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Collect for the Fourth Sunday after Easter
“O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The Collect for the Fourth Sunday after Easter is my absolute favorite collect in the whole Book of Common Prayer, not just because of the beauty of its composition, but even more because it perfectly prays out the Christian faith, just as through our works we live out the Christian faith. So we not only work it out, we pray it out as well. Probably amongst all the collects in the Prayer Book, this one best sets forward the distinction between earth and heaven, but also their connection at the same time. There is this unruly world, with its sundry and manifold changes, and then there is that other world where true joys are to be found, where we pray that our hearts may surely be fixed. Incidentally, before we get into the real crux of this sermon, I want to do a little liturgical training and point out how well this collect fits the who-what-why-how model that most collects follow. It is helpful to be aware of this structure so that you may more fully enter into and be aware of what we are praying in our liturgy. In a collect (and a collect is a prayer that collects several things together), you generally have “who”, the One to whom the collect is addressed, so that is God, and you usually say something about God; “what”, which is what you are asking for; “why”, which is the reason why you are asking this; and “how” which is invariably through Jesus Christ, because that is how all our prayers are answered. You might want to look again at the collect on page 174. So the “who” is Almighty God, who alone, who only has the ability to order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men. The “what” is “grant unto thy people that they may love the thing which thou commandest and desire that which thou dost promise.” Why? So that, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found. How? Through Jesus Christ our Lord. That’s maybe that’s a little preview for you of next week’s instructed Eucharist.
But back to this wonderful Collect. As I said before, I think what makes it so dramatic and powerful is how it pictures what our life would be like if we were not rooted to God’s commands and his promises. It makes you think of this world as an ocean swelling with waves and storms, in which the little ship of our souls would be tossed to and fro if we were not strongly anchored to God’s firm and sure steadfastness. Or if you will forgive me, I’m going to rerun a story I’ve used before, but it’s one of my favorite stories, so I think it bears repeating. It goes like this. There once was a contest held for artists to create a representation of peace, how they would convey the idea of peace in art. Well, all sorts of paintings came in, with most of them just about what you would expect: a calm, blue ocean; pretty flowers blooming in a meadow; rainbows up in the sky; a newborn baby quietly sleeping in his mother’s arms. All those things we normally associate with peace. But there was one painting that was vastly different. This one was of a swirling tempest raging in a fierce, circular pattern. You could just feel the lightning and gale force winds and see the debris flying here and there. In the middle of the scene was a huge oak tree, being battered about, it’s limbs thrashing from side to side, and its leaves and branches being violently ripped away. But on one branch of this tree, right in the middle of this storm, with its claws safely embedded in the bark way out on the very end of one of the limbs was a tiny, little bird. And do you know what that bird was doing? What do you think? Crying? Shivering? Covering its eyes with its wings? No—it was singing. She was whistling out her melody as surely as if the sky had been perfectly blue without a cloud to block the sun. For, remember what the theme of this painting was supposed to be—peace. For that is true peace. True peace does not mean the absence of the storm, that there’s not going to be any wind and rain billowing all around you, that there won’t be any sundry and manifold changes in our world. Rather, what true peace means is calm amidst that storm, peace in spite of everything that is raging around you, having our hearts surely fixed where true joys are to be found. And that is the kind of peace that only comes from Christ; you can’t get it anywhere else. That’s what comes out of loving God’s commands and desiring his promises. For all the things we love in this world are going to wind up being tossed around in the storm themselves along with everything else, and if our heart is fixed on any one of those earthly things, no matter how firm and solid and virtuous it may seem, eventually it will give way and crumble amongst the sundry and manifold changes of the world. We can only be like that bird, singing in the midst of the storm, if our hearts are fixed on something bigger than the storm, and that’s the whole point. God will outlast any storm that comes our way; God is bigger and stronger and more powerful than anything. Even though the world tries to tell us he is imaginary, a figment of our imagination, a spiritual crutch, indeed he is actually the most real thing there is, rather than the least real. He is more real than anything in creation, because he created it all. He’s not a spiritual crutch—instead, he’s the only thing that holds us up. That support isn’t to make us lazy, but rather to make us stronger, stronger in him. And there is no change, no alteration in him at all, because he is complete perfection. If he weren’t perfect, we would be wasting our time trying to be fixed in him, because ultimately like everything else he would be liable to change. But as St. James says in our Epistle today, there is no variableness, not even a shadow of turning with him, not one miniscule, microscopic millimeter of change in him.
How many times have we felt that we were hanging on just by my finger nails, like that bird on the limb? And how many times does God outlast our storm? Always—and there’s nobody else we can say that for absolutely, not even the most faithful parent, spouse, or friend. And if they do approach perfection, chances are it’s because they themselves are grounded in God—they are holding on to us with one hand, but are being held on the other by the same God who is holding us. For though it is a great escape to think that peace means the absence of the storm, what today’s collect and that image of the bird on the limb remind us is that the peace that passes understanding comes not from being whisked out of the storm, but in the midst of that storm being rooted and grounded in the changeless and invariable God, the only true reality, having our hearts surely fixed in him as we are tossed about by the sundry and manifold changes of the world. For that is one of the best and most perfect gifts which come down from the Father of lights, that in spite of our own unruly wills and sinful affections, and the unruly wills and sinful affections of all those around us, he may fix our hearts where true, real, and invariable joys are to be found.