Christ Church

Link to audio file of the service of Matins & Ante-Communion for St. Luke/Trinity 19

Then opened he their understanding

St. Luke is the Church’s spiritual director especially during the Trinity season, it seems to me, at least in terms of the quantity of readings from his Gospel appointed for the Holy Eucharist. But more than just the quantity of readings, there is the quality of these readings, captured best, perhaps, in Dante’s lovely phrase about St. Luke as scriba mansuetudinis Christi, the scribe of the gentleness of Christ. This captures wonderfully something about the quality of the man and his writings. Today is the Feast of St. Luke.

In the Gospel reading, we are told that: “He opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures.” As with the Epistle and Gospel for Trinity 19, the emphasis is one what Jesus wants us to know; “that ye may know,” in the context of the healing of the paralytic in the face of animosity and skepticism. But then, what is that understanding? The Gospel is emphatic: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name among all nations.” Powerful words which provide us with a sense of the tenor of his Gospel. Death and resurrection, repentance and forgiveness. Could anything be more concise, more clear, and more complete?

We know very little about St. Luke. His “praise is in the Gospel,” the Collect tells us, meaning that St. Luke is mentioned in the Scriptures of the New Testament, quite apart from the traditional attribution of the Third Gospel and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles to his mind and pen. The Epistle reading specifically places him in the company of Paul. “Only Luke is with me,” he says in the context of a discourse about evangelism. Elsewhere Paul identifies him as “the beloved Physician” (Col. 4.14).

The Collect, drawing upon these Scriptural hints, identifies St. Luke as both “an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul”. A healer, to be sure, but by way of something which must strike us as rather strange. The healing is by way of “the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him”. Healing is by way of teaching.

Health care and education are two critical areas of concern in our contemporary culture. The traditions of medicine and education have been strongly and profoundly shaped by Christianity. Hospitals and schools in our western world have their roots and being in explicitly religious institutions arising out of the medieval European world, however much they have become secularised.

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Tuesday, October 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Violet Moller’s The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found and Justin Marozzi’s Islamic Empires: Fifteen Cities That Define A Civilization.

Sunday, October 25th, Trinity 20
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Litany & Holy Communion

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

Luke 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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The collect for today, the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee; Mercifully grant, that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:17-32
The Gospel: St. Matthew 9:1-8

Artwork: The Paralytic lowered through the roof, 6th-century mosaic, Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna.

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, 1910, Embroidered Processional Banner, Ely Cathedral.

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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Now the serpent was more subtle

Perhaps you are familiar with the ‘rod of Ascelpius,’ the symbol for the healing arts of medicine and health care associated with the ancient Greek God of healing. The rod of Ascelpius is still used as the modern symbol for medicine. It depicts a rod which is entwined with a serpent, a snake. Here in Genesis 3 we have a snake, a most unusual snake, we might say, a talking snake, and a creature said to be “more subtle than any other creature which the Lord God had made”; in short, cunning or crafty, deceitful.

We have already encountered this story in its later development in the story of St. Michael and All Angels, the story of the cosmic battle between good and evil and the overcoming of evil by good. Why? Because sin and evil are nothing in themselves. They are entirely derivative and dependent upon that which they reject and deny. But in the Michaelmas story, allusion is made directly to this story, the originating story of human sin and evil which later takes on a cosmic dimension. Whence does evil arise? From rational creatures, men and angels, in their denial of the conditions of their very being.

And yet, there is paradoxically something positive in this story. What is it? It is about the awakening to self-consciousness albeit through deceit and disobedience. This account of the awakening to self-consciousness happens through the power of questions, five questions to be exact. First, there is the question of the serpent. “Did God say?” he asks ‘the Adam’, our humanity now distinguished in terms of man and woman, Adam and Eve. But we ‘know’ what God said. Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To be given such a command belongs to the essential goodness of the created order in which we are placed as in a garden, a paradise, but conditional upon our relation to the Creator in whose image we are made. We have heard and read that but how do we become self-aware? This story provides a way of thinking about human self-consciousness, about ourselves as selves.

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The collect for today, the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor (c. 1003-1066), King of England (source):

O Sovereign God,
who didst set thy servant Edward upon the throne of an earthly kingdom
and didst inspire him with zeal for the kingdom of heaven:
grant that we may so confess the faith of Christ by word and deed,
that we may, with all thy saints, inherit thine eternal glory;
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: Ecclesiasticus 31:8-11
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:35-40

Artwork: Wilton Diptych (detail of left panel showing St. Edward), 1395-99. Oil on tempera, National Gallery, London.

The collect for today, Harvest Thanksgiving Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who crownest the year with thy goodness, and hast given unto us the fruits of the earth in their season: Give us grateful hearts, that we may unfeignedly thank thee for all thy loving-kindness, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Additional prayers of Thanksgiving for the Blessings of Harvest, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God and heavenly Father, we glorify thee that we are once more permitted to enjoy the fulfilment of thy gracious promise, that, while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest shall not fail. Blessed be thou, who hast given us the fruits of the earth in their season. Teach us to remember that it is not by bread alone that man doth live; but grant that we may feed on him who is the true bread which cometh down from heaven even Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour; to whom with thee, O Father, and thee, O Holy Spirit, be honour and glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

O ALMIGHTY God, whose dearly beloved Son, after his resurrection, sent his Apostles into all the world, and, on the day of Pentecost, endued them with special gifts of the Holy Spirit, that they might gather in the spiritual harvest: We beseech thee to look down from heaven upon the fields, now white unto the harvest, and to send forth more labourers to gather fruit unto eternal life. And grant us grace so to help them with our prayers and offerings, that when the harvest of the earth is ripe, and the time for reaping is come, we, together with them, may rejoice before thee, according to the joy in harvest; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson Isaiah 55:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 6:27-35

Artwork: John La Farge, Angels Representing Thanksgiving, c. 1890-1900. Watercolour, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Link to the audio file of the service of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity 18/ Harvest Thanksgiving Sunday

So shall my word be … it shall not return unto me empty

Harvest Thanksgiving is the logical extension of the idea of Creation. Once you grasp that creation is a gift, the gift of life, it changes your attitude and approach to the world around you and to others. The idea of Creation as a gift moves in us in thanksgiving, giving back to God what God has given to us. It is profoundly spiritual in the intellectual gathering back to God that which has come from God. It is grace moving in us and in ways that belong to the truth and dignity of our humanity as made in the image of God. To see Creation as a gift means seeing one another as a gift, a point which Paul makes in the Epistle reading for Trinity 18. “I thank my God always on your behalf for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ.”

Thanksgiving is a profoundly spiritual activity because it is at once the human response to the marvellous givenness of things and equally God’s grace moving in us. In short, it belongs to the truth and dignity of our humanity in its wholeness and completeness as found in the return to God. Thanksgiving is the return to God of what has come to us in Creation and Redemption.

It is a theological way of thinking that counters the overly simplistic and destructive narratives which have so possessed and inhabited our contemporary world; “systems and ideologies” which are, as the writer and theologian, Marilynne Robinson suggests, both “simple and simplifying” in their attempts to explain reality (Theology for This Moment (2016) in What are We Doing Here – Essays (2018). These ideologies are captured in such tropes as ‘the invisible hand’ of certain forms of capitalism, ‘the survival of the fittest’ in the Darwinian competition for life, ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ in Marxist political thought, and the ‘id, ego and superego’ of Freudian psychology, to name some of the most familiar. What they have in common is that they are all materialistic and determinist, effectively denying agency and responsibility. They are also, for all intents and purposes, bankrupt and gone, things of the past which linger on in the present like so many ghosts. Paradoxically, in seeking to displace theology and religion, they are parodies of what they sought to displace; substitute religions, we might say, a point which George Steiner made in his 1974 Massey Lectures. The old world, as Feuerbach says, made spirit parent of matter; the new world makes matter parent of spirit. But such materialist claims are for the most part no longer credible. They are empty and no longer command allegiance, no longer dominate our minds.

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