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.