Christ Church

Imago Dei!

The first chapters of Genesis are especially foundational and formative for our thinking. They belong to a long tradition of reflection about the world and about what it means to be human; questions that are always with us and which challenge our thinking about our relation to nature and to our lives with one another. As such it touches upon a common question for students, especially new students at KES: “Where do I fit in?” That in turn is part of a greater question: “What is the place of our humanity in the givenness of creation?” After all, we find ourselves in a world which exists prior to us and in institutions such as schools which have a tradition and life shaped and formed by principles which are also prior to us.

The challenge of education is learning not so much what to think as how to think. It means at the very least an exposure to principles and ideas which require reflection and thought. Teaching is not mere technique. It is really about the passing on of things which have been learned and thus making them part of ourselves in one way or another. Genesis raises some of the great questions that become the foundational basis for many subsequent quests of the mind.

It begins, as we have seen, with a principle, God. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But what is meant by God? The philosophical and theological traditions offer a number of suggestions. Thomas Aquinas, in a kind of summary statement about ancient Greek wisdom complemented by Jewish, Christian, and Islamic understandings, simply says that “God is the beginning and end of all creatures, especially rational creatures,” referring to angels and our humanity. This alludes in some fashion to one of the great insights of the Genesis story of creation. ‘Adam, an inclusive term and not yet a personal name (and “functionally gender-indifferent” ), refers to our humanity in general which is said to be made in the image of God. “In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

At least three things are emphasized in that statement: first, our humanity comes at the end of the litany of creation which distinguishes one thing from another thing within a unity of order. But are we, as in the ancient Sumerian view, simply an after-thought of the gods and thus insignificant beings? No. Because, secondly, ‘adam as the work of the sixth day is not only connected to every other created thing but alone of the things of creation is said to be made in God’s image. What does that mean? All that we can say about God is that God the Uncreated is the creative and ordering principle who speaks things into being and sustains them in their being. This underscores the idea of the world as intelligible (without which ‘science’ would be impossible). Our humanity understood in relation to God informs our role and place in the created order. Creation is order and not chaos; something significant is being suggested about us in terms of responsibilities and care. Thirdly, we are much like everything else in the created order as ‘beings in the world’ in terms of the basic categories of male and female.

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

O ALMIGHTY God, who by thy blessed Son didst call Matthew from the receipt of custom to be an Apostle and Evangelist: Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires and inordinate love of riches, and to follow the same thy Son Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 9:9-13

Artwork: Charles Wautier, The Calling of St. Matthew, c. 1660. Oil on canvas, National Trust, Osterley Park, London.

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Coleridge Patteson (1827-71), Missionary, First Bishop of Melanesia, Martyr (source):

O God of all tribes and peoples and tongues,
who didst call thy servant John Coleridge Patteson
to witness in life and death to the gospel of Christ
amongst the peoples of Melanesia:
grant us to hear thy call to service
and to respond with trust and joy
to Jesus Christ our redeemer,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:12-19
The Gospel: St. Mark 8:34-38

John Coleridge Patteson was a curate in Devon when Bishop of New Zealand George A. Selwyn persuaded him to go to the South Pacific as a missionary. In 1856 he journeyed to Melanesia. He encouraged boys to study at a school Selwyn had founded in New Zealand and later set up a school in Melanesia. He was very proficient in languages and eventually learned twenty-three different languages and dialects spoken in Melanesia and Polynesia.

In 1861 Patteson was consecrated Bishop of Melanesia; he travelled across his diocese constantly, preaching, teaching, baptising, confirming, building churches, and living among the people. On the main island of Mota most of the population were converted.

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The collect for today, the Feast of St. Theodore of Tarsus (602-690), Archbishop of Canterbury (source):

Almighty God,
by the faithful ministry of your bishop Theodore you bound up the wounds of the English Church and renewed its vigour in the works of peace. Teach us, we pray,
the art of your healing grace,
that we may know the true balm and remedy
for the divisions which afflict your Church; through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 2 Timothy 2:1-5,10
The Gospel: St. Matthew 8:23-27

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity.

“God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”

This Sunday comes just after the Feast of the Holy Cross this year, itself the marker for the Autumn Ember days this week. Holy Cross (Sept. 14th) reminds us of the centrality of the Passion of Christ and its meaning for us in our lives partly by recalling us to the purpose of the ordained ministry. The task of the Church through the priestly ministry is to recall all of us to our life and vocation in Christ. In a profound sense the concentration of our thoughts upon the Cross and Passion of Christ is the great counter to the anxieties that bedevil our current world and culture.

Louise Penny’s post-pandemic novel, “The Madness of Crowds” suggests that people “were tired of being afraid” with respect to Covid, the fear of sickness and death which quickly turns to the fear and hatred of others, to division and hostility. I would like to think that she was right that people are tired of being afraid, but I wonder. It sometimes seems that we have become acclimated to fear, finding in it the comfort of being a victim where responsibility and agency is directed away from ourselves and is placed on others. Our fears make us more manipulable to the agendas of others.

This is the opposite to what Paul is saying in Galatians and which Matthew illustrates in his “be not anxious” gospel, a phrase which Jesus repeats three times. “Be not anxious” complements Christ’s “be not afraid”. The Gospel puts its finger on what we are anxious about: “your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” How can we not be concerned with and even preoccupied with these material and physical realities? And especially when all of the assumptions of the middle-class about their future and that of their children seems less and less rosy? To be sure, and yet there is a great spiritual danger in attaching ourselves to expectations that cannot do justice to the radical truth and dignity of our humanity, something which, paradoxical as it may seem, is realized in Christ Crucified.

The Passion of Christ teaches us most profoundly about God and about ourselves in our essential humanity. What it means to be human cannot be measured by wealth and power, by the material and physical aspects of our lives. Not that such things don’t matter but they are not and cannot be everything. At best they provide the context in which our lives are lived but to what end? It is not simply about the comfortable life; it is about a life lived with purpose to what is greater than ourselves and in which we find a deeper truth about ourselves. We are, as Paul suggests, a new creation in Christ. We are not defined simply by the cultural contexts and experiences of our lives. Which is why, as he puts it, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision matter at all.

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Tuesday, September 19th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, September 21st, St. Matthew
7:00pm Holy Communion

Sunday, September 24th, Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
7:00pm Holy Communion – KES Chapel

Tuesday, September 26th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Imperial Wine: How the British Empire Made Wine’s New World by Jennifer Rogan-Lefebvre (2022); and I drink, therefore I am: A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine by Roger Scruton (2009).

Thursday, September 28th, Eve of Michaelmas
7:00pm Holy Communion

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

KEEP, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy; and, because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 6:11-18
The Gospel: St. Matthew 6:24-34

Artwork: Jan Steen, Beware of Luxury, 1663. Oil on canvas, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Paying attention: the one thing necessary

One thing is needful, necessary. It is a famous closing line to one of the most remarkable chapters in the Gospel according to St. Luke. It belongs to the end of the story of Martha and Mary which bookends the Parable of the Good Samaritan. That parable shows us the radical meaning of the love of God and the love of neighbour. But the one thing necessary has to do with the qualities of attention. Building on our first Chapels, the challenge is about attending to creation in the very ways in which things are named and numbered, understood as one thing rather than another within an order.

Simone Weil, the remarkable 20th century philosopher and activist, observes that “prayer consists of attention,” and, indeed, attention of the highest order, namely, “the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God”. This complements the observation of the 16th century theologian Richard Hooker that prayer signifies “all the service that ever we do unto God”. For him, as for Simone Weil, the connection between learning and prayer was ever so obvious. They belong to our relation to God’s truth and goodness.

As teaching bringeth us to know that God is our supreme truth; so prayer testifieth that we acknowledge him our sovereign good.

There is no greater contrast than between ‘being distracted’ and ‘being collected’, being attentive, as it were. “The faculty of attention, directed toward God,” Simone Weil says, “is the very substance of prayer.” She connects this to studies because seeking to learn means a commitment to ‘truth’ in all of its various forms in accord with our varying capacities and situations. Yet no genuine effort of attention is ever wasted. “It always has its effect on the spiritual plane and in consequence on the lower one of the intelligence, for all spiritual light lightens the mind.” For “there is real desire when there is an effort of attention” even if “our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result.”

But attention is equally important in terms of the love of neighbour. “Not only does the love of God have attention for its substance,” she writes, “the love of neighbour, which we know to be the same love, is made of this same substance.” As she explains, “the capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle.” She recalls the medieval story of the Grail where the Grail – a reference to Christ’s Passion and Last Supper – belongs to the first comer who asks “what are you going through?” “The love of neighbour in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: ‘What are you going through?’” As Miranda in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest poignantly says “I have suffered with those that I saw suffer” in reference to the shipwreck that Prospero, her father, has conjured up.

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The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Ninian (c. 360 – c. 432), Bishop of Galloway, Apostle to the Picts (source):

Almighty and everlasting God,
who didst call thy servant Ninian to preach the gospel
to the people of northern Britain:
raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land,
heralds and evangelists of thy kingdom,
that thy Church may make known the immeasurable riches
of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Isaiah 49:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:16-20

Ninian was the first apostle of Christianity in Scotland. Born in Cumbria to Christian parents, he went to Rome for his education. After being ordained a priest and then a bishop, Ninian was commissioned by Pope Siricus to return to Britain to preach the Christian faith.

Tradition holds that Ninian’s mission to Scotland began in 397, when he landed at Whithorn on Solway Firth. The stone church he built there was known as Candida Casa (“White House”). Recent archaeological excavations in that area have found white masonry from what could be an ancient church.

Saint Ninian’s ministry was centred in the Whithorn and Galloway areas of Scotland, but he is also remembered for bringing the gospel to the “southern Picts”—people living in the areas now known as Perth, Fife, Stirling, Dundee, and Forfar.

As early as the 7th century, Christians were making pilgrimages to St. Ninian’s shrine. By the 12th century, a large cathedral had been built at Whithorn, but it fell into ruins after the Reformation. Yet today, pilgrims still travel there to visit St. Ninian’s Cave, where the saint would go when he needed to pray in solitude.

During his 2010 visit to the United Kingdom, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Scotland on Saint Ninian’s Day.

Saint Ninian’s Cathedral, Antigonish, Nova Scotia (“New Scotland”), is the Episcopal Seat for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Antigonish.

Artwork: Saint Ninian, stained glass, Saint Margaret’s Chapel, Edinburgh Castle. Photograph taken by admin, 24 July 2004.