Collects

For churches like the Episcopal Church that are liturgical churches and observe the church calendar of seasons and holy days, today is Trinity Sunday. The calendar is not necessary to salvation. I do not believe, nor does the church teach, that observing or memorizing the calendar is part of the entrance requirements for heaven. And, as a preacher, I cannot say that Trinity Sunday is one of my favorite days within the calendar.

But right there is one of the great advantages of following the calendar. I may not like preaching on the Trinity, but the calendar forces me and all of us to worry about the Trinity at least once a year. Whether or not recognizing the Trinity is necessary to salvation I cannot say. It could be, and reflecting on the Trinity is definitely helpful as we seek to know and welcome God into our lives here on earth. And beyond Trinity Sunday, the calendar guides us, week by week, season by season, through a broad and relatively comprehensive experience of God’s being and our relationship with God. The calendar prevents us, as individuals or as a community, from tarrying too long in just our favorite parts of the Bible or from settling in too comfortably with just our favorite prayers or just our favorite season. Think of the calendar as something like a personal trainer whom we voluntarily accept (or even pay) to train and develop our whole body… all of the different muscle groups and how they interrelate, developing strength and flexibility, power and stamina. Most of us find that hard to do on our own without some external structure or motivation. Or think of the calendar as being like a balanced diet. Just as only fried chicken does not produce a healthy body, only Christmas does not produce a healthy soul. We need a little bit of Trinity… and Epiphany, and Lent, and All Saints and Ascension and Advent and Easter.

Every Sunday on the church calendar has its own collect. I wonder how many life-long Episcopalians really know what a collect is. It is a prayer, but a very specific sort of prayer. We teach children that a collect, especially the collect of the day, is meant to "collect our thoughts," to focus them on the theme of the day. The collect also collects the people into a community gathered in common worship. The origin of the word is from the Latin colligere, to gather or collect. Listen again to the collect for Trinity Sunday:

"Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever."

Did that collect your thoughts or scatter them? The Trinity is difficult, this doctrine that God is simultaneously three and one. Every effort to describe or define or illustrate the Trinity using human language or human images… these all fall short (even the shamrock). The Trinity is meant to be a mystery, unexplainable, incomprehensible. And Trinity Sunday reminds us that God is a mystery, beyond our ability to explain, beyond our ability to comprehend. If you can explain or comprehend it, you are describing something less than God. If you think you have a handle on the Trinity, some church council sometime has undoubtedly proclaimed your idea heresy. And rightly so. How dare you presume to comprehend God! God as Trinity is a mystery, unexplainable, incomprehensible.

But let’s go back and look at the collect for Trinity Sunday.

Within the Episcopal Church collects, as one form of prayer, have come to have a very specific structure, as rigid as a sonnet or haiku (Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book). There are, of course, occasional exceptions and I want to stress that not all Episcopal prayers are collects. But the formal structure of a collect is this: They are one sentence in length and they have three specific components. One sentence. (Check the Prayer Book. Later.) Three components. The first component is an address to God. We address God. Usually with some descriptive modifier (almighty God, ever-loving God, merciful God). In that address we describe some particular quality of God, and it often includes a further ascription which alludes to something God does. The address is much more than just an address; it often says a lot about God. "Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity." That is the God we address on Trinity Sunday.

The second component of a collect is a petition. We ask God to do something. Often we ask that particular facet of God whom the prayer addressed to work in us so that we may better mirror and fulfill God’s will. "Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory." The third component is a mediation. We close with the prayerful trust that this prayer will be effective through the mediation of God’s own being. The mediation is often expressed as, or concludes with, a doxology of praise (Price and Weil, Liturgy for Living).

One sentence. Address. Petition. Mediation. In addition to gathering us and leading us in prayer, the richness of the Prayer Book collects comes from the breadth of what they teach us about the nature of God and our relationship to God.

In your private prayers, how do you usually address God? Always the same way? (The Prayer Book collects throughout the year won’t let you use the same address every time.) How do you address God in your prayers? My God? That’s OK. After all, Jesus used that form of address as he faced his crucifixion. "My God" speaks of a God who is with us and cares about us personally. What other qualities of God are implicit in your personal forms of address for God? O, sympathetic and understanding God… O God of compassion… O just and pure God… Dear Lord… to pray "Dear Lord" implies a God who is dear to us but also sovereign over us. It’s important to think about our prayers and what sort of a God it is that we are praying to. God is all of these things we use in our personal prayers, but collects like the collect for Trinity Sunday remind us that God is also much more.

Almighty and everlasting God. Almighty. A God beyond all human might and power. Everlasting. A God beyond all human time. Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace. This almighty, everlasting God acts in our lives to give us grace. Grace. Would you like to have grace? To be given God’s grace? Or do you have everything you need in life without God’s grace? Grace is an anchor to life you can’t get any other way. It’s a hope and a promise that are more real than anything you can touch. It brings holiness and meaning into the mundane. And the gracious gift has been given. Almighty and everlasting God, you have given us grace. Think about the God addressed in that collect. And the collect goes on to describe part of what that grace does for us. God’s grace, working in us, enables us to acknowledge the glory of God and to offer worship. Think about what that says about us.

The second part of a collect is petition. What are the common petitions of your private prayers? We often call upon God to guide us, strengthen us, help us, heal us. Or to do the same for those we care for. Guide them, strengthen them, help them, heal them, we pray, because we cannot bear to be or see others lost, weak, confused or sick. We should never stop praying those prayers. God hears them. God cherishes them. God answers them. But as we pray the collect for Trinity Sunday we are reminded that we are called to be even more than strong, healthy and clear sighted. We are meant to be faithful and also to revel in the wondrous glory of God in worship. "Keep us steadfast in faith and worship, and bring us to see you in your one and eternal glory." This petition tells us something important about who we are meant to be, who we are created to be, who God helps us to be. We pray that, by God’s grace, we may know faith, see God’s glory, and offer worship and praise. On your own how often do you pray for the grace to offer worship? That was our prayer today in the collect for Trinity Sunday.

Part three, the mediation and doxology. It is the Father’s mediation we seek as we offer this collect for Trinity. "O Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever." O Father, hear and heed our prayer. In many collects, it is Jesus’ mediation that we call upon… the familiar phrase "through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit…" Whatever the form, the mediation reminds us that this is a prayer. We do not demand. We have no right to expect. We cannot earn or buy or execute a contract with God. We can only pray, pray that through God’s mediation our prayer will be heard and fulfilled.

Pay attention to the collects. There is so much there about God and us as God’s people. In just one sentence.

The collect for Trinity Sunday addresses a God who is almighty and everlasting, beyond anything our human minds can contain. And yet that same God isn’t remote, but comes into our human lives to give us grace. And we petition God for that grace, so that we can see and experience and worship the glory and majesty and mystery of God, three in one and one in three.