Our Mission as a Church, Part 1

In the next series of blogs, I want to examine one of our collects (a prayer that gathers our thoughts and intentions) in The Book of Common Prayer. This one is known as Proper 6. And what it says is incredibly relevant:

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 forever. Amen.

This is a prayer for the church, for you and me in the pews. We’re praying for each other. You could easily pray, “Keep, O Lord, your household, ____________(name of your church). In other words, this prayer should have an impact on how we think about our mission in our own church. What is God calling us to do as a congregation? The collect says several things.

Keep Us

First, this prayer asks God to “keep” the church, which really means “to protect.” In other words, “Protect our church”—in what? The collect lists two qualities that are both important: steadfast faith and love. Both are important, because as you know, it’s quite possible to quote the Scripture and still be a mean person.

God has declared something in Jesus that is timeless and always essential: We are called to be very clear about holding up and living out his faith, about finding a way to express it, that God would keep us in it.

In Your Steadfast Faith

Faith is never merely a question of my opinion. Instead, it’s always, “How does what I’m talking about line up with what’s expressed in the Bible?” That’s the important, relevant issue, because that’s the commitment that we have made as a part of our commitment to Christ. We believe that what is contained in Scripture is the Word of God, and it contains all things necessary for salvation. So No. 1, we’re asking God to protect and keep us in the faith that has already been expressed.

If you’re really wrestling with the Scripture as opposed to merely your own opinion, it will mess with you.  It will cause you to wrestle with things you don’t want to face. It will show you things about yourself and about God that you don’t know. It should at times, surprise, even shock, delight, bring you great joy and cause you to be deeply troubled.

And if those emotional reactions are not happening as you’re wrestling with the Scripture, chances are you’re actually not wrestling with it—you’re just putting your time in and reading the words.

It is possible, is it not, to go through a whole church service, listen to the Scriptures, the songs, all of that, and really have your mind on something that has nothing to do with what’s going on in the service. You’re sort of on autopilot, right?

So in praying this prayer, you make a commitment, in essence, to engage with the Scripture.  To take what’s being said seriously and to know that God is saying something to you and to this group of people through it. In other words, it could not be more important or more relevant. Not if you believe that God is its Author. When you wrestle with the Scripture, you say, “OK God, what are you saying to us? And how do you want to challenge, change, affirm, reshape, provide direction for, or correct us?”

All of those things are a part of what it means be kept in God’s faith, he being the Author. And it takes more than one person to figure this out. That’s why always in the Scripture, the way you think about how we live it and express it, interpret it, even figure it out is that you’re able to say, “It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us.”

In other words, faith is not just my personal opinion. What has the Scripture said to previous generations? How are other people dealing with this? Because I can convince myself of almost anything, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. And so we wrestle with it together.

We’ll look at more of the collect over the next couple of posts.

How does your life show evidence that God is keeping you “in his steadfast faith”? Share this blog and your response on Twitter. Please include my username, @revgregbrewer.

(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon on June 17, 2018, at Holy Cross Episcopal Church, Winter Haven, Florida.) 

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

PHOTO CREDIT: © Kutizoltan