7 Easter Year C 6/1/2025
Acts 16:16-34; Psalm 97; Revelation 22:12-21; John 17:20-26
Rev. Mark A. Lafler
Today is the seventh and final Sunday in Eastertide.
It is kind of an odd day…
As the Feast Day of the Ascension was last Thursday…
Pentecost is next Sunday…
These ten days are sometimes referred to as Ascensiontide.
So, liturgically, we find ourselves in an in-between-sort-of-time.
Which is probably properly done…
As the disciples and the early followers of Jesus were also in an in-between-time.
Jesus had lived, died, and rose again.
He had appeared numerous times in his resurrected body to the apostles throughout the 40 days after Easter.
And then he ascended into heaven leaving the disciples with the promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit.
10 days of waiting…
10 days from the Ascension to the Pentecost promise.
And our collect takes up this emotion…
This sense of waiting, hoping, and longing for the promise to be fulfilled.
Today, we are going to dive into our collect appointed for today…
I encourage you to have the front of your bulletin in hand to look at it.
The collect is this (Rite 1):
O God, the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven: We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless, but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Savior Christ is gone before;
who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
The collect is this (Rite 2):
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen
The prayer is an ancient prayer.
Coming to us through the Latin Mass and recomposed by Thomas Cranmer during the English Reformation.
It was placed here in the liturgy for the Sunday after the Ascension in the original Book of Common Prayer in 1549.
So, this means, it is a prayer that has been said for well over 500 years.
Like most collects, the prayer begins with whom it is addressed to.
O God, the King of glory…
This would be God the Father in our Trinitarian language…
And it speaks of his royal presence…
Invoking the image of his throne room in the heavenlies…
Images that the Book of Revelation spark the imagination.
After the address, comes the statement or attribute of God.
Our collects says:
…you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven…
This is referring to the Ascension of our Lord.
God the Father has exalted…
He has raised up…
He has ascended…
His only Son, Jesus Christ to His Kingdom in heaven.
This is what we state in the Creeds:
…he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
So, Christ Jesus is seated at a position of power…
That is what at the right hand of the Father means…
A position of power.
In our collect, God exalted Jesus Christ with great triumph to the heavenly kingdom.
He ascended in victory…
As a King ascends to the throne…
A crucified and resurrected Lord sits on the throne in heaven.
A victorious King who overcame sin, death, and the grave.
Jesus is seated in power and glory, triumphant.
And then our collect moves to the petition.
It says: Do not leave us comfortless…
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word comfort or comfortless…
I think of leisure, relaxation…
A place of comfort.
Like being snuggled up in my bed under the comforter.
But when we pray: Do not leave us comfortless…
That is not what it means.
It doesn’t have anything to do with having a comfortable life.
It is referring to the archaic meaning of the word comfort.
Which means strength.
So when we pray: Do not leave us comfortless…
We are petitioning the Lord to not leave us strengthless…
or without strength.
And this has to do with the Lord’s presence…
With God’s presence…
Because Jesus said in John 15:5:
I am the vine; you are the branches.
If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit;
apart from me you can do nothing.
And here in this moment…
This liturgical moment…
This Biblical moment…
We are in-between the times…
Jesus has ascended…
And the presence of the Holy Spirit has not descended yet.
So our collect recognizes that Jesus has ascended…
His presence is gone…
And we pray: Do not leave us comfortless…
Do not leave us without strength…
Because – apart from me you can do nothing.
It is recognizing life without the presence of God.
And yet that so often speaks to us in the moments we are in…
How often do we try in our own strength to live in this world.
How often do we make decisions without prayer.
How often do we strive to live under the burden of moral strain without the presence of God.
How often do we turn to God because, well, it’s the last place to turn to.
Isn’t that what he wants – God helps those that help themselves.
No!
In fact, the opposite would be true…
God helps those that can’t help themselves…
And that would be all people.
All of us have sinned and are in need of a savior.
And that is the heartbeat of English Reformation belief…
Really the heartbeat of the Holy Scriptures…
God’s desire and initiative is to save his people.
The glory of God is to love the unworthy.
We call this gift…
We call it grace.
But the temptation in our world is to live life as though his presence is gone… and we are left to our own strength to try to make it.
To try to do our best in the midst of a strange world.
But the petition in our prayer is…
Don’t leave us without strength…
but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us.
Our longing is to see the Holy Spirit present in our life…
Because without the Spirit of Jesus we can do nothing.
The answer to living in this world…
Receiving guidance in this world…
Living in the holiness of God in this world…
Is living in the presence of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The disciples longed for the fulfillment of the promise of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
They waited 10 days after Jesus ascended…
Come Holy Spirit come…
And the Spirit came in power and gave them strength…
Gave them comfort.
This is why we have narratives like we heard in the book of Acts where Paul and Silas were beaten, and shackled, and thrown into prison for proclaiming the freedom found in Jesus.
But they did not wallow in self-pity…
Saying, “Woe is me…”
What did they do?
Acts 16 says: About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.
That’s the power and presence of God in Jesus, through the Holy Spirit.
That’s the power and presence that we are petitioning God for in our collect.
But that’s not the only petition…
The collect goes on to ask this:
…and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before…
It’s here that we find the hope that we live.
We find our strength in this world by the presence of God in our life…
The presence of the Holy Spirit…
We find our hope in the belief that one day we too, like Jesus, will be exalted to the place where our Savior Jesus Christ is now.
In the heavens…
In the heavenly throne room…
where God, the King of glory dwells.
You see this collect…
This prayer is full of promise and hope.
I don’t want it to just pass by as part of the opening words of our liturgy today…
It is a petition for the in-between-times that we are in.
A prayer of longing and yearning for the presence of Jesus in our life…
A prayer of desperation for the Holy Spirit to impact our lives…
In the way we live…
The way we move…
Into the very fiber of our being…
So that we don’t just go through this life tip toeing around as if we have a secret-faith-life, but hoping no one will notice or that we won’t disturb the people around us.
This is a prayer for God to move through us and in us impacting the world around us by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.
And in all of this life…
Knowing and hoping that we are to be exalted to the heavenlies with our Lord Jesus.
So, as we in short time leave behind Eastertide…
As we move on from the Ascension…
As we look toward the Day of Pentecost…
May this prayer be on our hearts and in our minds throughout the week impacting the way that we live in this world.
Let us pray it once again:
(Rite 1):
O God, the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven: We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless, but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Savior Christ is gone before;
who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.
(Rite 2):
O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting.
Amen.
