works of your commandments'.
We tend to separate heart, body and soul. But it's true to say that early Christian theologians saw them as one thing rather than separate. There's evidence going back to the Bible that early Christians used the terms interchangeably here and there, especially the terms soul and body. I think it's useful to think of them that way but with the subtleties of meaning we attribute to each. It's a fact that, certainly in this life, one is dependent upon the other and so it's good to think of them in unity. So we bring all that we are in this life, all that's contained in this that we call our body and ask God to direct, sanctify and govern it. In other words God is what makes each individual one of us to stand out from the other as unique. We ask Him to be the motivator behind all that we are and the sustainer of all that we are. But we ask Him to direct, sanctify and govern us in a particular direction. None of this is without any particular reason. Right from the outset the goal is in mind, the mission, the meaning and purpose of our life is in mind and in the heart of the prayer and in the mind and heart of God. It's all in the direction of 'the ways of your (God's) laws and the works of your (God's) commandments.
Life only works well as God created it, and our lives are only fulfilled in every respect if we live them in the way that God has created us to live. And that is 'in the ways of His laws and the works of His commandments'. Oh, we try to live in other ways, in the ways that humankind dreams up and what a mess we sometimes make of things when those ways aren't God's ways. Look at what has been happening in towns and cities up and down the country over the last few days. Once we've decided that God's laws can be ignored then we can ignore humankind's laws as well. One thing so often forgotten these days is the very fact that the rules that govern Western democratic societies have been fashioned and forged on the laws of God given to Moses and handed down generation after generation. And why? Because it's the way life, human life and society works the best.
So asking God to provide us with and to be right at the very heart of our living of life we, as it were, come full circle by spelling out the reason for asking - 'that through your most mighty protection, both here and ever, we may be preserved in body and soul'. The reason for asking God to help us live the life He has given us is so that we can go on doing it. It's so that we can come to a full knowledge of Him, and in living His way, find our fulfilment and become all that He means us to become.
What a great prayer this is. What better way to start a service? What better way to start a day, than to ask God that He might help us to become all that He means us to become and do all that He has for us to do.
we beseech you to direct, sanctify and govern
both our hearts and bodies
in the ways of your laws
and the works of your commandments;
that through your most mighty protection, both here and ever,
we may be preserved in body and soul;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
What gets you out of bed in a morning? What is it, day by day that keeps you going? Or, as a former vicar of mine asked me a long time ago, 'from where do you get your oxygen? I wonder if you've ever given much thought to those sorts of questions? One word that covers those questions is 'motivation'. What is it that motivates you, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year?
I do believe that we are all here for a purpose; a purpose known to God. And we are fortunate if we can tap into that and find the purpose for our own life. I think that the fundamental purpose for all of us is to get to know God; because it's through fulfilling that purpose that we find our natural place in creation. It's through getting to know God that we, as it were, fall into place in the jig-saw of life alongside others. It's how we fit into the great scheme of things.
Another way of thinking about what purpose we have in life is thinking about what our own mission is in life. Our church, St. Andrew's has a mission statement that was put together quite a long time ago now. And I think each one of us as part of St. Andrew's and simply as individual Christians, members of the Body of Christ, each of us has a mission. And if we thought about it long enough each one of us could put together our own mission statement in a sentence or two.
It's all about meaning and purpose in life. But to have meaning and purpose, to have a mission and to make that meaning, purpose and mission real to us and to others, we have to have the motivation. We have to find the 'oxygen' to breathe to move us forward. We have to have a foundation on which to build a meaningful, purposeful life.
I think the Collect today helps us in providing that foundation, and finding the wherewithal that helps us to be what God wants us to be, so that we can do what He wants us to do; to have a meaningful and purposeful life fulfilling our mission and indeed, as I was talking about last week, living up to our primary vocation, our calling to become Christ-like.
So we look first to the Almighty Lord and everlasting God - 'Almighty and everlasting'. God knows no boundaries of power and of time or space. He is a constant and always full, source of all we could ever need. In Him lies our meaning and purpose and our mission; and the wherewithal to see it and do it. And so it's to this God that we call to be built up and to be moved to be what God wants us to be. 'We beseech you to direct, sanctify and govern both our hearts and bodies in the ways of your laws and the works of your commandments'.
We tend to separate heart, body and soul. But it's true to say that early Christian theologians saw them as one thing rather than separate. There's evidence going back to the Bible that early Christians used the terms interchangeably here and there, especially the terms soul and body. I think it's useful to think of them that way but with the subtleties of meaning we attribute to each. It's a fact that, certainly in this life, one is dependent upon the other and so it's good to think of them in unity. So we bring all that we are in this life, all that's contained in this that we call our body and ask God to direct, sanctify and govern it. In other words God is what makes each individual one of us to stand out from the other as unique. We ask Him to be the motivator behind all that we are and the sustainer of all that we are. But we ask Him to direct, sanctify and govern us in a particular direction. None of this is without any particular reason. Right from the outset the goal is in mind, the mission, the meaning and purpose of our life is in mind and in the heart of the prayer and in the mind and heart of God. It's all in the direction of 'the ways of your (God's) laws and the works of your (God's) commandments.
Life only works well as God created it, and our lives are only fulfilled in every respect if we live them in the way that God has created us to live. And that is 'in the ways of His laws and the works of His commandments'. Oh, we try to live in other ways, in the ways that humankind dreams up and what a mess we sometimes make of things when those ways aren't God's ways. Look at what has been happening in towns and cities up and down the country over the last few days. Once we've decided that God's laws can be ignored then we can ignore humankind's laws as well. One thing so often forgotten these days is the very fact that the rules that govern Western democratic societies have been fashioned and forged on the laws of God given to Moses and handed down generation after generation. And why? Because it's the way life, human life and society works the best.
So asking God to provide us with and to be right at the very heart of our living of life we, as it were, come full circle by spelling out the reason for asking - 'that through your most mighty protection, both here and ever, we may be preserved in body and soul'. The reason for asking God to help us live the life He has given us is so that we can go on doing it. It's so that we can come to a full knowledge of Him, and in living His way, find our fulfilment and become all that He means us to become.
What a great prayer this is. What better way to start a service? What better way to start a day, than to ask God that He might help us to become all that He means us to become and do all that He has for us to do.
Friday, 5 August 2011
Seventh Sunday after Trinity
Lord of all power and might,
the author and give of all good things:
graft in our hearts the love of your name,
increase in us true religion,
nourish us with all goodness,
and of your great mercy keep us in the same;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
We continue to think about the great prayer we pray each week in the Collect; and when I was thinking about this week's prayer, it seemed to me to be like considering the benefits of a good meal. It's as if on sitting down to your dinner, you would think very carefully about where your food came from, what its nutritional value is and what you can do to continue to have such good food and wholesome meals that are good for building body, mind and soul; meals that will keep you through all that life has to bring you, from infancy, through maturity to old age; through the whole course of your life. That's the sort of impression I get from this Collect.
As always, the Collect begins by making a statement of our belief about God; and in this case that He is the 'author and giver of all good things'. When it comes to faith, there are things we have to, as it were, take for granted. If we don't, how can we say we have faith? That's where the great gulf lies, I think, between those who believe in God and those who don't; those who believe in Jesus Christ and those who don't. There's got to be that basic acceptance of foundational principles on which to build one's faith, then comes an understanding of 'the Faith' and you develop the wherewithal to live the life of faith. That way, having faith is not simply some blind acceptance of something that seems impossible, but a life build on acceptance of principles upon which life is lived. And from that comes the 'knowing' that what you have accepted and believe is true.
And here we have such a foundational principle; that God, who in the Bible is always taken for granted, Himself a foundational principle; that God is creator and provider or as the Collect says, is 'author and giver of all good things'. So we and what we pray for next depend entirely upon God for everything that is good. And we recall that at the end of the six days of creation, good looked upon creation and declared it 'very good'. So everything that God gives us, the whole creation, is essentially good. (I'm not going to go into any questions at all about evil, where it comes from, what it is; that's another series of sermons)
Now, having established that basic principle, that basic belief we go on to ask of God four things. The first is that he will 'graft in our hearts the love of your name'. The way this is put is very telling. It says so much about the state we find ourselves in. It takes us right back to the Fall of Adam and Eve. The consequence of Adam and Eve's disobedience was their estrangement from God, their separation from Him. And separation from anything means a forgetting, and a loss of love and finally an antipathy to that we once loved and depended upon. The worst sin of all is that we forget God who is not only the author and giver of all good things, but our creator and redeemer; the one to whom we owe everything. This is original sin, the sin with which we are all tainted, the possibility of not only hating God but of fogetting Him altogether.
But God sought out Adam and Eve to rescue them from the death that their sin had brought and He seeks us out also. And so having turned away from God we need to ask Him to put back into our hearts the love we had for Him before the Fall. So we pray 'graft in our hearts the love of your name.' We have already said we depend upon God as creator for everything. And we depend upon Him just as much to be our Redeemer. We need Him to help us love Him.
And then 'increase in us true religion'. And what would 'true' religion be? 'Religion'. What a word! Some people hate that word with a perfect hatred. Some people fear it. I don't know what the dictionary definition is but I would say that true religion is what we've just prayed for - loving the name of God. All flows from that love. And whatever we do in the name of religion outside of that love isn't religion at all but a mockery of it.True religion is loving God as He commands - with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. I love that last bit; loving God with all your 'strength' with every fibre of your being and will all energy, passion, enthusiasm and longing. That is true religion. Religion takes us nowhere but back to God, always and ever. If it doesn't it isn't true religion.
And 'true religion' to my mind should do what we next pray for. 'Nourish us with all goodness.' If religion that is true takes us back always to God it takes us back always to good and what is good. And when we get near the good, when we approach the good we are warmed by it as we are warmed by a fire. We take in the heat of goodness and are built up by it, we are nourished by the good; it seeps into us as by osmosis. There's an old saying that if you lie down with dogs you come up with fleas. Well the same is true the other way round. If your mind and heart think on good things then you can only become and do good. Because good is of God. We said that right at the beginning, that God is the giver of good things.
And then lastly we ask God to keep us in that good; 'and of your great mercy keep us in the same'. Finally we come to practicalities. It's hard work being good, simply because we are fallen. It's difficult keeping with it, it's difficult remembering God, we always have to work at it. That's at the heart of our vocation as Christians. We talk a lot about vocation in the Church, about God calling us to all sorts of different ministries. But we all share the one vocation that comes before all the others; and that is to daily turn from sin and to Christ. And every single day we have to rededicate ourselves to that vocation, to rededicate ourselves to God, to become Christ like, to follow in His steps, right now. And it's the hardest calling of all. St. Paul begged the people to 'live up' to their calling. And we can only live up to our calling by the mercy of God. We can only live up to our calling because God keeps us going in it; and we must always recognise that. It's God who puts us here and God who keeps us here. It's God who creates us and sustains us. It's God who, when we turn from Him seeks us out, forgives us and puts back into our hearts love of Him. And all of this, this great prayer reminds us of today, and so we continue to pray it not just today but every day.
the author and give of all good things:
graft in our hearts the love of your name,
increase in us true religion,
nourish us with all goodness,
and of your great mercy keep us in the same;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
We continue to think about the great prayer we pray each week in the Collect; and when I was thinking about this week's prayer, it seemed to me to be like considering the benefits of a good meal. It's as if on sitting down to your dinner, you would think very carefully about where your food came from, what its nutritional value is and what you can do to continue to have such good food and wholesome meals that are good for building body, mind and soul; meals that will keep you through all that life has to bring you, from infancy, through maturity to old age; through the whole course of your life. That's the sort of impression I get from this Collect.
As always, the Collect begins by making a statement of our belief about God; and in this case that He is the 'author and giver of all good things'. When it comes to faith, there are things we have to, as it were, take for granted. If we don't, how can we say we have faith? That's where the great gulf lies, I think, between those who believe in God and those who don't; those who believe in Jesus Christ and those who don't. There's got to be that basic acceptance of foundational principles on which to build one's faith, then comes an understanding of 'the Faith' and you develop the wherewithal to live the life of faith. That way, having faith is not simply some blind acceptance of something that seems impossible, but a life build on acceptance of principles upon which life is lived. And from that comes the 'knowing' that what you have accepted and believe is true.
And here we have such a foundational principle; that God, who in the Bible is always taken for granted, Himself a foundational principle; that God is creator and provider or as the Collect says, is 'author and giver of all good things'. So we and what we pray for next depend entirely upon God for everything that is good. And we recall that at the end of the six days of creation, good looked upon creation and declared it 'very good'. So everything that God gives us, the whole creation, is essentially good. (I'm not going to go into any questions at all about evil, where it comes from, what it is; that's another series of sermons)
Now, having established that basic principle, that basic belief we go on to ask of God four things. The first is that he will 'graft in our hearts the love of your name'. The way this is put is very telling. It says so much about the state we find ourselves in. It takes us right back to the Fall of Adam and Eve. The consequence of Adam and Eve's disobedience was their estrangement from God, their separation from Him. And separation from anything means a forgetting, and a loss of love and finally an antipathy to that we once loved and depended upon. The worst sin of all is that we forget God who is not only the author and giver of all good things, but our creator and redeemer; the one to whom we owe everything. This is original sin, the sin with which we are all tainted, the possibility of not only hating God but of fogetting Him altogether.
But God sought out Adam and Eve to rescue them from the death that their sin had brought and He seeks us out also. And so having turned away from God we need to ask Him to put back into our hearts the love we had for Him before the Fall. So we pray 'graft in our hearts the love of your name.' We have already said we depend upon God as creator for everything. And we depend upon Him just as much to be our Redeemer. We need Him to help us love Him.
And then 'increase in us true religion'. And what would 'true' religion be? 'Religion'. What a word! Some people hate that word with a perfect hatred. Some people fear it. I don't know what the dictionary definition is but I would say that true religion is what we've just prayed for - loving the name of God. All flows from that love. And whatever we do in the name of religion outside of that love isn't religion at all but a mockery of it.True religion is loving God as He commands - with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. I love that last bit; loving God with all your 'strength' with every fibre of your being and will all energy, passion, enthusiasm and longing. That is true religion. Religion takes us nowhere but back to God, always and ever. If it doesn't it isn't true religion.
And 'true religion' to my mind should do what we next pray for. 'Nourish us with all goodness.' If religion that is true takes us back always to God it takes us back always to good and what is good. And when we get near the good, when we approach the good we are warmed by it as we are warmed by a fire. We take in the heat of goodness and are built up by it, we are nourished by the good; it seeps into us as by osmosis. There's an old saying that if you lie down with dogs you come up with fleas. Well the same is true the other way round. If your mind and heart think on good things then you can only become and do good. Because good is of God. We said that right at the beginning, that God is the giver of good things.
And then lastly we ask God to keep us in that good; 'and of your great mercy keep us in the same'. Finally we come to practicalities. It's hard work being good, simply because we are fallen. It's difficult keeping with it, it's difficult remembering God, we always have to work at it. That's at the heart of our vocation as Christians. We talk a lot about vocation in the Church, about God calling us to all sorts of different ministries. But we all share the one vocation that comes before all the others; and that is to daily turn from sin and to Christ. And every single day we have to rededicate ourselves to that vocation, to rededicate ourselves to God, to become Christ like, to follow in His steps, right now. And it's the hardest calling of all. St. Paul begged the people to 'live up' to their calling. And we can only live up to our calling by the mercy of God. We can only live up to our calling because God keeps us going in it; and we must always recognise that. It's God who puts us here and God who keeps us here. It's God who creates us and sustains us. It's God who, when we turn from Him seeks us out, forgives us and puts back into our hearts love of Him. And all of this, this great prayer reminds us of today, and so we continue to pray it not just today but every day.
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