The Collect for Proper 15: The Sunday closest to August 17 - The Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration

Almighty God,
you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life:
Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work,
and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
(BCP 232)

Historical introduction:

This Collect was originally composed for the 1549 English BCP for the Second Sunday of Easter.^[1] The revisors of our 1979 BCP moved this Collect from Easter season to this Sunday in the Season after Pentecost to make room for a more appropriate Collect for the Second Sunday of Easter. This Collect “explains both the work of Christ and the response of the Christian.”^[2]

The Preamble

The Preamble, “Almighty God,” indicates that what follows in this Collect will focus our attention on God’s mighty work of our redemption.

The Acknowledgement

The Acknowledgement, “you have given your only Son to be for us a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life,” is the explanation of the work of Christ for our redemption that Hatchett has highlighted. This Collect, following the theological emphases of the Continental Reformation, weaves together three themes: sin, the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, and Jesus’ life and death.^[3]

Sin—whether by our own fault, “in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone” or what has been “done on our behalf”—distorts our relationship with God and each other, pollutes our world and wastes its resources, and limits our liberty (See the Confessions in Morning and Evening Prayer and the Holy Eucharist, BCP 79, 116, 360; Enriching Our Worship I, 19, 56; the Ash Wednesday Litany of Penitence, BCP 268; and the Catechism: Sin and Redemption, BCP 848-9). In order to live a godly life, we need to be freed from sin’s damaging influence and effects.

Sacrifice—through Jesus’ sacrifice, he “made the offering which we could not make; in him we are freed from the power of sin and reconciled to God” (Catechism: God the Son, BCP 850).

The mystery of our redemption through the sacrifice of God’s only Son is central to our faith (see John 3:16-18 and Hebrews 9:11-10:18). This central truth is threaded throughout our worship, maybe most poetically in the Pascha Nostra (“Christ our Sacrifice”) used as the Invitatory hymn in Morning Prayer for Easter Week and, optionally, until the Day of Pentecost (BCP 83).

The sacrifice of Jesus is central to our understanding of the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. In “the water of Baptism, we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.” (BCP 306)

Recalling Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf is central to our understanding of the Eucharist. We hear of his sacrifice for the sake of the world in our Eucharistic Prayers at The Breaking of the Bread: “[Alleluia.] Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; Therefore let us keep the feast. [Alleluia.]” (BCP 364, see also BCP 362, 379, and 403). See Note 1 for additional examples found in our liturgy.

Example of godly life—As those united to Jesus in his death and resurrection, we are to pattern our lives after his, seeking to live according to God’s will, not the ways of the world that lead to sin. Following the way of Jesus, as described in Philippians 2:1-18, is how we live out our baptism through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. See Note 2 for examples of this call to a sacrificial life in imitation of Jesus from our liturgy.

In this Acknowledgement, the Father is the one who has given his Son as our example and as the sacrifice for our sins that provides a way for us to be reconciled and redeemed. This Acknowledgement invites us to remember that the Father and the Son are in harmony and each is generous and loving beyond measure on our behalf.

Petition

In the Petition, “Give us grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life,” we ask for God’s almighty grace to shape our hearts to be thankful for the transformation of our wills and our lives so that we follow Jesus in such a way that our lives reflect his life, death, and resurrection. Becoming like Christ is a gift, and even receiving this gift with joy is itself a gift.

The Pleading

The Pleading, “through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen” is the typical Pleading used in many of our Collects. “Through Jesus Christ,” in this particular Collect, could be understood as short-hand for “through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, your only Son” from the beginning of this Collect.

For your consideration:

The call to live into our baptism instructs us to live differently from the prevailing culture. For those who have grown up in Christian households, it may be difficult to consider the ways that our common life as a parish, as a diocese, and as a denomination, is different from the way that others live. Those who have grown up in other traditions or without a religious background might be able to more easily name how our lives are different. Living differently from the prevailing culture is another way of describing a sacrificial life.

What sacrifices have you made and why? What sacrifices have we made as a parish and as a diocese and why?

How might thinking about these sacrifices as ways of living a godly life, following Jesus’ example, through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, change how we think about these sacrifices?

Note 1: According to the Catechism, the Eucharist is “the Church’s sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, … the way by which the sacrifice of Christ is made present, and in which he unites us to his one offering of himself” (BCP 859). Through Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf our altars are consecrated (BCP 573) and penitents are reconciled (see especially in the words that a deacon or a lay person may use to declare forgiveness in the Reconciliation of a Penitent, BCP 448).

Note 2: In two of the Offertory sentences, we are invited to a sacrificial life as followers of Jesus: “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God. Ephesians 5:2” and “to present [ourselves] as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual worship. Romans 12:1” (BCP 376). In the prayer that the Celebrant prays over the candidate for Holy Baptism we hear “Grant, O Lord, that all who are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ your Son may live in the power of his resurrection …” (BCP 306). In the Eucharist, the Celebrant prays on our behalf that we all might be “sanctified by the Holy Spirit” through Jesus’ sacrifice (Eucharistic Prayer B, BCP 369) and “may become one body and one spirit, a living sacrifice in Christ …” (Eucharistic Prayer D, BCP 373, 375).

^[1] Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book (New York, HarperOne, 1995), 190.

^[2] Hatchett, 190. Paul V. Marshall indicates that this Collect was appointed for The Second Sunday after Easter in the 1549 BCP and was used for this Sunday until our 1979 BCP. Paul V. Marshall, Prayer Book Parallels (New York: Church Publishing, 1990), II.94-5.

^[3] Holding together these two important themes in the theology of salvation prevent us from sliding into thinking that we do not need to be transformed or thinking that our transformation is through our own efforts alone. See also the more ancient Collects from the Season of Christmas with their emphasis upon the restoration of human dignity through the Incarnation in its entirety, of which Christ’s godly life and sacrificial death are but a part.

Want to know more about the Collect format or the underlying spiritual formation goal of this series of meditations? You can find that information here.