Sermon: The Collect

Preacher:

Chris Hollingshurst

Date:

Sunday 3rd August 2025

Venue:

Guildford Cathedral

Service:

6pm Choral Evensong

As I speak you will find it helpful to have in front of you the words of today’s Collect, which you can find on page 12 of the service booklet. I want to structure my thoughts around it to reflect together during the next few minutes…

Like all Collects, today’s Collect begins by ascribing divine characteristics as part of beginning to address God. This is a part of every Collect which, if we are not careful, we skip quickly past. As you will see, in the case of today’s Collect, God is recognised and addressed as ‘Lord of all power and might’ and ‘the author and giver of all good things’. 

There is so much that could be said about those opening words alone but, this evening, I just want to say that when, in the face of the world’s troubles, when many blame God for ‘all bad things’ (in the sense that He doesn’t wave a magic wand and stop them) it is important to remember God’s initiating, inspiring and sustaining of everything that is good. This Collect helps us to do that.

It’s a foundation of faith that God is all powerful and good, even when not everything that happens in the world is good. The God who is the ‘Lord of all power and might’ chooses to use that mighty power to be, in supreme generosity, and ‘the author and giver of all good things’. 

In terms of today’s Collect, it means that the requests which follow these opening ascriptions then need to be seen in light of who it is we have just said we are praying to.  

First, ‘graft in our hearts the love of thy name’. If we are really praying to ‘the author and giver of all good things’, a limitlessly generous God in whom all that is good can be found, then asking for help in loving this God isn’t just a good thing to do but a key priority. For in light of God’s gift of life and love, it’s a natural response to want to love God more.

Did you notice the double recognition in the wording?  ‘Graft in our hearts the love of thy name’. It’s clear that that those praying this prayer know we need God’s help to be able come to love the name of God. We need God’s help to love God more.

But there is a specific in the Collect - asking God to graft love into our hearts. It’s like a gardener grafting shoots or twigs into a tree trunk to get at the sap, or like a skilled surgeon grafting healthy tissue into unhealthy tissue to bring healing and restoration.

Now there are days when my heart overflows with love for God. If I’m honest there are other days when I am either in a far less positive state or, simply, I am not as attentive or as aware as I might be. And so I believe that whilst asking in prayer for more of God’s love pleases God, it is also good for us to do it for the strengthening of our faith.

The Collect then goes on to request that God ‘increase in us true religion’.

This was a phrase that left me cold when I was younger. The sort of churches I grew up in were sceptical of the word ‘religion’, and all that goes with it. Preachers often derided what they called ‘religiosity’ or ‘churchianity’, advocating, they said, not ‘religion’ but ‘relationship’ – principally a relationship with Christ.

I quickly came to bristle against not just the narrowness of these comments but the seeming judgementalism and keeping to themselves the right to say what was true and what wasn’t. This often seemed to be around preferences for forms and styles of worship including, sometimes, the practice of speaking in tongues which St Paul was teaching the Corinthians about.  

Worryingly, as I became more outwardly ‘religious’ in my faith (by which I mean worshipping with greater discipline and in more liturgical and formal contexts) I encountered the same judgementalism and dismissiveness the other way around, with some equating reverence with traditional worship only - when it really isn’t that straightforward…

When different traditions and groups see themselves as the true religion, that way lies trouble. Having prayed ‘graft in our hearts the love of thy name’ and then ‘increase in us true religion’, we need to leave the judgement of what is true religion and faith (or not) to God.

If we need pointers to true religion, we might heed the words of the Great Commandment, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves. Or the words of the prophet Hosea, later referenced by Jesus: ‘I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings. The merciful response of Joseph to his brothers suggests a person who knew what true religion was.

And then there are well-known words from the letter of James: ‘Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.’ 

In the end, we know to do right, and we authenticate our faith or otherwise by how we choose to live.

Now to the third petition within the Collect, that ‘the author and giver of all good things’, having heard our prayer for a true religion, would ‘nourish is with all goodness’.

It seems to me that the God who is addressed in this Collect will be only too pleased that we make this request! God who is all good wants to share his abundant goodness with us.  But to nourish us?

Of course nourishment is entirely for our good. It has connotations of being fed, of taking in what is good and healthy, of enabling us to grow through receiving what is good for us.

So many situations in the news at the moment show the dreadful effects of physical lack of nourishment and starvation. And I’m not ignoring this. I think the God who has provided more than enough resources for everyone weeps when resources are hoarded, withheld or used as weapons by those with the wealth or military might to do so. I am grateful to be able to eat well and it is surely incumbent upon each of us to share what we have with those who have little.

But there is a question of spiritual nourishment too.

I don’t know about you, but I can be easily distracted by ordinary things of life. They may be harmless enough in themselves, but they keep us from the life of God in Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. When we cut ourselves off, or are kept, from the good things of God, our faith withers. 

So given my inconstancy, I find it helpful that the Collect invites me to ask for God’s nourishment when, left to my own devices, I might forget to do so or simply take it for granted.

Finally to the words ‘and of thy great mercy, keep us in the same’ – a prayer that what we are given will be kept, retained; that it will be of lasting consequence for us, for all whom we encounter, and for the world. And it is all asked through the intercession and in the power of the risen Lord at the right hand of his Father in Heaven.

So just a Collect? I think not – and one of many, of course.  But like all of them, one which invites fruitful reflection.

Can I therefore encourage us to reflect on the Collects carefully each week, perhaps in the quiet before services begin?

And as we pray them to open our hearts and minds to the Holy Spirit, to draw us close to God and renew our desire to seek and live God’s purposes in our lives, and for His sake.   Amen.