Each Sunday of the year, the Book of Common Prayer appoints a special prayer for the week called a Collect. They are gems of devotion, theology, and turns of phrase. For the summer’s long green Season After Pentecost, I want to compare the current BCP collect appointed according to the calendar date with its older counterpart appointed according to the Sundays after Trinity, looking for connections that can yeild insight on holiness and the Christian life. Here’s a link to all entries.

The Collect of the Day: Sunday, September 13, 2026

• Proper XIX After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer
• XV Sunday After Trinity — Old (pre-1979) Books of Common Prayer

Proper XIX (Old XIX Trinity)

O God, because without You we are not able to please You,
mercifully grant that Your Holy Spirit
may in all things direct and rule our hearts;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

XV Trinity (cf. 1979 Proper IV, Proper VI)

Keep, we beseech Thee, O Lord,
Thy Church with Thy perpetual mercy;
and, because the frailty of man without Thee cannot but fall,
keep us ever by Thy help from all things hurtful,
and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The summer is over, and so I want to conclude this series. I had titled this series “Summer Collects,” due to lack of creativity, and have chosen a Sunday that can nicely mark the autumn. That Sunday is the one closest to September 14, which is Holy Cross Day (also known as Exaltation of the Holy Cross, and other flowery variations). This is a convenient time marking the transition from the summer to the fall. Holy Cross Day also marks the week of the traditional autumn “Ember Days” in the western Church, where Christians would fast and pray for those getting ordained.

All of these factors—a hinge point, the end of one thing and the beginning of another, the power of the Cross—have colored how I perceive these two Collects. That’s one of the benefits of reflecting on the Collects of the Book of Common Prayer: a Collect appointed to be prayed repeatedly over a whole week can gather (collect!) a set of richer meanings depending on various liturgical coincidences and the circumstances of one’s life.

The common tone I find in this week’s pair is a sense of assurance and a sense of returning to the basics of prayer. Prayer is about relying on God, rather than one’s own efforts; and it is based on a presumption that God’s good intentions for humanity are eternal.

I often seek reassurance that I am on the right path during periods of transition. The future is unknown. We have to make choices. But sometimes that assurance on the quality of my choices cannot be granted from my own conscience. It must come from above. This is the comfort I find in Proper XIX (which was XIX Trinity in the older BCPs). Like so many collects before it, there is a strong sense that God is eager to empower human prayer and empower human choices, “because without You we are not able to please You.” Many Christians still labor under the poisonous assumption that we please God by trying harder. But XV Trinity tells a truth of Christian anthropology, with another “because”: “because the frailty of man without Thee cannot but fall.”

So a coincidence for how the Propers After Pentecost and the Sundays After Trinity align this week is with that double “because” which emphasizes humanity’s reliance upon God for protection, for good things, for what is “profitable to our salvation.” This is not meant to come off as groveling before an angry God with a hair-trigger temper. Rather, God is a loving Father, Who sent a loving Shepherd, Who fills His Sheep with the Bond of Love they share eternally, “before the foundation of the world,” as Christ prayed in John 17.24—“Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me before the foundation of the world” (RSV).

The Sundays between Trinity and Advent, an un-themed liturgical time marked by the normal un-themed liturgical color of green in most churches, are sometimes characterized as boring. I wanted to prove that stereotype wrong by displaying the richness of the Prayer Book Collects in this time. They are hearty meals of devotion in two senses.

First, hearty in the normal sense of heavy and filling. You can find a basic theology of prayer, worship, and indeed all the wonderful topics of theology within these Collects. These Collects are an education.

Secondly, hearty in a more archaic sense of “heartfelt.” The classical Prayer Book tradition uses this adjective a few times: “we most heartily thank Thee” in the Thanksgiving After Communion;1 and “we thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks” in the General Thanksgiving of Morning and Evening Prayer.2 The Book of Common Prayer aspires a sincerity of the heart. Through careful attention and use of these Collects, the Holy Spirit guides our hearts, in spite of all its waves and billows, towards making us like God in His “perpetual mercy.” Lord, when we are faithless, come into our hearts and be faithful. Amen.

Subscribe now

Each Sunday of the year, the Book of Common Prayer appoints a special prayer for the week called a Collect. They are gems of devotion, theology, and turns of phrase. For the summer’s long green Season After Pentecost, I want to compare the current BCP collect appointed according to the calendar date with its older counterpart appointed according to the Sundays after Trinity, looking for connections that can yeild insight on holiness and the Christian life. Here’s a link to all entries.

The Collect of the Day: Sunday, September 6, 2026

• Proper XVIII After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• XIV Sunday After Trinity — Old (pre-1979) Books of Common Prayer

Proper XVIII

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in You with all our hearts;
for, as You always resist the proud who confide in their own strength,
so You never forsake those who make their boast of Your mercy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

XIV Trinity (1979 Proper XXV)

Almighty and everlasting God,
give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity;
and, that we may obtain that which Thou dost promise,
make us to love that which Thou dost command;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The petition of the 1979 Collect is simple. It asks for faith, and for that faith to have a certain quality: a faith in God held “with all our hearts.” The language of the heart is Deuteronomic, reminiscent of the Shema of 6.5, “You shall love the YHWH your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Of course, the Shema is quoted by Christ when He summarizes the Law. In this allusion to the Shema, then, the Collect places puts faith and love in an implicit relationship with each other. Loving God and having faith are synonyms.

This sounds like a hard burden for churchgoers or the spiritually curious who struggle with having faith. I don’t think the Collect’s language should be stretched beyond its plain meaning—the Book of Common Prayer intends for its pray-ers to aspire to a strong personal trust in Almighty God. I believe personal faith is utterly basic to an authentic Christian life. But belief can seem credulous or even cruel in the intellectual conditions of modernity and in the moral scandal of depravity done by Christians in the name of Christianity.

I remember a priest in the Church telling me that an individual’s disposition to personal faith is like an On or Off switch, where you’re either born with it or not. I disagree. Personal faith can be developed; it can increase. Otherwise it is foolish to pray this Collect sincerely. The Collect presumes that faith is both a means and a destination. We seek it even as we are empowered it to do the seeking.

Such an expansive notion of faith is one way to understand the thesis statement of the Letter to the Romans: In the Gospel “the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith” (1.17 RSV). Or in the NLT’s paraphrase: “This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith.” There is more to come. And this can only come by God, Who is the source of faith and its destination. I think these considerations can provide a merciful response to people who struggle with personal faith. Struggling with faith is not a personal failure, but an opportunity to practice the risk of trusting God. If one admits they are struggling, that proves there is a real mustard seed to grow.

Proper XVIII’s petition for faith overlaps strongly with the Collect for Fourteenth Trinity, also asking for an increase of faith. This collect’s petition famously references the apostle Paul’s “love hymn” of I Corinthians 13.

When I was a child,
I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child:
but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly;
but then face to face:
now I know in part;
but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;
but the greatest of these is charity.

(I Cor 13.11-13 KJV)

I’m using the KJV because it uses “charity” like the BCP. The KJV was translating the Greek term for selfless love, agape. The choice of charity over love demonstrates the KJV’s conservatism: the Vulgate had used caritas, which is the etymological source of the English word.

Like Proper XVIII, Fourteenth Trinity places faith and love in a relationship with each other. Now faith and love are in a triad of virtues rather than an implicit relationship. As Paul says, love is the greatest of these virtues. Love can somehow remain in a human life even when an explicit profession of faith in God wavers or is gone. Every human being may not trust God, but all human beings have received and have given love. Here is another pastoral remedy for the doubtful.

And its petition is twofold: “…that we may obtain that which Thou dost promise, make us to love that which Thou dost command.” In light of Proper XVIII’s allusion to the Shema, one can understand “that which Thou dost command” in terms of faith and love. The theological monergism and gracious character of God is demonstrated again by the Prayer Book. God doesn’t sit up in heaven demanding faith, hope, and love without working to grant us those things too. Perhaps the way to receive the “love of that which Thou dost command” is to look around us in our relationships: where have we been loved? Where is there opportunity to love? These are simple questions that are easy to ignore among our responsibilities and hardships. But the seed is there. The promise of God’s righteousness awaits its fulfillment in human life.

Each Sunday of the year, the Book of Common Prayer appoints a special prayer for the week called a Collect. They are gems of devotion, theology, and turns of phrase. For the summer’s long green Season After Pentecost, I want to compare the current BCP collect appointed according to the calendar date with its older counterpart appointed according to the Sundays after Trinity, looking for connections that can yeild insight on holiness and the Christian life.

Here’s a link to all entries.

The Collect of the Day: Sunday, August 30, 2026

• Proper XVII After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• XIII Sunday After Trinity — Old Books of Common Prayer

Proper XVII (Old VII Trinity)

Lord of all power and might,
the author and giver of all good things:
Graft in our hearts the love of Your Name;
increase in us true religion;
nourish us with all goodness;
and bring forth in us the fruit of good works;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

XIII Trinity (1979 Proper XXVI)

Almighty and merciful God,
of Whose only gift it cometh
that Thy faithful people do unto Thee true and laudable service;
Grant, we beseech Thee,
that we may so faithfully serve Thee in this life,
that we fail not finally to attain Thy heavenly promises;
through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Both of these Collects have an ancient pedigree in the Gelasian sacramentaries of the ancient Latin Church.1 The older version of Proper XVII appeared back in June for Seventh Trinity this year. The 1979 version alters the old version: in the final petition, “Bring forth in us the fruit of good works” replaces VII Trinity’s “and of Thy great mercy keep us in the same.” “Good works” in the 1979 version provides a parallel to “good things” in the invocation, and establishes a link between what God gives and the things a Christian can do. Good works are an outgrowth of God’s gifts. Indeed, the word good is repeated three times in this Collect: good things… all goodness… good works.

The Rev. Corwin Roach claims that the opening phrase, “Lord of all power and might,” is Cranmer’s paraphrase of a common Hebrew phrase in the Old Testament that could be transliterated YHWH Sabaoth, or the Lord of Hosts—the heavenly armies who enact His will.2 This Collect then is perhaps where the contemporary translation of the Sanctus originates, which renders Lord God of Hosts as “God of power and might.” There is thus a divine militancy to the phrase that opens the Collect’s invocation. It places an edge on God’s power that is invoked: in order for God to be “the author and giver of all good things,” God fights for us. “YHWH is a man of war; YHWH is his name” (Exodus 15.3). So God is good not only in the things He wishes to give us, but also in the fierceness of His commitment to do so.

Roach, in reflecting on Proper XVII (via its original placement for VII Trinity), points out an allusion to the famously comforting James 1.17: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (KJV).

There is another reference to James with the petition “increase in us true religion”:

If any one thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is vain. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (1.26-27 RSV)

So the petition of Proper XVII, “increase in us true religion,” with its allusion to James 1’s exhortation to servicing the marginalized, can be understood as a way of understanding what it means to “do unto Thee true and laudable service” from XIII Trinity’s prayer, or indeed “the fruit of good works.”

The notion and vocabulary of gift links together Proper XVII with XIII Trinity by coincidence for this Sunday. It is by God’s gift alone “it cometh that Thy faithful people do unto Thee true and laudable service.” This is one of the more beautiful phases of the BCP tradition. And its beauty also reveals a basic truth of Christianity. Religion can be summed up for the Christian as service to God. Service to God must be true in the sense of being faithful; and in the sense of being merciful to people who need mercy. Both Collects teach the Church how to pray for this consistency, so that the gifts received from “the Father of lights” may be reflected as light to a dark world—a light that can be shone with “no variableness.”

Subscribe now

Each Sunday of the year, the Book of Common Prayer appoints a special prayer for the week called a Collect. They are gems of devotion, theology, and turns of phrase. For the summer’s long green Season After Pentecost, I want to compare the current BCP collect appointed according to the calendar date with its older counterpart appointed according to the Sundays after Trinity, looking for connections that can yeild insight on holiness and the Christian life.

The Collect of the Day — Sunday, August 23, 2026

• Proper XVI After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• XII Sunday After Trinity — Old Books of Common Prayer

Proper XVI (1928 BCP: Tuesday After Pentecost)

Grant, O merciful God, that Your Church,
being gathered together in unity by Your Holy Spirit,
may show forth Your power among all peoples,
to the glory of Your Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

XII Trinity (1979 Proper XXII)

Almighty and everlasting God,
Who art always more ready to hear than we to pray,
and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve;
Pour down upon us the abundance of Thy mercy;
forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid,
and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask,
but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ,
Thy Son, our Lord. Amen.

Just as Twelfth Trinity follows Eleventh Trinity in the classical BCP collects cycle, the 1979 system rearranges these collects so that they follow each other: XI Trinity is assigned to Proper XXI (the last Sunday of September) and XII Trinity to Proper XXII (the first Sunday of October, which is the 4th this year). I wonder if there is significance to that sequence.

Regardless, XII Trinity stirs in me a sense of beauty and awe in its emphasis on human unworthiness. I am reminded of one of my favorite collects assigned to Lent: “Almighty God, Who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves” (Lent III, 1979 BCP; Lent II, old BCPs). There is also a resemblance of XII Trinity’s Collect to that of Proper XI which appeared back in July:1 “mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask.” As the BCP does many times, the acknowledgement of human weakness highlights divine strength: when we are not gracious to each other, or gracious even to ourselves, God is faithful, giving “more than either we desire or deserve.”

In reflection on this collect, the Episcopal priest and seminary professor Corwin Roach wrote in the 1950s, “Instead of being a barrier to God’s presence, however, our sense of sin can be the door by which we come to Him. It will enable us to break up the fallow ground. (Jeremiah 4:3).”2 That verse reads: “Break up your fallow ground, / and sow not among thorns” (KJV). There is a prophetic encouragement to the Church to pray boldly for things we care about, to open up an opportunity for God’s grace to break through.

I have been struggling in private prayer lately, suffering from depression and feeling like I am talking to a blank wall. It is not the first time, nor will it be the last—the condition of our praying reflects the condition of our hearts and minds. Twelfth Trinity’s Collect helps me to understand my condition better and experience the Lord’s compassion. It encourages me to keep asking and to plant my prayers in God’s character rather than my own strength.

This sense of trust appears in the 1979 BCP’s collect for this Sunday: it asks for God’s power to be demonstrated to the whole world. But what will activate God’s power? The Church’s gathering: “Grant, O merciful God, that Your Church, being gathered together in unity by Your Holy Spirit, may show forth Your power among all peoples…” Coming together as a Church, as a community or even the very aspiration of community, is understood by this Collect as the condition where God’s power can be manifested. We are not alone: God wants us to be with Him, and He also wants us to be with each other. Being with other people is essential to life and flourishing. For the Christian, being especially with other Christian believers when they love us and delight our presence, is the key evidence that God is He Who “art wont to give.”

Subscribe now

Each Sunday of the year, the Book of Common Prayer appoints a special prayer for the week called a Collect. They are gems of devotion, theology, and turns of phrase. For the summer’s long green Season After Pentecost, I want to compare the current BCP collect appointed according to the calendar date with its older counterpart appointed according to the Sundays after Trinity, looking for connections that can yeild insight on holiness and the Christian life.

The Collect of the Day: Sunday, August 16, 2026

• Proper XV After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• XI Sunday After Trinity — Old Books of Common Prayer

8/16. Proper XV (Old II Easter)

Almighty God,
You have given Your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin,
and also an example of godly life:
Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of His redeeming work,
and to follow daily in the blessed steps of His most holy life;
through Jesus Christ Your Son our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

XI Trinity (1979 Proper XXI)

O God,
Who declarest Thy almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity;
Mercifully grant unto us such a measure of Thy grace,
that we, running the way of Thy commandments,
may obtain Thy gracious promises,
and be made partakers of Thy heavenly treasure;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Before the 1979 Prayer Book, Proper XV used to appear every year in the Second Sunday After Easter (i.e. the Sunday designated the Third Sunday of Easter by the 1979 system).1 I personally believe the older placement in the Easter season gives it a grander dignity, because Proper XV’s collect is all about the atonement. Atonement is a word of reconciliation, and in fact is rather unique to English; many other languages simply use “reconciliation.” The question of the term atonement is how Christ’s righteous, gracious, compassionate character and benefits are applied to His disciples. The answer of the Collect for Proper XV is that Christ is a “a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life.” The once for all gift of Christ’s salvation is a twofold gift of Himself: He shares Himself by dying for our sins, and He shares Himself by being the pattern under which a Christian must live—this notion of a pattern conforming to character is the logic behind the older Collect’s language of “ensample” (an old-fashioned word for pattern) and the emphasis on obeying God’s commandments. The coincidence of XI Trinity and Proper XV being side by side on this particular Sunday creates a great pair of images: “follow daily in the blessed steps” with “running the way of Thy commandments.” I wonder if the latter phrase is borrowed from Psalm 119: “I will run the way of your commandments, for you have set my heart at liberty” (Psalm 119.32 BCP79). Walking with Jesus is a popular image of discipleship; but running intensifies the image into one of joy and abandon.

The twofold articulation of the benefits of Christ is key to Christian living: we live a Christian life by receiving the benefits of the Cross and the Empty Tomb, and also by walking in Christ’s steps. All of a Christian’s life can be summarized in learning how to do both these things. There is an “active” and “passive” component. God understands our weakness: we live according to what has been received. Atonement happens once for all, but it is received and applied over a lifetime. The one and the many are reconciled, as a Body’s head has many members. The end of this life, by coincidence, is represented by the Collect for Eleventh Trinity (which will come in Proper XXI in the 1979 system, the last Sunday of September): “partakers of Thy heavenly treasure.” So a past, present, and future redemption is covered by these two collects side by side. The past is represented by the phrase “You have given… a sacrifice for sin”; the present in “receive thankfully,” “follow daily,” and “running the way”; and the future in “may obtain… and be made partakers.” So the twofold gift is now threefold.

Subscribe now

Each Sunday of the year, the Book of Common Prayer appoints a special prayer for the week called a Collect. They are gems of devotion, theology, and turns of phrase. For the summer’s long green Season After Pentecost, I want to compare the current BCP collect appointed according to the calendar date with its older counterpart appointed according to the Sundays after Trinity, looking for connections that can yeild insight on holiness and the Christian life.

The Collect of the Day: Sunday, August 9, 2026

• Proper XIV After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• X Sunday After Trinity — Old Books of Common Prayer

Proper XIV (Old IX Trinity)

Grant to us, Lord, we pray,
the spirit to think and do always those things that are right,
that we, who cannot exist without You,
may by You be enabled to live according to Your will;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

X Trinity

Let Thy merciful ears, O Lord,
be open to the prayers of Thy humble servants;
and, that they may obtain their petitions,
make them to ask such things as shall please Thee;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

By coincidence, the Collect for Proper XIV this year was IX Trinity on the previous Sunday (Aug 2). This is one of those happy coincidences, since one has a chance to pray the same Collect of the Day two weeks in a row. For this Sunday what strikes me is Proper XIV’s clause “that we.. may by You be enabled to live according to Your will.” The priority of God’s initiative strikes again for how the Book of Common Prayer envisions a Christian life. This conviction of the priority of God’s grace fits well with X Trinity’s simple petition. Like VIII Trinity back in July 26, X Trinity’s petition is disarming and simple: it can be paraphrased “Dear God, please hear our prayers and let us ask for the things You like that will make You happy.” This taps into a vision of prayer that skeptics of Christianity and theism accuse of being crude. But at the end of the day, Christian faith often is that simple—it does not need to be proud of its sophistication, but sincere in its trust. Sometimes the notion that prayer is petitionary embarrasses Christians who struggle believing that God is too big, too remote, to care about personal life. I’ve noticed many Christians or spiritual seekers interested in practices of contemplation sometimes aspire to escape the crude dimensions of petition and desire in prayer. A good desire for intimacy and depth can be distorted by the flesh into a desire to escape the basics of a relationship with God, to appear profound.

Yet, first of all, there is an audacious crudity to Christian spirituality: God is involved in our flesh, in both the literal and Pauline senses. And God does care about what we want, even when it is simple. Christ says, “Indeed, the very hairs of your head are numbered” (Luke 12.7 NIV). One really can pray for the hairs on their head. (Maybe you want a better routine, a better style; or some of you just want more hairs for God to count.) Psalm 131 models the same trust: “Like a weaned child, I am content. Israel, put your hope in the LORD” (vv. 2c–3a NIV). If prayer cannot begin here with an attitude like like Psalm 131 or X Trinity, then can it even grow “into maturity” (Eph 4.13 NRSV)? The simple must precede the advanced. X Trinity models a way to begin the journey into maturity, and a way to consummate it: within the arms of God. In the beginning, God is there enabling Christians to pray, to desire towards God, and God is helping Christians pray through the thick and thin of life so that what they ask will be “such things as please Thee,” desiring with God.

Subscribe now

Each Sunday of the year, the Book of Common Prayer appoints a special prayer for the week called a Collect. They are gems of devotion, theology, and turns of phrase. For the summer’s long green Season After Pentecost, I want to compare the current BCP collect appointed according to the calendar date with its older counterpart appointed according to the Sundays after Trinity, looking for connections that can yeild insight on holiness and the Christian life.

The Collect of the Day
Sunday, August 2, 2026

• Proper XIII After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• IX Sunday After Trinity — Old Books of Common Prayer

Proper XIII
(Old XVI Trinity)

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.

IX Trinity
(1979 Proper XIV)

Grant to us, Lord, we beseech Thee,
the spirit to think and do always such things as are right;
that we, who cannot do any thing that is good without Thee,
may by Thee be enabled to live according to Thy will;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Proper XIII uses the language of “Your Church” to refer to Christians, which stands out to me. Its petition is for safety and purity: “cleanse and defend Your Church.” This is a powerful double petition that shows how the desire for God to protect the Church is connected with God’s desire for the Church to live righteously. Being cleansed is related to being defended. Thus the Christian understands that seeking purity is how one can be protected by God.

“Purity” for many reasons has a traumatic connotation, e.g. the purity culture of previous generations rightly condemned by many testimonials. Many people perceive Christianity as a religion that condemns all people outside of its boundaries, due to negative experiences with Christians who believe simply claiming faith or affiliating with the correct tradition grants them purity. (They may learn someday that Christ’s judgment begins with the Church.) These are twisted forms of purity. But in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ pronounced purity as a blessing, not as a curse: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt 5.8). What is this purity?

IX Trinity (which will actually is repeated the following Sunday the 9th as Proper XIV in the 1979 Prayer Book) provides a strong answer with its petition for “the spirit to think and do always such things as are right.” The word “spirit” is not capitalized in the Prayer Book, but it is not a stretch to interpret this petition as referring to the Holy Spirit, since a constant theme in Christianity and therefore the BCP is that humanity needs God to connect with God. Doing righteousness, and having a righteous heart—fully internalizing and externalizing the values of God’s loving goodness and His merciful Kingdom—is how a Christian can become pure. This purity is an indicative, something granted by Christ: “Blessed are the pure in heart…”; the Gift of the Holy Spirit poured on the baptized. And this purity is also an imperative, a command to live righteously that can be salt and light in the world. “Seek, and ye shall find” (Matthew 7.7 KJV).

Subscribe now

Let us pray.

Almighty God,
to You all hearts are open, all desires known, and from You no secrets are hid;
Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love You, and worthily magnify Your holy Name;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.1

[As an opening hook, I ad libbed a summary of Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017), particularly Luke Skywalker’s character arc where he has hid from his failure in shame and cut himself off from the Force.]

This passage of First Kings is one of the greatest moments of the Old Testament. It’s one of my favorite stories of the Bible. But we only got a snippet of it today. It’s better you have a sense of what Elijah the Prophet has been up to.

You see, Elijah has been running away.

Elijah is remembered as one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament because he opposed idolatry—specifically, the great idolatry of Ahab and Jezebel who ruled the kingdom of Israel in the north.

In First Kings chapter 18—the chapter right before our reading—God calls Elijah to challenge Ahab and Jezebel to a duel of prophets. Ahab and Jezebel, though they are Israelites, are idolators, and they call upon their own court prophets who worship the storm god Baal. The court prophets cry to Baal to accept their sacrifice, and nothing happens. When Elijah prays to Almighty God, God comes down at once in a great flame, consuming Elijah’s sacrifice completely. It looks like a rousing success. Ahab is completely humiliated. But this displeases his partner in crime Jezebel. So Jezebel threatens Elijah’s life.

When Jezebel threatens Elijah, the prophet becomes afraid and runs away. He goes far away to the wilderness of the south, which is the Bible’s way of saying he booked it as far from Jezebel’s kingdom as he could go—if you traced a line in those little maps of ancient Israel you can find in most Bibles, Elijah has travelled from the top toward the bottom. It’s like if today the President put out a hit on your life and you ran away to the tip of South America. So Elijah tells the Lord,

It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.^{I Kgs 19.4}

It’s that serious for our poor prophet. He is not just terrified of Jezebel’s threat to his life; but he is in despair. He thinks he is a failure, and that his life is no good. He wants to be alone and die.

So God does a strange thing and guides Elijah to go further south. Further toward the bottom of the map. The place of his despair will be the place of his redemption. God gives Elijah food and guides the prophet into the wilderness forty days and forty nights, to a special mountain: Horeb. That’s where we begin the Old Testament lectionary today. The commandment:

Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD,
for the LORD is about to pass by.^{I Kgs 19.11 NRSV}

The place of his greatest struggle will also be the place of his greatest intimacy with God.

Mount Horeb is a mountain you know. A few of you probably know where I am going with this. Another name for this mountain is Mount Sinai. That’s right, God has led the prophet to the same place where He gave the Law to Moses and the Israelites. Exodus calls it Sinai, while Deuteronomy calls it Horeb. Most of the books of the Old Testament, such as the Books of Kings, prefer the name from Deuteronomy. Mount Horeb is the mountain of revelation, the mountain of glory, and the mountain of struggle.

So we are in the same place as Moses and the Israelites when God led them out of slavery in Egypt. And there is a similar desperation, a similar despair, from the people of God.

The place of their greatest struggle was also the place of their greatest intimacy with God.

Then the Lord tells Elijah He will “pass by.” Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by. That term, pass by, is another clue that God is doing with Elijah the same thing He did with Moses and the Israelites.

Now there was a great wind,
so strong that it was splitting mountains
and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD,
but the LORD was not in the wind;
and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake;
and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire;
and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.^{vv. 11-12}

The version we have today, the NRSV, uses a sound of sheer silence, but the old King James Version puts it this way:

And after the fire a still small voice.

A still small voice. Beautiful. That’s how I’ll always remember this passage. That’s the key verse of this passage. Let’s say that together: a still small voice. I want you to remember that. But a sound of sheer silence is pretty good. Another translation I like says: A sound. Thin. Quiet.^CEB2 Others are plainer and say something like: A gentle whisper.^{NIV, NLT}3

The point of a still small voice is the juxtaposition: in this chapter Almighty God didn’t demonstrate how He was Almighty with the flashy stuff, but with the small stuff. He already gave Elijah the fire in the battle with Baal’s prophets. Now Elijah needs something different.

God is doing for Elijah what He did for Moses long ago: a glimpse of His presence. God told Moses, No man can see me and live,^{Cf. Exod 33.20} but God let Moses see Him anyway.

This passing-by of Almighty God is the most immense privilege of the saints of the Old Testament: to see the LORD. To be intimate with Him. The majesty and the intimacy come together. God is glory and God is love. They are one. You see, the Bible is full of patterns. It is a kaleidoscope. It is a web. It is an ecosystem. Every part fits together. Sometimes you get to really see it. This passage of First Kings is one of those times. Each part magnifying the other, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.”

I know what it feels like to be Elijah. I know what it feels like to be scared, and alone, and to avoid your problems. I think some of you know as well. I have wanted what Elijah wanted, and God met me there. I find human beings are very good at avoiding things. It is a real struggle. It doesn’t stop being hard. Even this week I found myself struggling. God takes mercy on this, because He has looked into the depths of our heart and knows us completely. “From You no secrets are hid,” says the Book of Common Prayer. That phrase can be one of the deepest comforts for anyone who suffers.

The place of your greatest struggle can also be the place of your greatest intimacy with God.

When God passes by Moses, He proclaims Who He Is. This is from Exodus 34:

The LORD, the LORD,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.^{Exod 34.6 NRSV}

That’s not just Who God Is, but Who God Is For Us.

I said God passed by Moses and He passed by Elijah. There is one more instance today. It is Christ our Lord. He passes by the disciples on the sea. In a moment of fear and despair, He is there, doing the impossible. There is the paradox of a still small voice, and now the paradox of a man walking on water. It is no matter for God.

I had said the Bible is full of patterns. When you don’t see the patterns, you don’t see God. You won’t hear God’s still small voice to you. Matthew’s Gospel wants you to see that what Christ the Lord is doing for His disciples is the same thing the Lord did for Moses and Elijah long ago. God is faithful, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. We sink, and He takes our hand, telling us, You of little faith, why did you doubt? We are of little faith, so God makes His voice still and small, maybe even a sound of sheer silence when we are too weak to speak our mind. But as another part of the New Testament says, if we are faithless, he remains faithful.^{II Timothy 2.13}

Take a look at how the Gospel ends: a confession of faith from the disciples, the essence of every creed: Truly you are the Son of God.^{Mt 14.33} That statement is our life’s goal as Christians. You and I might not be there yet, but we are being led. The pattern for Moses and Elijah in the desert; and Peter in the water; it is the pattern for you and me. Let’s go see it.

[I then concluded with an extempore prayer based on the themes of the sermon.] Amen.

I saw the new Spider-Man movie, Brand New Day, on Thursday. Opening weekend. Who’s seen it?2

Brand New Day is the fourth Spider-Man movie made in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This version of Spider-Man first appeared in 2016. So he might feel new to some of you, but this version of Peter Parker has been around for ten years. A kid who saw this version of Spider-Man at the age of 10 is now a college-aged adult.

In the previous movie, his only family member died. Peter almost broke the universe with a bungled magic spell, and he to fix it with the help of the magician Dr. Strange using a different spell that would make everyone forget about him, including all his superhero allies, his best friend, and worst of all, the love of his life. He ends the movie alone.

Peter begins Brand New Day years later the same way. The Friendly and Lonely Neighborhood Spider-Man. In order to avoid thinking about what he’s lost, he has thrown himself into his work. He has no family, no friends, and no allies. He thinks this is what he wants in life. But we know this is no way to live. We know that Peter has to go through a journey. You could say Peter’s journey in Brand New Day is to learn how to want more, to want better. He must learn that what he wants isn’t actually good for him.

Believe it or not, I’m not here to talk about Spider-Man today. I wanted to talk about prayer. Prayer is one of the most basic facts of being a Christian. Theologians and saints have compared praying to breathing—what does breathing do? It’s the thing that allows you live. Prayer is like that too. The life of a Christian is called life in the Spirit by the apostle Paul in Romans, and life in the Spirit is fundamentally the life of prayer. Paul says in another letter, First Thessalonians, Pray without ceasing.3 Just as one is alive by breathing without ceasing, so too does life as a Christian mean to pray without ceasing.

But that’s the elephant in the room: most of us are not great at praying, myself included. Our breathing is sick. We have lung disease of the soul. We all struggle with prayer. Here are some ways I struggle: I struggle with prayer by avoiding it, a form of fear. I struggle by convincing myself I don’t need it, which is a form of pride. I struggle with consistency. I struggle with focus: making the time for a practice. I struggle with doubt, and despair: is God really there, or am I talking to myself? Is this really working? Does any of this matter? I’m sure you relate to what I’m saying. All these are ways of making our breathing painful, halting, and harsh.

Most of all I think we struggle like Peter Parker: living our life, throwing ourselves into activity, pursuing goals we think should be our deepest desires of our heart. In other words, with prayer we struggle with what we even want. And God takes mercy on all this.

To be a human being is to be a desiring creature. God created us for Himself.4 He created us for a relationship with Him. But after Adam, we are bundles and tangles of desires: physical, social, psychological, spiritual. I say tangles because they’re not all in harmony.

God takes mercy on our desires. He gives us ways to untangle the knot. That’s fundamental to living a Christian life: unclenching our fists, letting God untangle the knots of desires with His tender mercies. We start this process by listening to the Bible. The world of the Bible is a world of desire and struggle where the Lord addresses us. The Lord addresses us because He loves us and wishes to heal the sickness of the soul. We are not really alone. Prayer happens to God, but it happens with God too. That’s why we have the Lord’s Prayer, as one big example. Jesus taught us how to pray.

And that’s why I’m so drawn to the Psalm today: it shows us a good prayer. This is the last two-thirds of Psalm 145, toward the end of the Psalter. The Psalm today teaches us that fundamental aspect of prayer: what to desire. Look at the Psalm. You have my permission to check your bulletin.

19 The LORD is near to those who call upon him,
to all who call upon him faithfully.

20 He fulfills the desire of those who fear him;
he hears their cry, and helps them.

There are one hundred fifty Psalms in the Bible, and they’re all prayers. They are made by human beings. They are not sacred in spite of being human, but because they are human. They are sacred because God has inspired each Psalm to describe a different facet of the human condition. The Psalms cannot be ignored. Learning how to pray like a Christian means learning how to pray the Psalms. That’s why they’re in our worship tradition, why they’re shoved in your face every Sunday whether you like it or not. The Church is saying, “Learn from the wisdom of God and pray these prayers.” Learn how to breathe.

Psalm 145 is all about learning how to want the Kingdom of God. It is the central theme of this Psalm: praising God for His power and His kingdom. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus prays, Thy Kingdom come. Psalm 145 is like an expanded version of that. It is a prayer of the Kingdom.

13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom;
your dominion endures throughout all ages.

But what is the Kingdom of God? Do I just mean heaven? Do I just mean something for later? No, the Kingdom of God is something that God makes happen now, in this life, and works to grow and grow in us until the next life. When I say the Kingdom of God, I don’t just mean the afterlife, but I mean life the way God intends it. Life the way God intends it is a life where God is in charge. If life the way God intends it is a life where God is in charge, then we can say life the way God intends it is a life where God is king. Hence: Kingdom of God.

Is it good for God to be King? It would not be good for a human being to be king, because human beings are sinners and as I said before, our desires are not perfect—it’s why power corrupts us rather than perfects us. But God is not a human being. God is God. God’s power does not corrupt, but it heals, sanctifies, protects. That’s why I love verse 8, where this portion of Psalm 145 begins:

8 The LORD is gracious and full of compassion,
slow to anger and of great kindness.

These words are from Exodus 34. They are the exact words God told Moses when He gave the Israelites the Law on Mount Sinai after freeing them from slavery. What God does always expresses Who He Is,5 because God is not a sinner and God is not a liar.

So the Kingdom of God is life the way God wants it to be, beginning now, completed in the afterlife. Psalm 145 praises God for this power: life the way God wants it to be is a life of justice. It is a life of peace. It is a life where no one is destitute.

15 The LORD upholds all those who fall;
he lifts up those who are bowed down.

16 The eyes of all wait upon you, O LORD,
and you give them their food in due season.

17 You open wide your hand
and satisfy the needs of every living creature.

The life of the Kingdom looks the most like the life of Jesus. Today He fed people with loaves and fishes. It’s one of the Lord’s most famous miracles, found in all four Gospels. In today’s secular age of science and so-called rationality, sometimes we’re uncomfortable with miracles in the Bible, thinking we’re smarter than that and trying to wave it away. What if we took this seriously? A miracle isn’t about God suspending what is is normal in the world, but about showing us the world the way it’s supposed to look—because the world is supposed to look like the Kingdom. It is supposed to be a world where everyone is fed and where every tear is wiped, as the Book of Revelation says at the end of the Bible.

I said Psalm 145 today teaches us what to desire. It sets a goal in front of us: here is a prayer where the Psalmist wants what God wants. One of my favorite sayings about prayer comes from a New Testament scholar:

Praying is not about getting God to give us what we want; it is about learning to want what God wants to give.6

God has so much to give us. What He wants to give most of all is Himself. That’s Who Jesus is for us, that’s Who the Holy Spirit is for us: God’s gift of Himself, that will heal what is sick and repair what is broken. Learning how to be a Christian is about learning how to want these things, from this life into eternity.

*To conclude, we prayed Psalm 145.10-13 in unison.* Amen.

Word count: ~1600

The Collect of the Day
Sunday, July 26, 2026

• Proper XII After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• VIII Sunday After Trinity — Old Books of Common Prayer

Proper XII
(Old IV Trinity)

O God, the protector of all who trust in You,
without Whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy:
Increase and multiply upon us Your mercy;
that, with You as our ruler and guide,
we may so pass through things temporal,
that we lose not the things eternal;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

VIII Trinity
(BCP 1979: Proper IV)

O God, Whose never-failing providence
ordereth all things both in heaven and earth;
We humbly beseech Thee to put away from us all hurtful things,
and to give us those things which are profitable for us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

These collects have appeared earlier in the season, especially Proper XII back at the end of June for the IV Sunday After Trinity. I previously wrote about how Proper XII’s language of temporal and eternal reminds me of a choice duality from the Sermon on the Mount: treasures on earth and treasures in heaven (Matthew 6.19-21).

I want to return to this language in a bit, but let me identify another strong duality in VIII Trinity’s collect: “all hurtful things” and “those things which are profitable for us.” This is such a simple prayer: “Dear God, keep me from pain. Give me good things. Amen.” One doesn’t need to be religious to understand that every human beings lives their life with these desires. We avoid pain. We pursue pleasure. We are animals, after all. But from a Christian point of view, human beings exist for more; and once again, one does not need to be religious to understand that. It’s like what the captain said in the climax of Pixar’s Wall-E (2008): “I don’t want to survive, I want to live!” He says this after realizing that humanity needed to descend from centuries of life aboard a spaceship full of creature comforts if they were to rebuild civilization on earth.

Recognizing pain and pleasure are foundational to life, and yet being captive to those impulses would make human life a matter of animal instinct rather than of dignity. Pain and pleasure are not equivalent to good and evil. To learn how live one’s life so that they are not constantly captive to the gut instincts of avoiding pain and gaining pleasure requires the faculty of wisdom. Gaining this kind of wisdom is a huge theme in Buddhism, I have learned recently, and I think Christianity provides its own powerful idiom, framework, teachings, and practices to live a good life, as opposed to merely a pleasurable life. “The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8.6 NIV).

Divine wisdom is the meaning behind the language in both collects of providence and guidance. Providence is another name for God’s wisdom in governing the cosmos. Providence guides, judges, divides. As Hebrews says, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Hebrews 4.14 RSV.) With God as “our ruler and guide,” “all things in heaven and earth” can be ordered toward what is our good, what will last beyond the transitory chasing of pleasure and pain.

“Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes,” says Christ (Matthew 6.20) A relationship with Christ is about learning how to cling to what is eternal, and “may so pass through things temporal.” The wisdom to judge between eternal and temporal is the deeper meaning behind asking the Lord to “put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which are profitable for us.” A Christian life desires to see underneath appearances of pleasure and pain to see what is truly hurtful and truly profitable in light of eternity.

Subscribe now

I will update this week by week so that all my posts in this series can be accessed here. One stop shopping.

Subscribe now

The Collects of the Day for Summertime 2026 in the Season After Pentecost

May 31. Trinity Sunday

JUNE

6/7. Proper V After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer
I^st Sunday After Trinity — Old Prayer Books

6/14 — Proper VI (1979) • II^nd Trinity (Old)

6/21 — Proper VII (1979) • III^rd Trinity (Old)

6/28 — Proper VIII (1979) • IV^th Trinity (Old)

JULY

7/5 — Proper IX • V Trinity

7/12 — Proper X • VI Trinity

7/19 — Proper XI • VII Trinity

7/26 — Proper XII • VIII Trinity

AUGUST

8/2 — Proper XIII • IX Trinity

8/9 — Proper XIV • X Trinity

8/16 — Proper XV • XI Trinity

8/23 — Proper XVI • XII Trinity

8/30 — Proper XVII • XIII Trinity

SEPTEMBER

9/6 — Proper XVIII • XIV Trinity

9/13 — Proper XIX • XV Trinity

Sunday, July 19, 2026 — The Collect of the Day

• Proper XI After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• VII Sunday After Trinity — Old Books of Common Prayer

Proper XI

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom,
You know our necessities before we ask
and our ignorance in asking:
Have compassion on our weakness,
and mercifully give us those things
which for our unworthiness we dare not,
and for our blindness we cannot ask;
through the worthiness of Your Son Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

VII Trinity
(BCP 1979: Proper XVII)

Lord of all power and might,
Who art the author and giver of all good things;
Graft in our hearts the love of Thy Name,
increase in us true religion,
nourish us with all goodness,
and of Thy great mercy keep us in the same;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The 1979 collect was written by Thomas Cranmer. It appears in the old Prayer Books, but not as a Collect of the Day. In the first Prayer Book (1549), the collect was originally used to conclude Ante-Communion (the first half of a Communion service celebrated as its own service). Then BCP editions after 1549 placed it in a section of supplementary prayers for Morning and Evening Prayer.1

Learning this Collect originates in the 16th century Reformation helps me appreciate its content more. I can see how it expresses a key theme of Reformed spirituality: the preeminence of God’s grace that undergirds all human activity and affections toward God. We need God to ask for the good things God wants to give us; and so the Collect asks God to give us that which “for our blindness we cannot ask.” This is a radical proposition, consistent with a Reformed anthropology emphasizing the impoverishment of the human condition after the Fall. If we cannot ask for our necessities, God must be involved in how we ask for them, to gift us the very capacity in heart, mind, and soul to ask for them. God is in the business of shaping desire, not just supplying needs. Human desire is not neutral, but the raw occasion for grace.

Notice the fourfold proliferation of words used to describe the human condition: “our ignorance in asking”; “our weakness”; “our unworthiness”; “our blindness.” The fourfold “our” is relentless and can be misunderstood as pessimistic. I know that sometimes the idiom of unworthiness in Christianity is hurtful to people who have been told by Christians that they are inherently worthless. But the Collect is not saying that we have no value and neither does Christianity. The point is not to denigrate the value of human beings, but to say that salvation is not a human accomplishment. The language of unworthiness must be understood in terms of soteriology rather than anthropology—that is to say, “unworthiness” is vocabulary belonging to the realm of how human beings are saved rather than how human beings are created. Human beings were created in the image of God. We are always unbelievably precious, even when we cannot believe this or feel this ourselves.

Seventh Trinity’s collect is reassigned by the 1979 BCP to Proper XVII, which is August 30 this year. The Proper XVII version uses a different petition in the last clause though: not “keep us in the same” but “bring forth in us the fruit of good works.” So we are seeing the Anglican original in this version. The Episcopal priest Corwin Roach highlighted for me the significance of the four verbs in the petitions: “Graft… increase… nourish… keep.”2 They are are actions of God toward humanity.

These four verbs, four acts of God for a single purpose, can be aligned with the four “ours” of Proper XI this Sunday. In the fallen human solidarity of Adam, God intervenes to create a new solidarity in Jesus Christ. Christianity exists as the hope of this new Way of being human. “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.” (Romans 5.15 RSV.) The seed was sown, the ground broken, by Christ, and He has kept plowing, and kept digging. He gets dirt underneath His fingernails. This is how Christ is worthy.

Subscribe now

Sunday, July 12, 2026

• Proper X After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• VI^th Sunday After Trinity — Old Books of Common Prayer

Proper X
(Old BCPs: I^st Sunday After Epiphany)

O Lord,
mercifully receive the prayers of Your people who call upon You,
and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do,
and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

VI Trinity
(BCP 1979: Easter VI)

O God, Who hast prepared for those who love Thee
such good things as pass man’s understanding;
Pour into our hearts such love toward Thee,
that we, loving Thee above all things,
may obtain Thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Like so many other collects, Proper X is prayer about prayer. The 1979’s Proper X this week, reshuffled from the First Sunday After the Epiphany, captures a basic sense of why these kinds of prayers are named collects (from the Latin collecta): they gather up the prayers of the congregation. The idea in times past may have been that the church gathers, praying silently, before the worship leader prays aloud the Collect. Once again the Book of Common Prayer reveals its hand as more than a mere engineer’s manual. In the spirituality of the Prayer Book, you learn to pray as you pray. Listening intently to a Collect during the service is a form of prayer based on the principle of receiving the words as a gift crystallizing many movements of the heart.

This crystallization is a key theme of Proper X. It asks us a simple question to focus on: when we pray, do we know what we are supposed to do? Do we know what we are supposed to want? Do we know our goal? Many times we do not.

My point is not meant to paralyze Christians in a state of discouragement or negligence, but to keep us sensitive to a fact of the soul: we need God’s guidance to receive God’s guidance. The concluding verse of Psalm 119 says, “I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost; search for your servant” (119.176). The necessary comfort and counterweight to one’s acknowledgement that they need more clarity on “what things they ought to do” is that God will “mercifully receive” our prayers, and give “grace and power” for the Christian life of searching and questioning. The New Testament scholar David deSilva describes prayer this way, beautifully:

Praying is not about getting God to give us what we want; it is about learning to want what God wants to give.1

What does God want to give? Here is where the old VI Trinity collect complements Proper X this Sunday: “above all things,” love for God is the one thing needful for a Christian life. And this love for God is described as an awareness and desire for “such good things” to His people that “hast been prepared” for them. Notice the collect’s use of I Corinthians 2.9, itself quoting a Greek version of Isaiah 64:

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. (KJV)

Even if a person feels like their love for God is coming from themselves, a person’s own love for God is also mysteriously a God-given way of experiencing God, because God is love. “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5.5 NIV).

To love God in the sense of this Collect, knowing and desiring the good things of God, feels related to John Calvin’s famous use of the term piety in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559):

By piety I mean that union of reverence and love to God which the knowledge of his benefits inspires. For, until men feel that they owe everything to God, that they are cherished by his paternal care, and that he is the author of all their blessings, so that nought is to be looked for away from him, they will never submit to him in voluntary obedience.
—Institutes 1.2.1 (trans. Beveridge)

I also love the Collect’s phrase “loving Thee above all things”—it reminds me that there is an indispensable element of ascension in the Christian life. “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3.2 RSV). Sixth Trinity’s collect was reshuffled to the Sixth Sunday of Easter season, the Sunday preceding Ascension Day,2 possibly due to this theme of being lifted up.

But does love of God “above all things” mean ignoring daily life and responsibility? No. Rather, love for God can become the new “soul,” a hidden divine power so to speak, within our life’s activities. Perhaps this principle is why an extra phrase was added in the petition of the 1979 version of this collect: from “that we, loving Thee above all things” to “that we, loving You in all things and above all things.” To love God above the things that are on earth is simultaneously and mysteriously to love God among things that are on earth. And so we are brought back in a holy circle to the question of Proper X’s Collect, animated anew with piety.

Subscribe now

Each Sunday of the year, the Book of Common Prayer appoints a special prayer for the week called a Collect. They are gems of devotion, theology, and turns of phrase. For the summer’s long green Season After Pentecost, I want to compare the current BCP collect appointed according to the calendar date with its older counterpart appointed according to the Sundays after Trinity, looking for connections that can yeild insight on holiness and the Christian life.

July 5, 2026

• Proper 9 After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• 5th Sunday After Trinity — Old (pre-1979) Book of Common Prayer editions

Proper IX After Pentecost
(BCP pp. 178/230-31)

O God,
You have taught us to keep all your commandments
by loving You and our neighbor:
Grant us the grace of Your Holy Spirit,
that we may be devoted to You with our whole heart,
and united to one another with pure affection;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

V Sunday After Trinity
(cf. Proper 3 After Pentecost, BCP 1979)

Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee,
that the course of this world
may be so peaceably ordered by Thy governance,
that Thy Church may joyfully serve Thee in all godly quietness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The BCP 1979 shuffled V Trinity to Proper III, the Sunday closest to May 25, which means it is rarely prayed on a Sunday unless Easter comes very early. I think the coincidence of these Proper IX and V Trinity being the same Sunday this year allows one to compare and unite the virtue of love with the desire for peace in their collects.

The 1979 Collect’s guiding theme is Christ’s Summary of the Law, also known as the Great Commandment. It appears in all the Synoptic Gospels: in Mark 12 and Matthew 22 during a dispute with a scribe (Mark) or lawyer (Matthew), and in Luke 10 during an exchange with a lawyer that prompts the magnificent Parable of the Good Samaritan. Here’s Mark’s version:

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12.28-31 NRSV)

The Summary of the Law welds the famous Shema (Hebrew, “Hear”) of Deuteronomy 6.4-5, and the last clause of Leviticus 19.18 (a slice of that book’s Holiness Code). Matthew’s version is the one quoted by the Book of Common Prayer in the communion rite after the Collect for Purity (Rite I, p. 324). I included Mark’s because unlike Matthew it includes the opening phrase and proclamation of God’s oneness, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

Oneness is not just an attribute of God, but an attribute of life with God. The central theme and petition of Proper IX this week is one strong and complete thought, like many of the greatest Collects. To love God and to love neighbor is the banner of Christian life. But it is not a generic love, because this kind of formula is a summary of the Law. This is not a generic principle of life, but the covenantal banner of Jesus Christ’s Torah. It is continuous with Torah. It is one with Torah as the Lord is One with Himself; indeed, it is one just as these two commandments are ultimately one. This theme of union is picked up by the Collect’s petition: it asks for union with God and union with neighbor under the idiom of devotion of the “whole heart” and “pure affection.” The language of the “heart” in the Collect keeps the Deuteronomic character of what it means to love God—it is always a union of inward character with outward acts. Affection to the neighbor behaves similarly.

The central petition of V Trinity concerns the maintenance of peace. The phrase “godly quietness” sticks out to me and reminds me of a choice exhortation in I Thessalonians:

Now concerning love of the brothers and sisters… we urge you, brothers [and sisters], to do so more and more, to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you, so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one. (I Thess 4.9, 11-12 NRSV n.)

Given that the Collect asks for an orderly divine governance of society, I suspect a sharper and more civic-minded cross reference is the famous Pauline exhortation of I Timothy 2:

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour. (I Tim 2.1-3 KJV)

This is the exact same passage reference in the classical Prayer Books’ “Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church” (now called in the 1979 Rite I “the Prayers of the People”):

Almighty and everliving God, who in thy holy Word1 hast taught us to make prayers, and supplications, and to give thanks for all men: (1979 BCP p. 329)

I cannot help but think about this last Sunday’s proximity to July 4 and the frequent question of churches’ proper relationship to civil religion, which is sometimes proximate but never identical to Christian faith.2 At its best, churches want to pray for good order and peace in society, as V Trinity models. At its worst (more often than not), the state’s pursuit of “peace” in society is a false one enforced by violence and injustice, thus mocking the values of the Gospel. In many ages, the Church has confused “godly quietness” with a tolerance of injustice.3 The Church is caught between these two visions—St. Augustine of Hippo famously called these two visions and ways of life the City of God and the City of Man.4 The difference must be one of love. A true love of God and neighbor, which is to say a love modeled after God’s covenant love of humanity throughout the world of the Bible, can reveal whether the peace asked for in V Trinity is a true peace of the City of God or a false peace of the City of Man. Love cuts through the crap and allows Christians to see whether “the course of this world” is actually “peaceably ordered by Thy governance.”

Now may the Lord of peace Himself continually grant you peace in every circumstance. The Lord be with you all! (II Thessalonians 3.16 NASB2020)

Subscribe now

3

Another honest reflection comes from my friend the Rev. Tony Hunt and his recent displeasure at how a classic Church of England spiritual text envisioned holiness in society: “It was, perhaps, naive of me to think that even Jeremy Taylor would be immune from Anglicanism’s original sin.”

Tony Hunt

(Un)Holy Hierarchy

For my Lenten study I decided to read Jeremy Taylor’s The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living. In which are described the means and instruments of obtaining every virtue, and the remedies against every vice, and considerations serving to the resisting all temptations. Together with prayers containing the whole duty of a Christian and the parts of devotion …

Read more

4 months ago · 3 likes · Tony Hunt

Sunday, June 28, 2026

• Proper 8 After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• 4th Sunday After Trinity — Old (pre-1979) Book of Common Prayer editions

Proper VIII After Pentecost
1979 BCP pp. 178, 230

Almighty God,
You have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone:
Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching,
that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to You;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

IV Sunday After Trinity

O God, the protector of all that trust in Thee,
without Whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy;
Increase and multiply upon us Thy mercy;
that, Thou being our ruler and guide,
we may so pass through things temporal,
that we finally lose not the things eternal.
Grant this, O heavenly Father,
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Something many miss about the Proper VIII Collect is that it is adapted from an older collect for a fixed date. In the old Prayer Books, this was the Collect for the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude, celebrated October 28 every year. The wording for the 1979 BCP is exactly the same. Proper VIII After Pentecost in the 1979 BCP corresponds to the Sunday closest to June 29, which informed Prayer Book users should recognize as the major feast of two less obscure apostles: Peter and Paul. In this way the 1979 BCP keeps in a sly way the older placement of the Collect for an apostolic feast.

So little is written about Simon and Jude in the New Testament that I suspect their old proper Collect decides to exposit a general notion of apostleship rather than something specific to those two men. But in this generality lies the Collect’s strength. A Collect teaches us as we pray it. This Collect teaches us what apostleship means: to be built upon Christ. This way of life and posture of the heart is what is celebrated in all the Twelve. Whether the obscurity of Simon or Jude, or the fame (and infamy) of Peter and Paul, the Collect instructs believers that looking to the example of the apostles has a united foundation. I think there is encouragement to be found here in that, wherever a Christian finds themselves in life, God has prepared a common place for them in Christ. Obscurity in the eyes of the world does equate to a lack of value.

Another basic feature of Proper VIII is the heavy reliance on unsubtle allusions from Ephesians 2:

So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. (Eph 2.19-21 RSV)

This rich, direct, unapologetic quotation of the passage displays a common apostolic metaphor in the New Testament where the people of God are compared to a temple. Ephesians 2 is a Pauline use of the metaphor and in the spirit of June 29’s feast, there is also a Petrine example:

To whom coming, as unto a living stone… ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. (I Pet 2.4-5 KJV)

An organic collective image, the human body, and a collective image pertaining to civilization, the temple, are united to describe the people of God. Scripture takes two to become one. God is in the business of union and intimacy with humanity, and for God to be united to humanity, humanity must be united with itself. I do not know what this union looks like, but it must come from God. The image of “living stones” (I Pet 2.4) or a temple that “grows” up into holiness (Eph 2.21) is a strange one befitting God’s own life and holiness. It will look unnatural to worldly eyes. But, as Christians know from the Cross, “The stone that the builders rejected / has become the chief cornerstone. / This is the LORD’s doing” (Ps 118.22-23 NRSV).

The majority of my thoughts have been toward Proper VIII. How might the Collect for IV Trinity inform this Collect? The Fourth Sunday After Trinity was shuffled by the 1979 BCP to Proper XII (which will be coming up on July 26 this year). What strikes me is a biblical allusion to the Sermon on the Mount:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matt 6.19-21 RSV)

The contrast the Lord Jesus makes between earth and heaven feels similar to what IV Trinity prays: “that, Thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal.” Earth and time. Heaven and eternity. These pairs, like Simon and Jude, like Peter and Paul, like body and brick, like people and temple, are meant for union, because God yearns for union to ourselves, to His precious image. In Scripture God unites two into one, to unite them to Himself.

Where Proper VIII prays that Christians may be collectively built upon Christ, IV Trinity prays that Christians know and embrace the cost of being built (cf. Luke 14.28). I feel that both Collects, then, remind me to keep the main thing the main thing. Can someone who claims to be a Christian learn to life their life as if Jesus Christ was the foundation, rather than an extracurricular element or decoration added to the foundation? Can someone who claims to be a Christian live their days with a consistent contact with the foundation?

Subscribe now

Proper VII After Pentecost
1979 Book of Common Prayer (pp. 178, 230)

O Lord,
make us have perpetual love and reverence for your holy Name,
for you never fail to help and govern those
whom you have set upon the sure foundation of your loving- kindness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

III Sunday After Trinity
Classical (pre-1979) editions of the Book of Common Prayer

O Lord,
we beseech thee mercifully to hear us;
and grant that we,
to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray,
may, by thy mighty aid,
be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

For this Sunday, we see the influence of last week’s old Prayer Book Collect, (II Sunday After Trinity) on the 1979 Collect for Proper VII. Last week, II Trinity asked God to “make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name.” This petition is now picked up by Proper VII, but placed at the very beginning. “Fear” is translated into “reverence” in this version to avoid modern offense. However, the 1979 Collects have two versions: one in traditional language (Rite I) and contemporary (Rite II). The Rite I version of Proper VII has kept II Trinity’s word “fear.”

More importantly, for the third week in a row I notice a strong theme of prioritizing divine agency in these Collects. The prayers that the Prayer Book appoints the Church to pray are themselves expressions and models of a theology of prayer. Proper VII’s petition for Christians to perpetually love and revere (fear?) the Name of God is placed “upon the sure foundation” of “your [God’s] loving-kindness.” The Collect for III Trinity’s simple petition is grounded in acknowledging God as the One Who gifts Christians “an hearty desire to pray.” “Hearty” here means “heartfelt.” The desire to connect with God and grow close with Him is a desire that God Himself works on behalf of humanity to grant. This is one way to understand grace.

This is what I love about the Collects: how they model an inward posture of prayer. Every petition of a Christian is planted on something God is already doing in their life. Every action of God in a Christian’s life is planted in God’s eternal character. The character of God is one of “loving-kindness.” This is a traditional way of translating the biblical Hebrew hesed. This word represents a deep covenant faithfulness to God’s people. God has made a promise with His people that is eternal, and even when the winds and waves of life knock us down, God intervenes and upholds what He has resolved to do. That whole covenant relationship gets expressed in two words of the Collect for Proper VII: “your holy Name” and “loving-kindness.” The capital-N Name of God hearkens back to the revelation of His unpronounceable proper name, “YHWH,” to Moses in Exodus 3, and then to all of Israel on Mount Sinai after God frees them from Egyptian slavery. The Old Testament understands in its DNA that the freedom of the elect is the freedom to know God by Name. And III Trinity complements this covenantal confidence with the confidence of grace: “Grant that we, to whom thou hast given a hearty desire to pray.”

So I see these two collects not only expressing a trust that God loves humanity and desires to defend their flourishing, but doing so on the twin basis of grace and covenant. There is an eternal connection between the notion that God favors humanity and wishes to give them the gift of His presence, and the historical, concrete expression of the notion in human time with the covenant God makes with Israel.

Subscribe now

Proper VI After Pentecost
1979 Book of Common Prayer

Keep, O Lord,
your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love,
that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness,
and minister your justice with compassion;
for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.

II Sunday After Trinity
Classical (pre-1979) editions of the Book of Common Prayer

O Lord, who never failest to help and govern those
whom thou dost bring up in thy stedfast fear and love;
Keep us, we beseech thee, under the protection of thy good providence,
and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A great coincidence for this week is that both prayers open by acknowledging a doublet of qualities described as “steadfast.” The 1979 Collect acknowledges God’s “steadfast faith and love” while the older Collect of the Day acknowledges “thy steadfast fear and love.” The older collect might give some readers pause: why is “fear” paired with “love”? In fact, II Trinity pairs it twice! A pair of pairs! Does not I John 4 say that there is no fear in love, and that perfect love casts out fear?

I think fear can be understood biblically in two senses, in a positive and negative light. There is the negative fear that makes your faith small—it diminishes your capacity to love well, and should be considered a kind of idolatry. And there is its antitype, a personal quality of awe, reverence, and wonder that expands one’s capacity for love—what the Old Testament commonly names “the fear of the LORD [YHWH].” “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” is a common phrase throughout the Old Testament. E.g. the very beginning of Proverbs, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; / fools despise wisdom and instruction” (1.7 RSV); or Psalm 111.10, its concluding verse, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; / a good understanding have all those who practice it. / His praise endures for ever!”

In this sense, there is a fine line between two fears that a Christian walks in their life before God. “Choose ye this day” which fear shall be served: a fear that begets life and one that leads to death. (Cf. Joshua 24.15; Deuteronomy 30.15-20.) Thus, I don’t have a good answer for how “the fear of YHWH” became a stock phrase of the Old Testament’s wisdom books. But I do believe that the vocabulary is still commendable and valuable for life coram Deo, as long as a Christian seeks the wisdom to delineate the two kinds of fear.

A second observation is in order. The 1979 Collect names “faith and love” as steadfast attributes of God. In the old Collect, “fear and love” are meant to describe attitudes of the believer. The clue is the mention of “fear”—faith and love are traits God can display, but can God be said to fear? No; the fear of the Lord is a human quality. Therefore the opening lines could be paraphrased as, “O Lord, you never fail to help and govern those whom you are bringing up in the steadfast fear and love of you…” So II Trinity asks God to assist the church in a “perpetual” and “steadfast” fear—this petition reminds me of the famous memory verses, “Pray without ceasing” (I Thessalonians 5.17). The older Collect imagines a healthy “fear” of the Lord, in that expansive sense aforementioned, can assist a Christian in living a life according to Paul’s apostolic maxim.

If II Trinity’s Collect uses the human virtues of fear and love to ask a general providential protection, Proper VI is more confident and specific in naming the human actions that can be driven by God’s attributes of grace and faith and love towards believers. Proper VI asks us to proclaim truth and administer justice: bedrock concerns of the Church’s communal life that are oriented to the world. This is a Collect that imagines a Church steadfastly sensitive to its neighbors.

Subscribe now

For the next couple of months, I’d like to reflect on a special kind of prayer each week, called a Collect (pronounced KALL-ekt). They are the Collects appointed for each Sunday in the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), called “The Collect of the Day.” There are two kinds: the Collect from the current 1979 Episcopal BCP, and the older Collect of the Day.

I hope to explain this system of Collects in a later post. For now, know that I really adore these kinds of prayers. They are gems of beauty and truth and holiness, and I hope to be consistent in unearthing some of these qualities over several weeks.

June 7, 2026: Proper 5 After Pentecost / First Sunday After Trinity

Proper V After Pentecost
1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer

O God, from whom all good proceeds:
Grant that by your inspiration
we may think those things that are right,
and by your merciful guiding may do them;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I Sunday After Trinity
Classical (pre-1979) editions of the Book of Common Prayer

O God,
the strength of all those who put their trust in thee;
Mercifully accept our prayers;
and because, through the weakness of our mortal nature,
we can do no good thing without thee,
grant us the help of thy grace,
that in keeping thy commandments we may please thee,
both in will and deed;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It is a great coincidence that both Collects begin the Season After Pentecost with a theology of prayer. Both Collects have a strong sense of grace. They’re both collects that explore the intimate marriage between grace and prayer. By grace I mean God’s favor towards creatures and also God’s gifts to creatures that exemplify favor. Grace names in single word a divine initiative and agency that shows how “God is love” (I John 4).

So the 1979 Collect invokes God as the One “from whom all good proceeds.” This is also attested when the old Collect invokes God as “the strength of all those who put their trust in thee,” and then even doubles the acknowledgment within its petition by acknowledging that “we can do no good thing without thee.” I enjoy the very strong sense in both prayers that without God, humanity cannot pursue what is good: the petitions in both prayers ask for God’s grace to do good; “those things that are right” in Proper V and “keeping thy commandments” in I Trinity.

This conviction, “we can do no good thing without Thee,” might make some non-Christians nervous. Are these Collects saying that you can only do good things by being a Christian, or that the only good deeds that please God are those done by Christians? I am ashamed to say that sometimes Christians have peddled this lie. But this is not the core idea. The core teaching is one basic to Christianity: God created everything. Existence is not neutral. Existence is good, because God intended it. Therefore all things have a connection with God just by existing. All things, when they exhibit goodness, are plucking a thread, no matter how distant, that goes back to the original and ever-present Weaver of the threads. To paraphrase a recent movie poster: His web connects us all.

If God is the source of all goodness, then He is also the source of all prayer, because prayer is an act of goodness. Perhaps it is strange to think of prayer as an act. Most people imagine prayer as a mere verbal prelude to genuine action. But I wonder if this impression is a mistake. Prayer is about growing closer to God, and growing closer to God involves becoming like God, which means that prayer can be a means of growing in goodness under God’s gracious attention and guidance. The way we grow is named in both collects as thoughts and action: “will and deed.” This is where personal faith matters for those praying: personal faith gives one the privilege of identifying the invisible threads in life that need to be plucked. They can become people who delight in doing good. Faith, which is to say an acknowledgment of grace received, can open up the pray-er’s life to become a woven tapestry of goodness.

Subscribe now

I’ve been teaching a general introduction to world religions at a community college. The last unit was on Islam, which I designed as an introduction to the Quran. The Quran’s early Meccan chapters (suras) have a poetic quality that is striking.

This week we read Sura 81 of the Quran, a description of Judgment Day which I find striking for several reasons. Here’s Muhammad Haleem’s translation:

In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy

When the sun is shrouded in darkness,
when the stars are dimmed,
when the mountains are set in motion,
when pregnant camels are abandoned,
when wild beasts are herded together,
when the seas boil over,
when souls are sorted into classes,
when the baby girl buried alive is asked
for what sin she was killed,
when the records of deeds are spread open,
when the sky is stripped away,
when Hell is made to blaze
and Paradise brought near:

then every soul will know what it has brought about.1

(81:1-14)

So I adore this Sura’s imagery, reminiscent of passages like Isaiah 64:

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains would tremble before you! (v. 1)

This Sura turns from disturbing images in nature to a disturbing image of human evil: from the cosmic plane of darkened skies to the human plane of an infant girl buried alive—an evil from Muhammad’s pre-Islamic Arabia that God is rebuking.

One does not need to be a Muslim here to appreciate the message communicated about God’s character: God sees all; there is no escape from justice. Again, this is a deep commonality with the Bible. The cosmic disruption of nature’s ordinary courses is revealed as something fitting, rather than unprecedented; it is really a divine response to OUR disruption of the moral order when we are complacent with a society that condones monstrous acts. It is not God who acts unnatural on Judgment Day, but rather humanity who acts unnatural with every unjust choice and unjust way of life.

“Love and Betrayal are a Sword”
A sermon preached at St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church (Ridgewood, NJ)
2026.4.2 — Maundy Thursday
Revised Common Lectionary (modified) — John 13.1–18, 31b–38

Let us pray.

Assist us mercifully with Your help, O Lord God of our salvation,
that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts,
whereby You have given us life and immortality;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.1

My first time washing feet in a Christian setting was when I was fifteen. It was not part of a church service. I didn’t consider myself a Christian. I had joined an evangelical youth group recently. We were on a winter retreat near a lake in the Catskills. It had snowed and it was cold. Like many teenagers, I suppressed a deep insecurity about what kind of person I was and what kind of person I should be. I remember the youth group leaders telling us about all the ways they served us—giving us rides, paying for food and movies and outings, organizing games—my Young Life leaders remain master sages of the youth group game. They told us they served us because they were Christians. Jesus told His followers to serve. Jesus came in the form of a servant2 and washed feet, and if we were to take Jesus seriously we were to do the same. Then we passed around a basin and rinsed and dried the feet of the person next to us. My heart softened a little. A little of that insecurity melted away.

This was the first time in my life that Christianity made a difference to me. I made a connection for the first time, the connection all Christians are supposed to make: all of Jesus’ acts are done because He personally loves us. We do those things for each other to share that love, a love which is as eternal as God is, because as John tells us in another part of the New Testament, God is love.3 Being a Christian means looking at Jesus and letting Him change your life. What shocked 15-year-old me was that some people really tried to live this way. Jesus wasn’t locked up in the past. Jesus was alive in the present, addressing us today.

Today is called Maundy Thursday. Today begins the great climax of what we liturgical Christians call the liturgical year. The Christian liturgical tradition considers the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday leading up to Easter Sunday the holiest time of the year. These Three Days are the ascent of a great mountain of glory where the Risen Lord promises to meet us face to face. Thursday, Friday, Saturday: the Lord’s last night, the Lord’s crucifixion, the Lord’s rest in the tomb. Three days of love and betrayal, grace upon grace upon grace.

That’s why my opening prayer asked the Lord that we may “enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts.” What many liturgical Christians do every year is just that: contemplation of those mighty acts of Jesus Christ to save us. Mighty acts of love in a world of suffering and betrayal.

Our contemplation begins with Maundy Thursday. Some of you, even if you’ve been raised in a liturgical tradition, don’t know much about Maundy Thursday. It’s a rich day of many layers. I think of Maundy Thursday like a stack of pancakes. Each of these pancakes is something essential to being a Christian.

The first pancake is the name “Maundy.” “Maundy” is Old English. I’m tempted now to joke about Episcopalians and our obsession with sounding British and cultured. It’s Old English based on the Latin word for “commandment,” mandatum. What is the commandment of Maundy Thursday? We heard it: “Love one another as I have loved you.” John 13:34. “Love one another as I have loved you.” This verse is often called the New Commandment, but that’s misleading.4 In my opinion, that verse is John’s version of a very old commandment, the Summary of the Law: “Love God with all your heart… Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Here is the Christian life: to love like Jesus. To recognize His love and pass it around like seed on the ground, because unlike every other resource in the world, love doesn’t run out.

The second pancake is the foot washing. The commandment is paired with action, because the acts of God seal His promises and confirm His character. The Lord Jesus stoops down and washes feet. His nostrils probably crinkled. I wonder how much scrubbing was involved for people who wore sandals and walked everywhere. The ancient and majestic Nicene Creed, which we recite most weeks, says this of the Son, “For us and for our salvation He came down from heaven.” This is the same action of Jesus: on earth as it is from heaven. He humbles himself and comes down to the disciples, to serve them.

Here is the Christian life: to be served by Jesus. We cannot love one another like Jesus unless we can recognize the love of Jesus. That’s why He says, Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.5

The third pancake of the Maundy Thursday IHOP Special: the Last Supper. On Jesus’ last night on earth, He identifies himself in bread and wine. Broken bread, broken body. Poured out wine, poured out blood. The body and blood of Jesus is the stuff of life. But the body and blood of Jesus is also the stuff of suffering and death. Grace upon grace.

Here is the Christian life: to betray Jesus.

Every time we take Communion, we must confront betrayal. That’s why the Apostle Paul says, For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.6 Because you cannot enjoy the sacrament of Communion without remembering the Last Supper, and you can’t remember the Last Supper without remembering what made it “the Last.”

Every one of us has betrayed Jesus. If we do not recognize how we have betrayed Jesus, then we are not Christians. If we do not recognize how we have betrayed Jesus, then we are just people who use Jesus as a mascot to make ourselves look good. The world has enough mascots. It does not have enough love. But God has intervened. God desires to be close to us. God will not be far. For God to be this close to us—for example, as close as bread is to our hunger—is disturbing. It’s not a relationship of convenience or transaction, but a relationship of need and rescue.

In terms of the relationship, love is a double-edged sword. It is a double-edged sword of vulnerability: the closer the disciples get to Jesus, the more capable they become of hurting Him. Peter’s a great example tonight of who we are: he thinks he is incapable of betrayal, believing intimacy with God comes easy. He does not know the truth of himself. But without that risk, there is no love. Jesus takes on that risk willingly, and the disciples have taken it on without knowing it.

But how could it be any different? That’s what love is: the leap of faith to seek the good of the beloved. Jesus suffers that risk. He runs toward the danger because that’s where the love is. That’s what He does for you and me. He runs toward the danger of our life, the danger of our betrayal.

That’s why John begins in tonight’s chapter, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”7

Jesus loved us to the end. For us to truly receive that love, we cannot jump ahead of Him. Very truly, I tell you,” says the Lord tonight, “servants are not greater than their master.8 So for us to truly receive that love, we must acknowledge our betrayal. That’s what tonight is about. If you want to love like Jesus, you will let yourself be repaired by Jesus. To be repaired by Jesus, we name the truth about ourselves, that we are the traitors.

Being a Christian means looking at Jesus and letting Him change your life. Here, the beginning of these Three Days, is the beginning of that change, where Jesus gives Himself to us.

Let us pray.
[Something extemporaneous asking God to give us what we need in Holy Week]
Amen.