Devoutly serve the eternal God
Almighty and eternal God,
by whose Spirit the whole body of the church is sanctified and governed,
receive our prayers, which we offer for all your people,
that each member, receiving your gifts of vocation and ministry,
may truly and devoutly serve you,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Thomas Cranmer was a liturgical borrower, but he was also a gospel tweaker. For this collect, Cranmer reached back to the long-established Good Friday prayers found in the Gelasian Sacramentary, one of the pre-Reformation Roman rites. Here he discovered a beautiful prayer for God to equip his people in their vocation and ministry — but it was a petition limited to the clergy alone. So, in adapting the collect, Cranmer dramatically expanded its scope. We pray here for all God’s people, each of whom uniquely and individually has received God’s gifts of vocation and ministry.
For Cranmer, ordained clergy were not a separate and higher class of Christian, the recipients of a special extra dollop of divine grace. Rather, clergy were simply a part of the laos — the whole people of God — who were called to particular responsibilities within the one body of the Church. We can often find ourselves limiting ‘vocation’ language just to those who are ordained — but in this collect, Cranmer sets us on a surer foundation.
On Good Friday we approach the foot of the cross, and gather around our crucified Saviour. From Christ’s bleeding hands and streaming side, God’s love is poured out into our hearts through his Holy Spirit. And that same Spirit supernaturally equips all those for whom Christ died with gifts of vocation and ministry — to edify his church, and to glorify his name.
This collect is a wonderful antidote to Christian competitiveness. We might sometimes be tempted to look sideways at our brothers and sisters in Christ, and feel discouraged because we haven’t got her gospel eloquence or his pastoral wisdom; perhaps, alternatively, we might occasionally feel a bit puffed-up by our particular gifting or vocation, as rather more impressive or glamorous than those of our fellow believers. But when we look around us like this, it will act to imprison us and make us unhappy — it will bear in us the spiritually dangerous fruit either of pride or of despair. This collect bids us, instead, to look up: to see that God’s calling on each of our lives is by grace, not by merit, and is given in the service of his purposes, not our egos. Our vocation as Christians is to serve God in the place he has put us, with the gifts he has given us, and to rejoice that, as we do so, he builds up his church.
As a member of the Church of England’s General Synod, there has been much that I have witnessed that is sadly displeasing to God. But there has also been the marvellous encouragement of seeing God’s faithful people, both ordained and non-ordained, beautifully serving Christ together by exercising their distinct gifts — whether through powerful prayer, winsome speech-making, or wise advice on Synod procedure and legalities. So, let this collect stir you up today: to give thanks to God for the gifts of vocation and ministry that he has graciously and uniquely given to you, and to trust that he will bring gospel fruit through those gifts, as you serve him by his Spirit.
So pray this with me:
Almighty and eternal God,
by whose Spirit the whole body of the church is sanctified and governed,
receive our prayers, which we offer for all your people,
that each member, receiving your gifts of vocation and ministry,
may truly and devoutly serve you,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.