Collect
O God, forasmuch as 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 your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
or
Faithful Lord, whose steadfast love never ceases and whose mercies never come to an end: grant us the grace to trust you and to receive the gifts of your love, new every morning, in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Post Communion
Holy and blessed God, you have fed us with the body and blood of your Son and filled us with your Holy Spirit: may we honour you, not only with our lips but in lives dedicated to the service of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Epistle – Philippians 4.1–9
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.
I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Gospel – Matthew 22.1–14
Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, maltreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.
‘But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” For many are called, but few are chosen.’
Sermon on Sunday, Trinity 19
Paul winds up his letter to the Philippians with these words –
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
What more needs to be said? I could stop right here and we could have a Quaker meeting – silence in which the Holy Spirit would speak through and to each one of us. However, aren’t you expecting some sort of commentary on our readings this morning? Why else would you come to church? – Or is it the coffee and biscuits that entice you outon this cold morning? As I don’t want to disappoint some of you, let me plough through with my own thoughts.
There are many amongst our friends and contemporaries who might ask with Pilate, “What is truth?” Lots more questions arise from this point of view. How are we to know it when we see it? Indeed we might even ask whether we can recognise ‘whatever is true’ at all. What Paul is asking us to look for, you might say, is something which we may never see in our lifetime. However, time and again we all want to talk about truth, or the good. We all want to do what is commendable, don’t we?
But we have to admit that our ordinary lives are not spent in pursuing what we might consider ‘the pure’, are they? All we want is an easy life. Trying to live a life of excellence is not something we normally aim at – unless that excellence is comfort, like the rich man in last week’s parable who wanted to relax into eating and drinking to his heart’s content. Why even today’s parable is about a feast!
What are the things that we normally consider? Is there a goal in our everyday that we think worthy of all praise? Do we follow that focal point to the exclusion of all others just because it is right and just in itself? These are the questions we have to ask, not just because Paul has asked us to consider them, but because they point us to the Commandment of Love which Jesus handed on to us.
If we don’t love, how can anything we do be commendable? With perfect love as our impulse to act, won’t all our actions result in honour, justice and purity? Wouldn’t our lives be worthy of praise if we were to behave out of love in everything we do? Our Collect for the Day echoes Paul’s thoughts, doesn’t it? We would pray –
O God, forasmuch as without you we are not able to please you; mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts.
Paul looks at us, as we consider our lives, while our Collect addresses God directly. We stand before that throne as petitioners, at the mercy of God. What worth does any action have which we offer to God? We are pathetic sinners before the divine majesty. In the words of this prayer, we say it is not possible for us to please God by ourselves. Instead, we pray that the third person of the Holy Trinity will transform us so that we, and what we do, might be pleasing to God.
We are the epitome of the Jesus prayer, which says, ‘Have mercy on me, a sinner.” How ever we present ourselves before God – or indeed anyone else, Jesus, archangels, angels, thrones, powers and dominions, even our fellow human beings – we stand before them as unworthy for any positive evaluation in the words of our common prayer, that Collect which gathers us up.
But Paul does not condemn us out of hand. Paul suggests that we can aspire to true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing and commendable ends. Certainly we should consider them. We can conceive of excellence. There is hope that we can even approach or even accomplish any thing worthy of praise. We can certainly think of all these things. Paul suggests that we can raise ourselves into the realm of goodness in our daily life. Although the law condemns us, he says elsewhere, the spirit gives us hope and life.
Much of the western tradition of christianity is more than a little bit pessimistic and has given us a dire picture of humanity. This tradition has tainted our ordinary view of life. Hence we wonder what truth is, or whether we might be able to do something good. There is a whole tradition which considers human being as redeemed and ready to do what is right and good. Perhaps we have been tempted away from it – that is our weakness as human beings.
We have fallen and that image of God, which we ourselves are, is tarnished. We need to open ourselves in humility in order to receive the grace of God in our lives. The saints have always taught this possibility as true. In our own power, we can only acknowledge our ‘fallen’, ‘deficient’ nature, as in that prayer “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” However, in the power of the Spirit we can aspire, consider or even accomplish ‘whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable.’
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