Relocating To Elfland

In the day late department, here is the next collect:

“Blessed Lord, which hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; grant us that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them; that by patience and comfort of thy holy word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our savior Jesus Christ.”

A couple months ago, I wrote an introductory piece about the “collect” (a particular form of prayer) and promised shortly to post a number of these. This being the first Sunday in Advent, here is the first in a yearlong series of collects from Thomas Cranmer:

“Almighty God, give us grace, that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, (in the which thy son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility;) that in the last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the holy ghost now and ever. Amen.”

A prayer of thanksgiving to our Lord for two of His lambs who are to be baptized today:

“Almighty God and merciful Father, we thank and praise Thee that Thou hast forgiven us and our children all our sins, through the blood of Thy beloved Son Jesus Christ, and received us through Thy Holy Spirit as members of Thine only begotten Son, and so adopted us to be Thy children, and sealed and confirmed the same unto us by holy baptism. We beseech Thee also, through Him, Thy beloved Son, that Thou wilt always govern these children by Thy Holy Spirit, that they may be nurtured in the Christian faith and in godliness, and grow and increase in the Lord Jesus Christ, in order that they may acknowledge Thy fatherly goodness and mercy, which Thou hast shown to them and to us all, and live in all righteousness under our only Teacher, King, and High Priest, Jesus Christ; and manfully fight against and overcome sin, the devil, and his whole dominion, to the end that they may eternally praise and magnify Thee, and Thy Son Jesus Christ, together with the Holy Spirit, the one only true God. Amen.”

“We praise thee, we hymn thee, we bless thee, we give thanks unto thee, O God of our fathers, that thou hast brought us in safety through the shades of night, and hast shown unto us once again the light of day. And we entreat of thy goodness: Be gracious unto our sins, and accept our prayer in thy great tenderness of heart. For we flee unto thee, the merciful and almighty God. Shine in our hearts with the true Sun of thy Righteousness; enlighten our mind and guard all our senses; that walking uprightly as in the day, in the way of thy statutes, we may attain unto life eternal (for with thee is the source of life); and graciously be permitted to come unto the fruition of the light unapproachable.

“For thou art our God, and unto thee we ascribe glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

“O God, our God, who hast brought into being by thy will all the powers endowed with speech and reason, we beseech thee and supplicate thee: Accept our praises, which together with all thy creatures we offer according to our strength; and reward us with the rich gifts of thy goodness. For unto thee every knee doth bow, whether in heaven or on the earth, or in the regions under the earth, and every breath and created being doth sing thine ineffable glory. For thou only art the true and most merciful God.

“For all the powers of heaven magnify thee, and unto thee we ascribe glory, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

“O Lord our God, who hast granted unto men pardon through repentance, and hast set us, as an example of the acknowledgment of sin and of the confession which is unto forgiveness, the repentance of the Prophet David: Do thou, the same Lord, have mercy upon us according to thy great mercy, notwithstanding the manifold and great iniquities into which we have fallen; and through the multitude of thy bounties, blot out our transgressions. For unto thee have we sinned, O Lord, who knowest the secret and hidden things of the heart of man, and who alone hast power to remit sins; and as thou hast created a clean heart within us, and established us with thy guiding Spirit, and made known unto us the joy of salvation, cast thou us not away from thy presence. But inasmuch as thou art good and lovest man, graciously vouchsafe unto us that even until our uttermost breath, we may offer unto thee the sacrifice of righteousness, and an offering upon thy holy altars.

“Through the mercies and bounties and love toward mankind of thine Only-begotten Son, with whom thou art blessed, together with thine all-holy, and good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

“Illumine our hearts, O Sovereign Master, who lovest man, with the pure light of thy wisdom, and open the eyes of our understanding to the comprehension of the proclamation of thy Gospel. Implant in us, also, the fear of thy blessed commandments; that trampling down all carnal appetites, we may lead a godly life, both thinking and doing always such things as are well pleasing in thy sight.

“For thou art the sanctification and the illumination both of our souls and bodies, O Christ our God, and unto thee we ascribe glory, together with thy Father, who hath no beginning, and thine all-holy and blessed and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

As Reformed Christians, we’re excited about what God has done for us in His courtroom. And we should be. It’s unbelievable. “That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me”? The righteous for the unrighteous? Constituted righteous by one Man’s obedience? Utterly amazing.

I believe there exists in our circles, however, a kind of preoccupation with the divine courtroom that is terribly unhealthy. I refer to the preoccupation of some of God’s people with the question: am I really forgiven? (It takes varying forms, actually: is God really for me? does He really love me? am I really His child? did Jesus really die for me? etc.) Now, this is not the same thing as a believing soul’s continual hunger for, and delight in, the gospel; the normal Christian life is one lived “by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” What I have in mind is something else: a settled unsettledness about the eternal state of one’s soul; a regular revisiting of the courtroom verdict, not with joy but with anxiety; a feeling that if one doesn’t feel a certain measure of angst, of desperateness, in approaching the issue of justification, one is near to compromising (and is certainly at least devaluing) the article of the standing church; or more insidious still, belief that talk of anything beyond the courtroom is a step away from the gospel.

I know Christians who are spending their entire lives on the courthouse steps, looking over their shoulder, wondering if they can really trust the pardoning verdict, or even if it actually occurred. They desperately need to hear it again and again, not because they believe it, but because they don’t. They stubbornly refuse to move off the courthouse precincts into the home and family room of God, to claim Him as their Father (and to know He rejoices in this), to eat His bread and wine, to celebrate His gifts and His unfailing love. Indeed, they seem to find pious reassurance in the fact that they are unsure, that they don’t trust the Almighty too much. Their doubts and fears are their insurance against dreaded presumption.

There are preachers – Reformed preachers – whose ministry feeds this kind of spiritual sickness. For them, conversion is the driving theme of every sermon: are you right with God? are you in Christ? where will you spend eternity? It doesn’t seem to occur to them that it could be biblically normative for God’s children to regard the question of their eternal state as settled in Christ (this is, after all, the point of the gospel); or that the summons to faithfulness might be better grounded in assurance than in uncertainty; or that a secure, conclusive answer to the courtroom question might open the way for some other highly important considerations (from God’s point of view) in the living room.

There is a kind of preoccupation with the question of God’s love that calls His love into question – that in fact impugns His character as Father and makes Him appear hard, even loveless. There is a fine but important line between faith’s normal struggles in this world, and a spirit of wicked unbelief that is really a subtle form of pride: I believe my own doubts (and Satan’s whisperings) more than the Word of God who cannot lie.

Take Jesus’ statement, “I am the Bread of Life.” For some Reformed saints, eating the Bread is simply a matter of life and death. Fine. It is that; no question about it. But I don’t eat my dinner simply because I will die if I don’t, true though that may be. I eat it because it is good, because it is nourishing, because (dare I say) I like it. It doesn’t simply stave off death; and in fact if I am really healthy, I don’t think about death while I am eating; I have other things to think about. There is more to the Bread of Life – there is more to life – than not dying. There is more to the good news in Christ than bare forgiveness of sins, a favorable courtroom verdict, as fundamental as this is. To change the metaphor, an engine doth not an automobile make: yes, our lives are lived by faith in what Christ accomplished for us in His death and resurrection, but believing we live. The car goes somewhere! We live in covenant with the Lord our God, we and our seed; and precisely because His salvation is sure, beyond question, we live with Him faithfully and well.

To put all this yet another way (I’m on a roll, you see), there is more than one way to undermine confidence in God’s courtroom verdict: one can doubt it, question it, or deny it; or one can make it the be-all and end-all of life with God, as if to think about anything else will render it null and void. But the way to truly enjoy God’s verdict is to skip down the courthouse steps and take up residence in His family room, to enter into the familial life He intended when He announced the verdict. In a certain glorious sense, we ought to take the Judge’s verdict for granted (which is to say, trust it), and get busy living with our Father. Don’t stop with justification; go on to embrace the whole salvation of God.

“O Lord our God, who hast banished from us the sluggishness of sleep, and hast assembled us together by a holy bidding, that in the night-season also we may lift up our hands, and make unto thee thankful acknowledgement of thy righteous judgments: Accept our prayers, petitions, confessions of thanks and nocturnal worship; and grant unto us, O God, faith invincible, love unwavering, hope unfeigned. Bless our goings out and our comings in; our deeds and works, and words and thoughts. And grant that we may come to the beginning of this day praising, singing and blessing the goodness of thine ineffable beneficence.

“For blessed is thine all-holy Name, and all-magnified is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)

“O God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hast raised us up from our beds, and hast gathered us together at this hour of prayer: Grant us grace in the opening of our lips, and accept our thanksgivings as we have power to make them; and instruct us in thy statutes. For we know not how to pray as we ought unless thou, O Lord, by thy Holy Spirit, dost guide us. Wherefore we beseech thee: Pardon, remit, forgive whatsoever sins we may have committed unto this present hour, whether by word, or deed, or thought, whether voluntarily or involuntarily; for if thou wilt be extreme to mark iniquity, O Lord, Lord, who shall stand? For with thee is redemption. For thou only art holy, a mighty helper and the defender of our life; and our song shall be ever of thee.

“Blessed and glorified be the might of thy kingdom, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.”

(Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, ed. Isabel Florence Hapgood)