"All hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid..." - The Very Rev. Mike Kinman

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A sermon preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral at 8 am on Sunday, October 27, 2013.

There’s a prayer we pray at the beginning of every service. It’s called the Collect for Purity. It begins like this.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known and from you no secrets are hid.

What amazing words. Think about what we’re saying there! Let me say it again:

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known and from you no secrets are hid.

We open our worship. We come before God first by acknowledging that we come before God hiding nothing. Our whole heart lies open before God. Every desire we have, God knows. Every secret we have … even the ones so deeply nestled in our hearts that we don’t tell them to ourselves … they are not hidden from God.

When we stand before God in this place, we do it in a way unlike any other way we stand in any other place. We stand before God as who we are, fully, completely. All desires known. No secrets hid.

We stand before God and God sees us as we are. Every … last … little … bit.

And here’s the even more amazing thing.

We do it together.

This isn’t a prayer that we pray in a corner of our room. This is a prayer that we pray as a community gathered together. And what that means is that we believe we are called to be not just individuals that stand before God this way but a community that stands before God this way. A community that stands before God with completely open hearts, with all desires known and with no secrets hid.

As terrifying and as liberating as at once that is, we are a community that stands before God and stands with one another as who we are. A community that hearkens back to Eden before the fall. A community where we can be naked – completely open and vulnerable – and yet not ashamed.

But the prayer doesn’t stop there.

It continues.

It continues, “Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

If it’s possible, maybe those words are even more powerful than the first. We stand together before God, with completely open hearts, with all desires known and with no secrets hid. Think of the incredible trust that takes. Trust that God will not just accept us as we are but will adore us as we are. Trust that God’s love does not have any preconditions. Trust that we can stand that way with each other and feel that same acceptance and love from one another.

But then we take it this huge leap further. The belief that God not only accepts and adores us as we are, but loves us way too much to leave us that way. That we are asking God to take these selves that we have laid open before God and to mold them and shape them and change them … cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit.

We are saying God, here we are – triumph and tragedy, success and failure, beauty and warts – accept us, love us, but also change us. Turn us into something new. Chip away those pieces that aren’t helping us be your beloved children of God made in your image. Sandblast away those places that are keeping us from loving you and one another. Get so deep into us that the very thoughts of our hearts … the things we think and feel before we can even stop to think and feel … that even those are shaped into thoughts and hearts that glorify you.

We blow through this prayer every Sunday, and I know so often I miss its deep meaning. That together we are laying ourselves bare before God and asking God to change us. And change us for one purpose and one purpose alone … that we may more perfectly love God and sing God’s praises in the world.

This prayer is an incredible, earth-shaking statement. It’s an incredible earth-shaking statement of trust. Of trust in God and each other.

It’s a statement of trust to make ourselves so vulnerable not just to God but to each other to lay ourselves that bare. It is a statement of trust that we ask God to shape the very foundations of our being, to strip away things that we might hold incredibly dear.

It is a statement of trust in the love of Christ embodied and lived in community to not just love us as we are but to love us into being something new, something even more beautiful, to love us into being the best possible instrument to sing God’s praise.

To say this kind of trust is hard is an incredible understatement. Because at every turn, we are taught not to trust. We are taught to arm our hearts, to shield our desires and to hide our secrets deep inside … sometimes even from ourselves.

And because we do, it is so difficult for us to trust not only God but one another. Because we are so afraid – and afraid because of a lifetime of experience of being burned – because we are so afraid of opening our hearts and speaking our desires and telling our secrets, instead of trusting we shut ourselves off from both God and each other.

And changing that habit is a long, slow, tentative process. Changing that habit is why we pray this collect every Sunday. Where every Sunday we affirm that this is how we want to stand – completely who we are before God and everyone – even if that completely terrifies us and even if we only live into that in fits and start.

In many ways the church … this church … is a grand experiment in that trust. We come together week after week, month after month, year after year … and we pray this prayer. We try just a little bit more each time to be open before God and each other. To let God and each other in to see those thoughts of our hearts, to share the stories of our journeys and the desires that burn inside us. To trust God and one another enough to tell those secrets of which we are afraid, those burdens we carry because we are sure that we will be destroyed if we let anyone see.

We are a grand experiment as a community of trust … of trust in God and one another.

This is Ingathering Sunday. In a few minutes we will literally come to the table and lay our offerings of money and time and talent before God and everyone. These gifts are sign and symbol of this prayer we opened the service with. They are sign and symbol that we want to be a community of incredible trust of God and one another.

Through entrusting a portion of our gifts back to God in this community, we are saying that we deeply want to be that community where we can be naked and unashamed. Where we can be who we are and yet at the same time even ask God to change and shape us.

Through entrusting a portion of our gifts back to God in this community, we are saying that one of those deep desires of our hearts is that this be a community where we don’t need to hide anything anymore … and where we have relationships of not just deep support but deep accountability in letting Christ shape us into something even more beautiful, even more profound, even more earth-shattering than we already are.

When we lay our gifts on that table we are saying that who we believe we are as Christ Church Cathedral is that community of trust where we will speak plainly and listen deeply to one another. Where together we will look for where God is trying to help us love God better and praise God louder.

When we lay our gifts on that table, we are saying that we are not going to hold anything back. That we are going to trust God and one another with everything we are and all that we have. That, in the words Robert Franken used several weeks ago, we are going to give God permission to use us without our consent.

When we lay our gifts on that table we are saying together as Christ Church Cathedral that we are before anything else the Body of Christ. And we believe that means we are a community of divine freedom, a community that lays itself open to God’s power working in us, a power that can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.

When we lay our gifts on that table we are saying as one body that we are Christ Church Cathedral. And that together we stand before one another and before our God in trust and together we sing:

“Almighty God to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.”