GRANT US GRACE TO PRAY
1st Sunday after Trinity.
The Rev. Michael Vinson+ Rector
The Collect. O God, the strength of all those who put their trust in thee; Mercifully accept our prayers; and because, through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Dear friends, today we embark upon a new season, shaped by the worship we rightly offered last week on Trinity Sunday—when the Church honored the mystery and majesty of the Triune God: One God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. How fitting it was to witness a baptism on that day. For baptism is the sacrament by which we are born anew into the Divine Life—granted a heavenly Father, a spiritual family, a renewed purpose, and the certain hope of eternal life.
This is what baptized Christians are saved and reborn to do: to offer worship to the Holy Trinity. And yet that worship is not limited to Sundays. Sunday sets a trajectory meant to carry us into Monday and beyond. The whole Christian life is to be offered to God as an act of worship, day in and day out.
But how often do we separate the pursuit of holiness from the worship we offer to God? St. Paul will not allow it:
“I urge you, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1).
Every moment, whether in the sanctuary or in the street, is meant to be an act of worship. And yet we need the Apostle’s urging—because apart from God’s grace, both sanctification and true worship are wholly impossible for us. Though justified, we are not yet perfected. “I do not do what I want,” confesses the Apostle, “but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15). This is as true for me as it was for Paul. And it is true for you as well.
We are weak. And without prayer, our sanctification will be stunted. The baptismal flower, born and rooted in Christ, will begin to fade, and in time be overtaken by the weeds of wickedness and vice. This is precisely why the Church, here at the threshold of Trinitytide, places words in our mouths—for if we are unaware of our need, we will certainly be at a loss for words as well. Through the Collect, the Spirit himself helps us in our weakness, for “we do not know what to pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). And so, we are directed to ask: grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping thy commandments we may please thee both in will and deed. For it is in asking that we receive.
And what is it we are asking to do? It is to love. For all sanctification intends and leads to one thing: to love God and to love our brother.
“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”
If one were pressed to choose a single verse to capture what Trinitytide is all about, this would be a worthy candidate. What is of greater concern to a Christian than growing in charity toward others and in love of God? I ask you—why pour yourself into studying Scripture if love be not the fruit of your labor? Augustine says, “Whoever thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures so that it does not build the double love of God and of neighbor does not understand it at all.” Why pain your knees in prayer if it does not lead to charity toward your neighbor? St. Paul declares, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” Your faith without love, dear friends, is dead faith. Your worship, unacceptable.
Love is the work of sanctification. And “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” To refuse love is to refuse God. To withhold mercy from your neighbor is to erect a barrier between your own soul and the very Divine Life into which you were baptized. This is not peripheral. This is the heartbeat of the Christian life. And so our Lord sets before us a mirror. Not a flattering one—but a truthful one.
“There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table.”
We must not misread this parable. The rich man is no pagan. Abraham calls him Son—he belongs to the covenant. He had Moses and the prophets. He had the worship and sacrifices. He had every spiritual advantage grace could provide. And yet he is in torment. Why? Because he worshipped himself.
St. Gregory the Great observed that evil men often receive their good things in this present life, for they have made transitory things—wealth, comfort, status—their happiness and their surety. The rich man had confused the blessings of God with the purposes of God. He clung to the gifts and forgot the Giver. His table became his altar. His appetite became his god. Consider: he was clothed in purple and fine linen—consumed with the wool, the luxury, the produce of his wealth—while Lazarus, the very sheep, the man made in God’s image, lay suffering at his gate. Covetousness does not merely take and consume. It blinds. Self-absorption impairs our ability to see anyone but ourselves.
Was it his wealth that condemned him? No—Abraham himself was a wealthy man. What came from within the rich man was hard-hearted contempt and luxurious self-indulgence—symptoms of a deeper plague. At the root was unbelief. He did not know the unseen God of heaven because his eyes were fixed upon the visible world. And because he did not believe he did not love. We love as we believe, and we believe in what we love. The rich man believed in himself. And so his love turned entirely inward, away from God and away from Lazarus. St. John will not let us soften this:
“If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?”
The rich man had, in all likelihood, never said aloud that he hated Lazarus. He simply ignored him. But in the economy of love, indifference is hatred wearing more respectable clothes.
And then—death. Lazarus, whose name means God is my help, is carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom. His poverty was but the outward expression of an inward poverty of spirit—the blessed poverty of one who knew his need of God and cast himself wholly upon him. It was not his rags that saved him, but his faith. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” says the Lord, “for theirs is the Kingdom of God.” The rich man is buried. And in torment he lifts up his eyes.
“Son, remember… between us and you there is a great gulf fixed.”
That gulf was not fixed at the moment of death. It was being fixed, slowly and silently, across the entire span of his life. Every morning he dressed in purple and passed Lazarus by. Every day he did not pray, did not ask, did not seek the grace to love. The distance between his soul and God grew wider, the chasm deeper, until what had been a life’s habit became an eternal condition. He had Moses and the prophets. What he lacked—what he never asked for—was the grace to obey them. Do you see now, beloved, why the Church places this Collect upon our lips at the very threshold of this season?
“Because through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee; grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed.”
The rich man’s tragedy was not his wealth. It was that he never prayed this prayer—or never meant it. He never acknowledged his need. He never asked. And so he never received the grace that could have opened his eyes to Lazarus, softened his heart, and turned his very table into an act of worship.
We are covenant sons and daughters. We have been baptized into the Divine Life of the Holy Trinity. We have the one who rose from the dead, present with us here in Word and Sacrament. We have the Spirit who gives us the very words to pray. The question is whether we are employing these gifts. Are we praying—truly praying—for the grace to love? Are we seeing the Lazarus’s at our gates?
For God has loved us first. “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” This is the love that bridges every gulf. This is the love that opens eyes blinded by self-absorption. This is the love that turns ordinary days—ordinary meals, ordinary encounters at our gates—into acts of true worship.
“God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”
This is holiness. This is sanctification. And it is only ever possible through the grace of him who is the strength of all those who put their trust in him. So let us ask. Let us pray. Let us love. For in loving, we worship. And in worshipping, we become what we were reborn to be.
“Grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
