THE COLLECT FOR THE 18th SUNDAY OF PENTECOST (SEPTEMBER 5, 2010)
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 forever. Amen.
The collect is pretty clear that our capacity to trust God is a gift granted by God. We say we trust in God on our American currency, but it makes it seem as if this is our doing as a nation, something we have accomplished, like going to the moon or winning a war. But what if the collect is correct and that the only way we could trust God with our whole heart is if we humbly received this trust as a gift and not something we have earned or that sets us apart from other nations or individuals?
The collect is swift to add that to act as if faith or trust in God is anything but a gift is sheer pride of one’s personal strength, intelligence, or will. It reveals such pride as trusting ourselves while claiming to trust God. How does God resist such confidence in self as the source of trusting God? Perhaps just revealing such thinking is a form of resistance that may be lost on someone who clings to the notion of rugged individualism, but doesn’t it really point to a form of folly that is sadly tragic?
There is a good deal of drum beating over the Internet that purports to trust God while preparing to go to war against those who don’t trust God the “right” way. The remedy for a haughty and prideful spirit is not to boast about how we have won the battle for being faithful, but to humbly acknowledge that we are totally dependent upon God for this gift of trusting the “One in whom we live, and move, and have our being.” The collect suggests that we boast in God’s mercy rather than in our superiority over others.
Mercy, loving kindness, is the very heart of God and so we pray for and receive the heart of God as a sheer and unearned gift of great worth. We do not earn it through our cunning, intelligence, strength, or being over against those we claim are God’s enemies.
Instead, we receive this gift as Jesus accepted his divinity: “Jesus who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing he had earned, but a gift that he continued to offer back to God in complete abandon and trusting that God was trustworthy with this gift that was God’s to give. And so, Jesus with his final breath of life did what he had been doing his entire life—he emptied himself and waited to be filled by the One whom he called Father.
What shape does your trust in God take?
