Christ Church

“And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him”

It is a poignant and touching story that speaks to the fears and the experiences of countless parents down throughout the ages. It is a story about a father’s concern for his son who is said to be “at the point of death.” The father is described as “a certain nobleman.” Clearly status and wealth are of no use in the face of death. “What helpes honour or worlde’s bliss”, a fifteenth century English medieval lyric puts it about the fact of mortality. “Death is to man the final way.”

And yet, as a 14th century tutor at Oxford wonderfully tells his students,“live each day as if you are to die tomorrow; study as if you are to live forever.” To study is to pay attention to words and the power of words, and, most especially, here, to the word of Christ.

We forget that we can be profoundly touched by words. Words can make or break our day, raise us up or put us down. How and what we think and say to one another is important. It is important to our spiritual health especially we might say.

Today’s epistle reading from Ephesians abounds with military imagery but in an entirely spiritual context, the idea of a spiritual struggle, the cosmic struggle between good and evil which is not about “wrestling against flesh and blood” but something much more serious:“against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” This must not be misconstrued as gnostic dualism – dividing the world into them and us in which we demonize the other and pretend that we are the good. Such conflict narratives only contribute to the forms of spiritual wickedness that Paul is highlighting.

There is a struggle, to be sure, but the struggle is always first and foremost in us. It is the struggle to  be defined by the good, by God’s Word and truth and not by “the devices and desires of our own hearts.” More than thirty years ago, the great English doyenne of mystery novels, Dame P.D. James, wrote a wonderful novel with the title “Devices and Desires.” Against the strong recommendation of her editors, she refused to provide an explanation of the title on the grounds that every educated person should know the reference. This was long before our current fascination and obsession with our digital devices which, paradoxically, reveal only too well “the devices and desires of our own hearts.” The phrase comes from the General Confession at Morning and Evening Prayer in the Prayer Book: “we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.”

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Monday, October 22nd
4:45-5:15pm World Religions/Inquirers Class – KES, Room # 206
6:30-7:30pm Sparks in Parish Hall

Tuesday, October 23rd
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Wednesday, October 24th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Friday, October 26th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, October 28th, SS. Simon & Jude / Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, November 17th
4:30-6:00pm Annual Ham Supper

Sunday, December 2nd
4:00pm Advent Lessons & Carols with KES

Tuesday, December 18th
7:30pm Capella Regalis Concert

The collect for today, the Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace; that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 6:10-20
The Gospel: St. John 4:46-54

Artwork: Bartholomeus Breenburgh, Christ and the Nobleman of Capernaum, c. 1630. Oil on panel, Private collection.

Then opened he their understanding

The opening of the understanding is a recurring motif in Luke’s Gospel. It serves to highlight an important feature of his commemoration as the author of the third Gospel and the author of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. There is something significant and attractive about the figure of St. Luke and the role which he exercises in the Christian imagination. He is, as the Collect puts it,“an Evangelist and a Physician of the soul” and one “whose praise is in the Gospel.”

Healing is about more than just relief from bodily ailments. More important is the idea of the healing of the soul captured in the Gospel for his feast day. The Scriptures are opened for our understanding and in particular the understanding of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection from which flows the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. These are powerful ideas which Luke explores in his writings to the glory of God and the good of his church and people, we might say.

The healing of our souls. How we think about things and how we look upon one another are critical concerns. It strikes me as somewhat ironic that we should commemorate Luke, Evangelist and Physician, the day after the legalisation of cannabis in Canada. It is true that from a Christian perspective nothing in the physical and natural order is simply evil. Somehow there is  something good in the being of every creaturely thing, something good by definition about cannabis and its chemical components. But there is also the great and good wisdom about how we use the good things of our world and day.

That is a far greater question. We know that we can abuse all manner of good things. What I must confess to being utterly uncertain about is the recreational use of marijuana, of cannabis. What exactly is that good? We know only  too well about the misuse and abuse of alcohol, namely, drinking to excess, drinking to get drunk, to intentionally lose control and imagine that one is ‘feeling good’ while under the influence. We know only too well what dangers that can lead to and the cost it brings. But abusus non tollit usum. The abuse of something doesn’t take away from its proper use. What is the proper use of cannabis exactly?

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The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, who calledst Luke the Physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, to be an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul: May it please thee that, by the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed; through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Timothy 4:5-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 24:44-52

Virtually all that we know of Saint Luke comes from the New Testament. He was a physician, a disciple of St. Paul and his companion on some of his missionary journeys, and the author of both the third gospel and Acts.

It is believed that St. Luke was born a Greek and a Gentile. According to the early Church historian Eusebius, Luke was born at Antioch in Syria. In Colossians 4:10-14, St. Paul speaks of those friends who are with him. He first mentions all those “of the circumcision”–in other words, Jews–and he does not include Luke in this group. Luke’s gospel shows special sensitivity to evangelising Gentiles. It is only in his gospel that we hear the Parable of the Good Samaritan, that we hear Jesus praising the faith of Gentiles such as the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, and that we hear the story of the one grateful leper who is a Samaritan.

St. Luke first appears in Acts, chapter 16, at Troas, where he meets St. Paul around the year 51, and crossed over with him to Europe as an Evangelist, landing at Neapolis and going on to Philippi, “concluding that God had called us to preach the Gospel to them” (note especially the transition into first person plural at verse 10). Thus, he was apparently already an Evangelist. He was present at the conversion of Lydia and her companions and lodged in her house. He, together with St. Paul and his companions, was recognised by the divining spirit: “She followed Paul and us, crying out, ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation’”.

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“What have you done?” God asks Cain, “Your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” There is darkness at the heart of our humanity. It is one of the important take-away points from the infamous story of Cain and Abel. It is part of the fall-out from the Fall. We tend to read this story moralistically and as such largely misread it. It is really about the primordial and mythological state of our humanity outside the Garden of Eden. It is what our humanity looks like withoutmorality,withoutlaw and order. As such it points us to the absolute need for a moral order, for justice and truth.

We forget that Cain is actually the first farmer, the first to found a city, the first to inaugurate sacrifices – an attempt from our side to negotiate between ourselves and God, however understood – and that in Cain’s lineage are the originators of the arts and technology. Jubal and Tubal-Cain arise out of the seventh generation of Cain. And yet the point is that at the heart of our humanity, at the heart of civilisation, there is darkness, the darkness of the human heart.

What we are given to see are the primordial emotions of revenge, of fear, and of anger. What we are given to see are the forms of pride and self-regard that negate and deny our common humanity. It is, to be sure, about fratricide and it begets, if you will, the long, sad and sorry tale of all of the ‘cides’ of human history: patricide, matricide, regicide, homicide, genocide, and the much later (1648) modern Latin word, suicide. There is no word interestingly for the killing of sisters – sororicide? just doesn’t work. It comes under fratricide.

We know and in many ways celebrate various kinds of rivalries especially in the sports world. We hope that the morality of good sportsmanship will be dominant and not the ugliness of violence and bloodshed. Here is a story about the most primordial form of rivalry, sibling rivalry. In a way, the whole Book of Genesis is about sibling rivalry, mostly brothers against brothers but also including some sisters: Cain and Abel, Abram and Lot, Isaac and Ishmael, Leah and Rachel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers.

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The collect for today, the Feast of St. Etheldreda (d. 679), Queen, Foundress and Abbess of Ely (source):

O eternal God,
who didst bestow such grace on thy servant Etheldreda
that she gave herself wholly to the life of prayer
and to the service of thy true religion:
grant that we may in like manner
seek thy kingdom in our earthly lives,
that by thy guidance
we may be united in the glorious fellowship of thy saints;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Philippians 3:7-14
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:29-34

Artwork: St. Etheldreda, stained glass. St. Peter’s Church, Walpole St. Peter, Norfolk, England. Photograph taken by admin, 3 October 2014.

The collect for today, the commemoration of Hugh Latimer (1485-1555), Bishop of Worcester, and Nicholas Ridley (c. 1500-1555), Bishop of London, Reformation Martyrs (source):

Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, that, like thy servants Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, we may live in thy fear, die in thy favor, and rest in thy peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 3:9-14
The Gospel: St. John 15:20-16:1

Two leaders of the English Reformation were burned at the stake in Oxford on this day in 1555. Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London, and Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, were removed from their positions and imprisoned after Queen Mary ascended the throne in 1553. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1533, was deposed and taken to Oxford with Latimer and Ridley.

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“See then that ye walk circumspectly,
not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time”

These are strong words which complement wonderfully the strong and disturbing words of the Gospel. On the one hand, there is an invitation to a royal wedding – what’s not to like about that? – and yet, on the other hand, after the refusal, the denial even to the point of violence about that invitation, someone who is gathered in from the high-ways is cast out for not having a wedding-garment! The parables of the Gospel are not always easy to understand! They always challenge our assumptions. That is the point. They do so by opening us out to a larger and more comprehensive understanding.

In a way, it is has everything to do with “redeeming the time,” a concept which is about more than just making the best of things. It is, instead, about seeing the good and acting accordingly. We see, as Paul and Aristotle and others have observed, but “in a glass darkly.” It is an important insight about the limits of our knowing, on the one hand, and the realization of a deeper darkness in the heart of our humanity, on the other hand.

Walking circumspectly. What does that mean? Walking carefully, paying attention to where you are and what is happening, walking while looking around you; in short, walking thinkingly or thoughtfully. The word in Greek relates to the term used for Aristotle’s school of philosophy, the Peripatetics, thinking while walking. It gives a whole new and deeper meaning to thinking on one’s feet!

Walking circumspectly is a feature of this very building and its spiritual purpose. Just above the main doorway in the narthex leading into the Church is a curious phrase from Ecclesiastes. “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God.” I have often wondered why no-one has ever asked me about what that means. I can only surmise that perhaps they have been looking down at their feet literally and so are completely unaware of what was over their heads.

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Monday, October 15th
4:45-5:15pm World Religions/Inquirers Class – KES, Room # 206
6:30-7:30pm Sparks in Parish Hall

Tuesday, October 16th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club – Coronation Room: The Temptation of Forgiveness, by Donna Leon, and Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents, by Mark Sakamoto

Wednesday, October 17th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, October 18th, St. Luke
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, October 19th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, October 21st, Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
7:00pm Holy Communion – KES Chapel

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, November 17th
4:30-6:00pm Annual Ham Supper

Sunday, December 2nd
4:00pm Advent Lessons & Carols with KES

Tuesday, December 18th
7:30pm Capella Regalis Concert