"Keep watch over your Church, O Lord, with your unfailing love; and, since it is grounded in human weakness and cannot maintain itself without your aid, protect it from all danger, and keep it in the way of salvation; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."
Psalm 95:6-11, Jeremiah 7:23-28, and Luke 11:14-23
I love the collect for today for a couple of reasons. Structurally, it's different from what we think a collect typically looks like. Secondly, there's a humble admittance that we as humans have been entrusted to care for something that we really have no business caring for. We're asking God to protect the Church from us and from our own desires to steer the Church in the direction we think it should go.
History shows us, too, that we are not the first to do this, and we won't be the last. The Church has, through the years, been broken and molded time and again for purposes that seem so human. Whether it's about how to worship or who can lead worship or who's in charge or where the person in charge should live, the Church has fought and fractured.
Jesus speaks in the Gospel for today about division and the weakness it causes. The weakness caused by division can lead to destruction. For Jesus it seems like that division is caused by a lack of faith and an unawareness of God's presence and actions. When we in the Church start to forget about God's presence and actions, and even God's call to us, we risk setting ourselves up for weakness and division.
The hope in the collect, though, comes in the portion of the petition that says of the Church, "...keep it in the way of Salvation." In other words, "Help us, Lord, to remember that our actions should point to you, showing the world your love for us all."
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