Collect for Trinity 9
Fruit of the Holy Spirit: Love, Joy and Peace
The Holy Spirit is available to whisper to us thoughts of love and joy and peace and patience every moment of our lives.
Our collect for today is a beautiful prayer and so full of meaning and purpose – an ideal prayer for our daily devotions.
Almighty God, who sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love and joy and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
And what an opening statement it says it all: The Holy Spirit is the life and light of the Church
The Church that is alive grows and goes places – it is evident in the way in which its members react to worship and take that worship away with them as they leave the Church.
We need the life blood of the Holy Spirit so as to grow in Grace just as much as we need air to breathe and blood flowing through our bodies in order to live.
The Holy spirit is the life blood of the Church and each individual member and its gifts are evident in each one of us.
Today the Church is facing many controversial issues, where many decisions have to be made and whatever the outcome, whatever way we decide – it will be wrong in the eyes of some and right in the eyes of others – we can’t win.
We are, as they say, between a rock and a hard place.
And this is where we need the light of the Holy Spirit to guide and direct our thinking and above all our actions.
Indeed we all need that light in our daily lives to guide us through the day’s toil and the decisions that we have to make.
And scripture has a unique place to play in shedding this light – as the Psalmist says, ‘Thy Word is a lantern unto my feet and a light to my path.’ (Ps. 119:105)
And so we pray that the Holy Spirit will: Open our hearts to the riches of Your Grace.
The important aspect of all this is to realise that we must be prepared to let God speak to us through His Holy Spirit – we have to be receptive!!
We all have our likes and dislikes and this is especially true when its connected with the Church but we mustn’t let our bias dictate.
We must be open to ideas and new ways of Glorifying Almighty God.
We must NOT shut the door but keep it open so that we and everyone will be enriched by God’s Grace so that we will bring forth the fruits of the Spirit.
Sometimes we have to seek a compromise and look to way of mixing the old with the new as we want to grow and NOT decline, as Jesus said to His disciples: Every Scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old. (Matt. 13: 52)
Indeed we have our own saying, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ but it might need a polish or a good clean – its all about balance and thinking through the consequences of your actions.
And this is where the next part of our collect comes in: Open our hearts to the riches of God’s grace, so that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love and joy and peace.
Ironically the first 3 gifts of the Holy Spirit as described by St Paul in his letter to the Galations are love, joy and peace.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Is this list in order of priority? - with love, joy and peace leading the way – the most important.
The fruits of the Holy Spirit starts with love and as Paul outlines in 1Corinthians 13, his hymn of love:
Love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things - LOVE NEVER
ENDS.
Love covers many of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in that list: patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – all these are attributes of love.
In the English language love covers so many things but in Greek there are a number of different words that cover the rich meaning of the word, love.
There is Eros which is the love a man has for a women (and visa versa), it is love with passion even lust and as such is a word not used in the NT.
Eros is associated with the Greek god of love, the son of Aphrodite, the Romans called him Cupid the god with those deadly romantic arrows.
Then there if Philia which is the warm love that we feel for our nearest and dearest – it is the love that emanates from our hearts, that unites the family and underpins friendship in a bond of love.
Then there is Storge which is the kind of love we might have for our cat or dog, a faithful pet.
Again it can be used for human affection but is far more meaningful and that’s why storge and philia often go hand in hand to describe a loving relationship.
Lastly there is Agape, the Christian word for love meaning an unconquerable charity and no matter what someone does by the way of insult, injury or humiliation we will never seek anything other than their higher good.
It is a feeling not just of the heart but of the mind as well, it concerns the will as much as the emotions and it is a sacrificial love – the giving of self at all cost, even to ones life.
Agape seeks and is determined, a love that seeks everything and anything that is the BEST even for those who seek the worst for us.
It is Agape, this kind of love that is the gift of the Holy Spirit, it is the kind of love that Paul refers to in his hymn of Love in 1Corinthians 13, it is the kind of love that Jesus asks Peter – do you love me.
In love and joy and peace – JOY, the kind of joy that is God given, hence why it is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
All too often we confuse the word joy with aspects of achievement, winning a victory or a competition, gaining something which perhaps isn’t really ours.
Transient accomplishment, a high, which soon dwindles to nothing.
But eternal joys are a gift from God and last forever.
And ironically Joy and Grace are interconnected in a very divine way, after all Grace is all about God’s forgiveness, the sacrifice that Jesus gave on the cross to achieve that forgiveness.
God’s gift of love in His Son our Saviour Jesus Christ that gift of Grace surely is a Joy to behold.
The Joy of being a child of God and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven – a Joy to behold, a joy indeed.
With this love and joy we have the peace that the world cannot give, the peace which passes all understanding – the peace of God.
One could go on forever and I’m sure you all have individual experiences to reinforce how the Holy Spirit has opened your heart to the riches of God’s Grace.
In the same way many have tried to express the richness of God’s Grace and how it works in their lives and how it shows itself through the gifts of the Holy Spirit in love and joy and peace:
Love is the key:
• Joy is love exalted – Joy is love singing
• Peace is love in repose – Peace is love resting
• Long-suffering is love enduring
• Gentleness is love in society – Gentleness is love’s self-forgetfulness
• Kindness is love’s touch
• Goodness is love in action – Goodness is love’s character
• Faith is love on the battlefield
• Meekness is love in school
• Temperance is love in training
• Self-control is love holding the reins
A parish priest went to visit Maggy, one of his congregation, she was in the final stages of her life because of cancer, and was heavily medicated and unresponsive.
He went to support her family, who were taking it hard and when he got there, he was surprised at what he saw.
Her daughter, Jane, had taken off the bed sheets and set them aside – she was putting lotion of her mother’s body, starting at her feet.
She was using a very expensive lotion far more than she could afford.
And as he walked in Jane gave him a mischievous smile and made him promise not to tell her children what she was doing.
They had given Jane the lotion as a present for her birthday with the words, ‘you never do anything for yourself, mom – so we have to spoil you.’
As Jane applied the lotion on her mother, she was unresponsive.
Maggy nor anyone else would ever know the difference what she had done, but this is the very nature of self-sacrificial love.
So what if these acts of love go unappreciated or unnoticed? – So what if no one ever knows these precious acts of love?
God knows and sees these acts of love – they are noticed and they are precious and valuable in His sight.
Acts like these, care for others and their needs – puts others first.
These acts of love show the love and mercy of Jesus and we are motivated by them – they in effect point us to Jesus – surely they are the marks of a Christian.
Indeed St. Paul outlines the marks of the true Christian in his letter to the Roman 12:9-12:
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour.
Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.
Come Holy Spirit and be our life and light in this world and open to us the riches of Your Grace that we may grow in love and joy and peace all the days of our life.
