Dear Reader,
I pray this finds you and yours well. If you are in the heat as I am, I also pray this finds you cool!
Before diving into the collect, please note a few blog updates:
The new address for the blog is http://www.notonlywithourlips.com. Of course the old address will continue to redirect to here, but I hope this will be simpler for all to type and remember.
Also, a few have asked about following via email, and so to your right you will see a gadget wherein you may type your email if you wish and be notified of new posts via email. You won't receive any emails from doing this besides notification when the blog has been updated.
I hope you will forgive my tardiness in posting this update, but Saturday I had the privilege of conducting a burial for one of the Faithful Departed, and am just now sitting back down to write.
Proper 13, The Sunday closest to August 3rd
Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
This is an interesting collect for Ordinary Time (more on why it's Ordinary Time later--hint, Pentecost is not a season), which comes from the Gelasian Sacramentary , which is a very important early (complied circa 750AD) book of Christian liturgy that was one of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer's key sources in translating liturgical elements for his compiling/writing the first Book of Common Prayer. In other words, this collect was not made up in the 1960's (a comforting fact, indeed).
Acknowledging that the Church cannot continue without divine assistance is not at all surprising, though we would do well to remember this truth. What is more striking to me is the petition for God to "cleanse and defend your Church." Asking God to defend us comes quite easily, but what about this business of cleansing us as well?
I would like to suggest that the cleansing and defending of the Church, and ourselves as well, are in some sense two necessary parts of one action--God's maturing of His People. That is to say, that if God were to cleanse us but not defend us we would be clean but easy prey for the Devil and the powers of this world. On the other hand, if God defended us without cleansing us as well, we'd be exceedingly safe spiritual infants. For God to grow and develop the Church, He cleanses her of impurities via loving discipline and defends her from all assaults of her enemies. For the Church to rightly live out her role as Christ's presence on earth, she must always submit to God's cleansing actions while giving thanks for His defense. God's loving discipline is a mystery to be sure, but it is true that He loves us entirely too much to fail to discipline and cleanse us. God's discipline is a loving action.
Praying for God to cleanse the church is not too difficult to do, but what about praying for Him to cleanse each of us individually? This is far more difficult, indeed. When praying corporately, we can pray for God to cleanse the Church from the grievous sins of all those around us without ever admitting that we ourselves are culpable before God and need to be cleansed of our sin as well. We are to submit to God's discipline and pray that He would cleanse and defend us, growing us into fuller expressions of of the image of Jesus Christ.
May we yearn for God's cleansing, loving discipline in our lives as much as we yearn for His protection and defense. May God bless you this day.
David+
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