Call for Purity | a sermon

A sermon by Rev. Rod Sprange on Mark and the Prayer- Call for Purity.

Let us pray. May the word my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts and the actions in our lives be now and always acceptable in your sight of God, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Well, this is my final Sunday with you. Filling in and I'm sure everybody's excited because Andrew will be starting very shortly and that'll be just great for everybody. But it's been wonderful to be with you and I really appreciated the affirmation that I've had at times and the friendliness of the congregation.

Tonight I wanted to talk to you about two things. One to look briefly at the Gospel reading tonight and then secondly, I want to talk to you a little bit about the liturgy and about one particular part of the liturgy. That I hope will be an example for looking at the rest of the liturgy.

So we're reading from Mark and Mark is the earliest of the of the Gospels, probably written some 30 years or so after the life of Christ and. He tells a very quick story, like it's very brief, it starts abruptly and it ends abruptly, and he's in a hurry and you all the connecting pieces like and immediately and then and he, you know, and it's so it kind of gets you galloping through, which I think is supposed to help us recognize the urgency. Of Jesus Mission, Jesus message. He knew he only had a while to proclaim his gospel before the religious authorities, the temple authorities, and the and the Romans. And this would want to destroy him.

So far in Mark, it started with John the Baptist in the wilderness, baptizing people with the baptism of repentance for the becoming of the Kingdom. And Jesus shows up and he himself is baptized and comes out of the water and then he receives the Holy Spirit and he hears those wonderful. You are my son, the beloved. In you, I am well pleased.

And then according to Mark, he is immediately whisked off into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil for 40 days and for 40 nights. And there he is, able to resist the kind of the temptations of humans, the, the, the, the need for bodily comforts, and for safety and for power. And he comes out of there afresh with his mission clearly in mind.

The first thing he does, he goes off to Galilee amongst the village there. But he's walking along the lake. And the first thing he does is select disciples. It's the very first action he does, disciples or apprentices. If you want to call them that.

He's walking on the lake and he sees Simon and Andrew and they're casting their Nets into the sea, into the lake to catch fish. He sees something. In Simon, something in Andrew. That he can make use of as his apprentices. And so he calls them and says come, follow me. I'll make you fishes of people.

I don't know. What it was he saw in those two, whether it was their way they worked together in fishing and and taking it seriously. What what it was. But something he saw. And they saw something in Jesus because. Amazingly, they put down their Nets and they followed this guy. They didn't know where they were going. They didn't know what they were following into, but they knew they had to follow him.

Jesus continued along the lake and he saw the two sons of Zebedee James and John, and they were diligently fixing the Nets. Kind of boring, laborious work looking for the tears in the net white putting them all together and doing them up. And. He saw so. In John and something in James that he could use as his disciples, and he called them.

And they must have seen something wonderful in Jesus because they did an audacious thing. They left their father in those days. You did not leave your father. If you want to know about it, read the the parable of the the Prodigal Son. And they left there and they went with him.

So I was thinking about what is this say for us? I think what it says is that Jesus has called us each one of us. And Jesus has seen something in you. And something in you and something in all of you. Every one of you that he can use as his apprenticeship to carry on his mission to bring about the Kingdom of God.

So whatever it is, we need to find that out. What is that thing that Jesus sees in us? And so I think we need to be discerning what gift is it that God has given me that Jesus has seen and Jesus can use to bring about the Kingdom to help in that work.

To find that out, we may need to engage with a friend or somebody we trust to help them reflect on us, to see what it is that we have. That Jesus might be wanting to use and so I think there's three parts to this. The 1st is to do that reflection to find out what is the, what is this gift. The second is to think about, well, now I've got that gift. What is it to? Be used for. How best can that gift be used? In what mission? What ministry? Once you've done that, the next one is. Go do it. It's pretty simple as that. Just get on with it.

We're coming up to the time very quickly to the time of Lent this year, and I think that's a wonderful time to sit there and discern about, think about what is it that Jesus sees in me that he wants to use? In me and how might I go about that?

The other thing I wanted to talk to you about was liturgy a little bit. You have a very unique special liturgy here. And it's an abbreviated kind of version of some of the BAS worship. And it's filled with beautiful music that. Envelops us.

One of the things I think about worship and liturgy is sometimes we can skip over parts and miss what it's about with the music. You've fixed that because you have that repetitiveness that brings those words back and back and back until you're. You're immersed in it. And it sinks in. But when we get to the prayers, we kind of we're through them and we don't have time to stop and think. And what is it about?

 So I wanted to talk about and it's funny because I wanted to talk about the collect for purity. All the other days I've been here, you've had the call out for purity. But like I look at the menu when it's off, there's no point for purity. But I'm going to go there anyway.

 So you remember the call for purity. That's almighty God to you all hearts are open. So let's just go through that a little bit. Almighty God to woo just a second here. What are we saying? Almighty God. This isn't some little address, dear Sir or Madam. Or to whom it may concern. This is addressing almighty God. We should be all struck that we're doing this. We should. We should be laying down with our heads covered to say almighty God, me, US, we're talking to God.

I think it would be good at times to pause after the opening. Things almighty God or loving, loving God or father, and just stop and think about. The audacity of us doing this so we go on

Almighty God to you all hearts are open. Wow. That's a pretty amazing, wonderful thing. The heart, this is an ancient, by the way, an ancient call it probably when the ancient, most ancient ones we've got probably coming out around Augustine Time. Translated for the Book of Common Prayer by Cramer. When we're starting that so it's been around for a long time. So all hearts open, the heart was the scene as the essence the the central part of who we are. So all hearts are open. So to this God, everything about me is. It's kind of amazing, wonderful, but a little scary too.

To your hearts, open all desires known. So everything I desire, everything. I am anxious for would like to have happen. All those things God knows. Knows everyone of them, so this helps me so much in prayer. How many of you love it when you're somewhere with a group and they say, would you pray for us today? Not me. I can't do that. Even priests sometimes feel that way.

The wonderful thing is, if God already understands our hearts desire. We don't need clever words. We don't need the right words. We just need to connect with God. All desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden. I'm not too sure about that one. We've all got secrets. Maybe things we don't want to share with anybody. Maybe things we wish we couldn't remember, or if we do, we cringe. Thinking, was that me? Did I do that? Did I say that? Did I not do that?

So all those secret things, all those things we but somewhere back in here, God knows them already. So how does that help us?

Well, it helps us because despite all that. Or include all that God loves us. And through Jesus, God loves us and cares for us.

When we go to confession. And it's important that we do go to confession. You. May wonder why. Why do we need to go confession? If God has already forgiven us? If God already loves us, why are we doing this together? Well, The thing is, it's really God's plan is for us to be reconciliation, to be reconciled. And the steps in reconciliation are first to take ownership. To admit. And take responsibility for whatever part we have done to sever that relationship or damage that relationship.

The second is to be asking for forgiveness. And the third is to then do our best to turn our lives around. So when we all get together, we're all acknowledging that we're in this together. Not one of us is clean. As it were, we all need that chance to admit that we have faults, that we have failed in some way or other. And ask together to acknowledge that forgiveness that has already been won for us through Jesus.

We get to the next part with, so we've got to all desires known or from you no secrets of hidden cleanse. The thoughts of our hearts. So our hearts is where we keep those secret thoughts, all those thoughts, and we're asking God to make us clean. Cleanse that despite what may be in there or whatever, clean us from that. Now, how is that going to happen? Through the inspiration of your Holy Spirit.

Now sometimes we think of inspiration as, oh, I've got the idea. Ohh, I think I could inspiration in this case. Is the actual reading of the word to inspire to breathe in. The clinging of our hearts is through the breathing in of the Holy Spirit. So just think of that. close your eyes sometimes and just think. Breathing in God's Holy Spirit, all that. Cleansing and and making well and fresh and healed.

That's what we're that's the through the inspiration of your Holy Spirit. And why do we why do we need that? That we may perfectly love you. Think about that. Jesus said that the 1st and most important of all the commandments was you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, with all your strength.

How many of us really feel? We have perfectly loved God. So we are hoping we're praying that through this cleansing. We are able to better love God.

And the other one we say is and to worthily magnify your holy name. We're here, we're magnifying God's holy name through music, through prayer, through the Proclamation. And we want it to be. As pure as possible, when we go to do that and we can't do that on our own. So all of this is done to make it possible for us to really go surround this table that Christ invites us to. And to receive.

Not because we're worthy in our own minds, but because we're worthy to stand before Christ and God because of Christ's actions. So that's a lot. We've been praying for in this little prayer. But how is it to be accomplished? Why is it to be accomplished? And it's the very end. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.