Seventh Sunday after Trinity - 2014

The Seventh Sunday after Trinity.

Psalm 119.49-56

Memor esto servi tui

O THINK upon thy servant, as concerning thy world : wherein thou hast caused me to put my trust.

50. The same is my comfort in my trouble : for thy word hath quickened me.

51. The proud have had me exceedingly in derision : yet have I not shrinked from thy law.

52. For I remembered thine everlasting judgements, O Lord : and received comfort.

53. I am horribly afraid : for the ungodly that forsake thy law.

54. Thy statutes have been my songs : in the house of my pilgrimage.

55. I have thought upon thy Name, O Lord, in the night-season : and have kept thy law.

56. This I had : because I kept thy commandments.

The Collect.

LORD of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things; Graft in our hearts the love of thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of thy great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Old Testament Reading: Hosea 14.1-9

Psalter: Psalm 32, 36 | 33, 34

Epistle Reading: Romans 6.19-23

Gospel Reading: St. Mark 8.1-9

Toon: “God the Father is addressed as the LORD, the One who has Authority and Strength/Force, not merely authority but authority with power. He is well able to do what in his infinite wisdom and love he chooses to do. And such is what we would expect to be so of the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

The Father is also remembered and recalled as the Almighty Lord who is both the maker and the giver of all good things, the One to whom belongs everything that is most excellent. By these words we recall James 1:17, Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

The petition in this Collect is all about the increase of genuine religion in our hearts, which is only brought about by two divine processes. These are (a) God’s nurturing of what he has planted in our hearts; and (b) his guarding and keeping what he has nurtured.

Our human nature, even when highly educated and formed into good habits, does not love the Name of God, even as a garden does not grow rose trees naturally. God the Gardener has to plant the love of his Name in our hearts, He has to nurture that seed of love as he also has to feed it. It is important to recognise that for the biblical writers, the Name of God reflects his revealed character and thus in loving the hallowed Name we love God and what is made known to us from him.

One obvious duty arising from this petition is that of reading in the Bible of the character of God, of thinking about and meditating upon that character, and even rising to the heights of contemplating God as he is known through his revealed character.

Therefore we ask that God will graft, increase & nourish the seed he sows and will through his Fatherly mercy and affection keep that seed growing until it blossoms and magnifies his Name.

We ask through our Lord Jesus Christ the One Mediator between God and man and the one, as the Gospel for this week declares, feeds the hungry with good things. Further, we ask through the same Jesus Christ from whom comes to believers the gift of eternal life as the Epistle declares” (http://www.pbs.org.uk/the-bcp/seventh-sunday-after-trinity).