On our Collect . . .

      I made it to the weekend without any clean discernment of a sermon for us.  That is not to say I did not have any ideas for sermons, but that none seemed to be landing where we were corporately.  For example, many of you know we had an issue with the freezer being shut off by a problem with the HVAC in the parish hall that resulted in quite the mess and stink.  So, Hebrews seemed a little different this year.  Of course, it probably speaks differently to Hilary, Nancy, Larry, Sarah, and me, as we were the ones working in the mess and smell and responsible for cleanup!  Watching our politicians again this week, I was put in the mind of the psalmist and reminded not to put my trust in mortals, in whom there is no help.  But I don’t know that many of us are trusting mortals right now, and fewer Adventers are trusting politicians.  Mark’s Gospel is pretty straight forward.  Love God with everything and love our neighbors as ourselves.  Who does not know that?  The challenge, of course, is living both commandments.  Ruth provided some great fodder.  We have the theological claim associated with the drought.  We have Israelites leaving their inheritance for an enemy nation, Moab.  We even have Israelite parents marrying their sons off to Moabite women.  But, except for those in our families who marry people from Alabama, can we really relate?

     All that sort of pushed me eventually to the Collect.  By Friday, I was getting a bit worried I had nowhere to go for my sermon.  But, the Collect was bouncing around up in my head.  I even had a couple conversations with folks who were quick to tell me that we Episcopalians do not take the Bible as seriously as their traditions do.  Y’all know I love those conversations.  If I am feeling snarky, I let my inner congregationalist out.  More often than not, and unsurprising from my perspective, fewer and fewer Christians really wrestle with the Scriptures.  So, when they take issue with something that we do that I think is biblical, I let them know.  If I am feeling more pastoral, though, I might share from the beginning about the nature of the Prayer Book.  What is it, something like 80% of our BCP is straight out of the Bible?  From time to time, people with take one and read it and return with a “I had no idea y’all had so much Scripture in your book.”

     One of those places that borrows heavily from the Scriptures are our Collects.  Everyone here has been baptized.  Most have been confirmed, so you know some of their history.  Archbishop Cranmer and a few others plumbed the Scriptures for prayers that were related to the readings for the Principal service and the readings for the Daily Offices during the week.  We have lost that tie or binding thanks to our adoption of the RCL, but we recognize that our prayers were meant to supplement our BCP lectionary.  Good.  I see nods of agreement.  For those of you who did not know there was a method to our madness, see Casey.  He has taken the most recent class on that subject matter and most likely to be able to answer all questions.

     The Collects are so good that one can do a sermon series on them.  I can remember doing just that one summer after ordination.  I wanted to do a sermon series through which no one had suffered, and so I spent several weeks preaching the Collects of the Day.  The congregation was better than tolerant.  They were thrilled I was boring them with new material rather than making them suffer through the same old, same old.  But, they really are good and it speaks to our readings this week, perhaps in ways of which we do not often speak.

     O God, Whose blessed Son came into the world.  Right away, in the introduction to our collect, you and I are reminded that we are an incarnational people.  It takes some getting there, I understand it.  But we remind ourselves all this week that Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world.  It is a claim that defies logic and much of the understanding of the rest of the world.  In most cultures, the world is yucky.  Gods exist in the heavenly or spiritual realms.  No god, no goddess, in his or her own right mind, would ever want to burden themselves with bodies.  Bodies are frail.  Bodies can be weakened by diseases.  Bodies get hungry, and bodies die.  In the west, this separation of matter and spiritual finds its height probably in the ideas of Plato.  Most of us gathered here today are well educated and at least know the teaching of the cave in Plato.  At best, we see shadowy reflections of the true images on our walls.  Good.  I see the nods.  I do not want to linger too much here, but understand the claim of the incarnation.  God became human!  Those who built ziggurats and those who understood the heavens to be pure would be scandalized by such a claim.  Yet such a claim should be unsurprising to us.  When God created everything, before sin entered the world, how did He judge it?  That’s right, Good!  Matter is impacted by sin now – we have fires and flooding rains and a pandemic which remind us of that truth every day – but matter was not yucky according to God.  He fashioned it.  He molded it.  He created it out of nothing.  And it was good!

     That He might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life – what was the big work of the devil?  It was THE lie.  You have all read it.  We have all placed ourselves in that story.  How does the devil trick Adam and Eve into eating from the fruit?  Does God really love you?  Does God really care about you?  How do you know God wants what is best for you?  Oh, to be sure, the devil points out the good fruit.  If God is good, why does He tell you not to eat that beautiful fruit?  Can you really trust Him?

     We buy that lie all the time, don’t we?  Give us a little suffering; toss in a smidge of persecution—and let’s be honest, give us a bit of consequences for our being jerks, and we are often quick to doubt whether God loves us.  Give us a lot of either, and many turn away from God.  Place yourself in Naomi’s and Elimelech’s shoes.  We are starving.  What can we do?  Maybe God has abandoned us?  Maybe we sinned one too many times as a people, and He has divorced us.  I know!  We can go to Moab.  Crops are doing well over there.  Once they give up on God’s covenant love, how much easier is it to give up on His torah.  Some of us have seen it around us these last couple years.  How many Christians have turned away from God because of privation or the pandemic?  How many have turned away from God because their leaders acted as if their hearts followed anybody’s but Jesus’?  How many forgot they were called by God to incarnate His torah in the world?  The whisper gets louder in ears and draws us away.

     But the Collect speaks to the gulf that we all know is there.  What keeps us from being properly attuned to God?  What keeps us from hearing His voice or seeing His face or feeling His nudge?  Sin.  How could we have closed that gulf given our predilection to sin, to selfish, ungodly behavior?  We could not!  But Jesus could!  The Incarnation was the beginning of our understanding that we could not save ourselves.  It took God saving us to close that gap.  And because He lived that perfect sinless life, you and I know, like the writer of Hebrews teaches, that we are more purified than we could ever be through our own efforts.  In fact, everything, every single promise of God to which we cling depends and depended upon Jesus’ faithfulness!

     All that work of the Incarnation, His suffering, death, and Resurrection, is to make us fit for adoption and inheritance.  No longer does our Lord see us for the sinless wretches we are!  Now He sees His Son in us and us in His Son.  Like the story of the Prodigal Son, we are returned and celebrated.  Like the goel, the kinsman redeemer, Boaz in Ruth, we know ourselves loved and valued and worth redeeming!  We are reminded that He is our Father in heaven, that He wants what is best for us, and that, even when we could not do what was best for us, He was willing to step into the breach!  In reality, the cross stands in diametric opposition to the whisper of the devil in the garden!  We know God really loves us.  We know God really wants what’s best for us.  Better still, we know that God has the power to redeem everything wrong, even death itself!  And because He is good and because He has promised, we know we will inherit His promises.  It may not happen when we want it to happen, or in the ways we prefer it to happen, but it will happen.  And it will exceed all that we ask or imagine—such is His promise.

     Grant that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves as He is pure . . . Here’s the rub, right?  How do we purify ourselves?  The author of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us that we do not purify ourselves.  All of us are made perfect through the atoning work of Christ Jesus.  And, yet . . . do we not have a bit of a role in that effort?  We must choose Christ as Lord.  We ask for the Sacrament of baptism to proclaim our loyalty and accept our obligations of becoming His servants.  How are we purified?  Jesus Himself points to our work in today’s Gospel.  We love the Lord our God with everything we have and everything we are.  And we love our neighbor as ourselves.  And, as our oath at baptism and confirmation reminds us, when we fail, we do what?  That’s correct!  We repent.  We repent and ask God for the grace so as not to fall into temptation again.  Over and over and over again, we are called to repeat this process.  This is the initial wash, rinse, repeat of our lives!

     Make no mistake, our work is simply to try and do God’s will in our lives.  Sanctification and salvation and all those other blessings we tout are gifts of grace.  We cannot do enough to merit those gifts.  By force of will, we cannot become non-sinners.  But, a curious thing often happens along the way.  As we continue in the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and in the prayers, we become more and more attuned to God.  Over time, our hearts and minds become more attuned to Him.  Over time, others begin to note the changes in us.  Tomorrow, we celebrate the Feast of All Saints’.  Think of the saints in your life, the people who were most important in the nurturing of your faith, the people who made sure you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that you were loved by God.  Did they consider themselves saints?  Did they share stories of their youth when they were a bit more miserable sinner and less a glorious saint?  We laugh because we know the truth.  My guess is that every saint in your life that you thank God for tomorrow would balk at the honor you bestow upon them.  Just as you might balk at the recognition another might offer you.  You see, as we become more and more attuned to God, we begin to recognize just how other He really is.  We begin to realize just how much He loves us, how big His mercy is for us, and how much He wants us to share all that with those around us.  And we begin to recognize our inherent lack of anything to commend us to Him.

     That, when He comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like Him in His eternal and glorious kingdom. . . Part of our prayer and teaching this morning has dealt with sanctification, that process by which we are molded like clay, that process by which we have the dross burned away, that process by which we become more and more imprinted with the heart and mind of our Father in heaven.  But as seemingly holy and righteous and loving as we get on this earth, as seemingly blessed as we may appear to outward appearance, none of it compares to what God has in store for us when He returns to re-create the earth.  At all.  Y’all know I do not focus too much on the eschaton because I am certain it will be orders of magnitude more glorious than I can dream up.  But by virtue of Christ’s Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, I can say that with certainty.  When an uncrossable chasm existed, that separated me from God, that I could never have filled in or bridged or jumped, He acted to save me and to save you and to save you and to save every single person we encounter in our daily life and work.  Because He acted when we could do nothing to save ourselves, because He was faithful when we were feckless; we know He is trustworthy beyond all doubt.  And because He has shown His power to redeem even death itself, we can trust that He can keep every single one of those promises He has made to us.  What will our bodies look like?  How will we all be kings and queens in His kingdom?  How will we all inherit a firstborn share?  I have zero clue.  But we know, because He loved us, died for us, was raised for us, and now stands at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us, that one glorious Day, even those promises will be fulfilled for us!

     All that from a Collect?  You bet!  From a book we believe to be our single greatest contribution to believers intent on sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.  We would do well to learn it, live it, and inwardly digest it, that we might do our part to share the Gospel in a land called Nashville.

 

In Christ’s Peace,

Brian†