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.