Give us grace, O Lord,
to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ
and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation,
that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(BCP 215)
Historical Introduction
This Collect, drafted by Massey H. Shepherd, Jr. for the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, echoes phrases from the Collect for the feast day of Saint Andrew (November 30, see BCP 237).[1] This Collect is appropriate for this Sunday because the Gospel lessons in Years A and B are about Jesus’ calling of the first four disciples, including Andrew (Matthew 4:12-23, Mark 1:14-20).[2] The Year C reading, while not about the calling of the disciples (Luke 4:14-21), contains the narrative about Jesus’ sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth and the Collect echoes an important element of Jesus’ ministry[3] that all of the baptized are called to follow: to proclaim the Good News of salvation through Jesus to all.
The Preamble
The Preamble, “O Lord,” invites us to consider how we are calling upon God in this Collect. We are invited to ask whether this Collect addresses God as our sovereign or to address God as approachable and relational—that is, the God who has revealed God’s own divine name to us. For a discussion of how referring to God as Lord invites this question, see the Note below.
The Acknowledgement
The optional Acknowledgement is not present in this Collect.
The Petition
The Petition, “Give us grace … to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation,” is a request for grace to follow in the footsteps of the first disciples in their response to Jesus’ invitation to proclaim the Gospel with him. This Petition continues to develop the Petition from last week’s Collect: that we, who are “illumined by [God’s] Word and Sacraments” might, through our lives, be means of reflecting Christ’s glory. In this Collect, we pray for grace to live into the Baptismal Covenant by proclaiming “by word and example the Good News of God in Christ” (Holy Baptism: The Baptismal Covenant, BCP 305).
This Good News of God in Christ that we are called to proclaim is described in the Year C reading of Luke 4:14-21: captives being released, the blind having their sight restored, and the oppressed going free—this is good news to those who are poor because of the power of sin. Through sin we “we lose our liberty” that God desires for us. Through sin, our relationship with God, each other, and all of creation is distorted (Catechism: Sin and Redemption, BCP 848-9). It might seem that one of the things in this list (poor, captives, blind, oppressed) is not like the others, except one can read “the blind” in this passage as those whose ability to perceive God with their spiritual eyes has been obscured.
The salvation that is in view in Luke 4:14-21 is health that begins in this life. Salvation is freedom from the power of sin. Salvation is experienced as living in harmony with God, each other, and all of creation. (Catechism: Sin and Redemption, BCP 848-9). Since the mission of the Church is to “restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” through “the ministry of all of its members,” (Catechism: The Church, BCP 855) this petition is asking God to give us grace to be active members of the Church. Suffrages A of Morning and Evening Prayer (BCP 55, 67-8, 97-8, 121-2) provide a similar description of the Good News of salvation in Christ.
The Aspiration
The Aspiration, “that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works,” gives us another way of stating the purpose of the Aspiration of last week’s Collect (that we, who have been illumined by God’s Word and Sacraments, may reflect Christ’s glory into the world so that Christ “may be known, worshiped, and obeyed”). As we are illumined and empowered through our worship, we are better able to recognize the marvelous works of salvation in our lives and in the lives of those around us. Through this increasing perception of Christ’s glorious work, we are better able to proclaim how God is at work in the world today.
The Pleading
The Pleading, “who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen,” makes this a petition to all three persons of the Trinity—our Savior Jesus Christ, the one who offers healing to the fabric of our society; the Holy Spirit who illuminates us through Word and Sacrament; and God our Lord.
Note
God as “Lord” can also be understood as the English translation of God’s revealed name (see Exodus 3:11-15). How the divine name is understood as Lord is a bit complicated. In Hebrew, God’s revealed name is written as four consonants (called the Tetragrammaton and transliterated as YHWH). The practice of Jews has been to not speak God’s revealed name. When they write God’s name, they do not include the vowels of God’s name, but write the vowels of what is to be read: “Adonai” (“my Lord”) or “Elohim” (God). In the Old Testament of our English Bibles, we have followed this Jewish tradition: when the Tetragrammaton occurs in the Hebrew text that is being translated, the translators wrote LORD (regular capital “L” followed by “ord” in small capital letters) or GOD (regular capital “G” followed by “od” in small capital letters). Following this ancient way of addressing God by speaking “Lord” and meaning the unspoken Divine Name provides one of three ways of interpreting how we are referring to God in a Collect. A second way of understanding God as Lord is affirming that God is sovereign over all of creation.
For your consideration:
Answering the call to proclaim the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ is both consistent throughout time and yet must be contextualized for our present situation. What new ways are we being invited to share the Good News?
How have you experienced release from captivity, recovery of sight, and freedom from oppression through the work of Jesus Christ?
What new sights of God’s glory revealed through Jesus Christ have we as a parish, diocese, and denomination, received since we prayed this Collect last year? With whom are we sharing this Good News?
Give us grace, O Lord,
to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ
and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation,
that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
[1] Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book, (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 171.
[2] Hatchett, 171.
[3] Hatchett, 171.
© 2021 Donna Hawk-Reinhard, revised in 2022 and 2023; edited by Kate McCormick
Want to know more about the Collect format or this series of meditations? You can find that information here.