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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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Enable Us, O, God |
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1
Corinthians 10:1, Luke 15:11 Ninth
Sunday after Trinity August
1, 2010 The
Collect for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity is a profound confession of our
absolute need of God. The
author, more than 1600 years ago, was able to look at the world, the human
race, and his own life through the lens of Holy Scripture, and see that it
is filled with a tragic wrongness, which we are completely unable to fix.
Hear the grief and despair in the words, "we who cannot do
anything that is good without thee."
These are the words of a person who has experienced life and has
learned that the dreams and hopes of human endeavour are as doomed as the
Tower of Babel. They are doomed because there is, in man and nature, a
fallenness that turns all our glory into sorrow and all our achievements
into dust. The Bible word for
this is "sin," but that word has been used so much people no
longer think about its meaning or consequences. So let us use a word C. S. Lewis used in his Space Trilogy, let us use the word, "bent."
If you can imagine trying to build a house with bent nails, or
drive nails with a bent hammer, you begin to understand what Lewis meant
by the word in his books, and also what the Bible means when it refers to
us as sinners. It is saying
human nature is bent so badly we are no longer capable of being the people
God made us to be, or of enjoying the good God created us to enjoy. But
more than that, it means every endeavour of our heart and mind is doomed
to failure unless God Himself enables it to stand and succeed. "We...
cannot do anything that is good without thee." Allow yourself to feel
the grief, the alienation, and the suffering in those words.
Look on the pages of human history and see their truth demonstrated
again and again, life after life, home after home, civilisation after
civilisation. Truly,
"Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it:
except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain" (Ps.
127:1). Thus
we are lead to cry out in our souls, "Grant to us, Lord, we beseech
thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as are right, that
we... may by thee be enabled to live according to thy holy will through
Jesus Christ our Lord." O God, fix the bentness in our souls and
forgive the bentness of our thoughts and deeds. How
odd it seems at first to find this idea in this part of our cycle of
prayer. We have been talking
about the loveliness of God. We
have been talking about God as the fulfillment of every need of our soul.
We have been talking about God as the great Householder who offers
a feast of majestic proportions to poor and neglected people who have no
right to expect any good thing from Him.
We have been talking about God, who is Himself the Feast for the
starving souls of people. Why now insert this morbid reminder that we
can't do anything good apart from God? I
think it is here because we need to be reminded again that all the glories
and all the blessings we enjoy in God are given to us as the gift of His
grace. We did nothing to earn
them. God does not owe them
to us. He gives them to us
out of His unfathomable love through the unimaginable horror of the cross
of Christ. We enjoy God only
because Christ was willing to go to the cross to reconcile us back to God. I
think this reminder is here because in the midst of the feast of Christ we
need to be reminded that only He can keep us in Him. Just as we could not come to the feast without His Divine
invitation, we can also not keep ourselves in the merriment. If left to ourselves we would slip out the back door and
trade the festive garments of Christ for the rags of spiritual poverty.
We would leave the Father's House to gather our meals from garbage
cans and hog troughs. We did
not create the spiritual wealth we enjoy in Christ, and we did not bring
ourselves into this faith in Christ.
We did not create our blessings or earn our place at the Lord's
Table. He purchased all of
this for us with His own life. Neither
can we keep ourselves in Christ. Our
dwelling in Him is as much a gift of His grace as getting us in was.
So, remember, as we recount the glories and blessings that are
ours, glories and blessings that will dwarf all our troubles and sorrows
in this life, remember that it is by God's grace alone that we have them
and continue in them. Therefore
is it very right, meet, and our bounden duty that we beseech God to hold
us in the faith by His grace. True,
we can do nothing good of our own selves.
We can't make ourselves do good, love truth, love holiness, love
God, or even want to do these things.
All we can do is waste our lives in wildernesses and far countries. But God can enable us. God
can enable us to desire these things and to do them.
Call upon Him. Ask Him. Beseech
Him day and night. Like Jacob
do not let Him go until He blesses you with these things.
He will hear. He will
listen. He will help. "Grant
to us, Lord we beseech thee, the spirit to think and do always such things
as are right; that we, who cannot do anything that is good without thee,
may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will; through Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen."
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