Christ Church

“All the city was moved, saying, Who is this?”

Advent is the season of questions, questions that awaken us to the radical meaning of God’s Word coming to us in law and prophecy, in mind and in flesh. Without the questions of Advent, Christmas is only tinsel and wrap that conceal the illusions of our hearts and leave us in the darkness, desolate and in despair. The great questions of Advent illuminate the Word of God as the Light which overcomes the darkness of disillusion and despair.

The questions are at once our questions in all of their confusion and uncertainty and the questions of God that redeem our desires. Our questions are really about the deeper desires of our hearts and minds for wholeness, for what is absolute and true, however misguided we may be in what we think we want. God’s questions belong to the redemption of our desires; in short, to the redemption of our humanity. But how? By confronting us with the wilderness and the darkness of our hearts and world.

The great Gospel for The First Sunday in Advent is about Christ’s coming to Jerusalem in triumph but also in judgement. The triumphal entry of Christ, in images that fulfill the prophetic expectation of the Messiah, is full of the sense of joy and delight in the one who comes. HIs royal procession is greeted with branches of palms strewn in the way and with the exultant cries of “Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord.” We know this from Palm Sunday. There is the sense of joyous expectancy, of hope, that speaks directly and clearly to the world of darkness and uncertainty both then and now; to our world, to be sure. It is a moving spectacle. “All the city was moved,” Matthew tells us, “saying, Who is this?” At once named as the Son of David, referring to the Messiah and to the hopes for justice and peace, and yet unknown, it seems. The first question of Advent is about our unknowing, about the darkness of our minds and hearts. We know and do not know in equal measure.

And so we must begin again to attend to the radical pageant of God’s Word coming to us as light in the darkness. We “know in part,” as Paul puts it, “in a glass darkly,” but we long to know and to be known more fully, more completely. That can only happen by confronting the darkness. We learn from the darkness about the light which is greater than all the forms of suffering and evil that belong to the darkness of the world and our hearts. Without that we can really make no sense of the one who comes and who will be called Emmanuel, which by interpretation, as Matthew tells us, is “God with us.”

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Monday, December 4th
2:30pm Advent/Xmas Lessons & Carols
Gr. 10 & 11: Hensley Memorial Chapel, KES

Thursday, December 7th, Eve of the Conception of the BVM
7:00pm Advent Programme I

Saturday, December 9th
Advent Quiet Day – Fr. Curry at St. George’s, Halifax, 9am – 1:30pm

Sunday, December 10th, Second Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Thursday, December 14th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Advent Programme II

The collect for today, the First Sunday in Advent, being the Fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 13:8-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 21:1-13

Artwork: Bernardo Bellotto, Jesus Cleansing the Temple, c. 1765. Oil on canvas, National Museum, Warsaw.

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain

Isaiah is the great prophet of Advent. Advent, from the Latin, adventus, which means coming, is about the motions of God’s Word coming to us as light in the darkness of the wilderness of our hearts and world. This is concentrated for us in the great pageant of the Advent and Christmas Services of Nine Lessons and Carols. An important feature of that pageant are readings from Isaiah. This week in Chapel, one of those readings was highlighted and commented upon, Isaiah 11.1-3a, 4a, 6-9.

It provides a twofold reflection upon the Messianic King and the idea of Paradise Restored. The passage has had an enormous influence upon the theological understanding of our humanity and upon the idea of Creation as Paradise as well as contributing to the Christian understanding of the person of Jesus Christ. The idea of the Messianic King is associated with King David. “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse,” it begins, recalling us to the family tree or lineage of King David, the King who united the unruly tribes of Israel in the worship of God centered in Jerusalem, Zion.

In Isaiah’s vision, “the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.” The Holy Spirit of God conveys the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit upon the Messiah, the anointed one who is thought of as the saviour of the world. The gifts are spiritual principles which speak to the integrity of our humanity, to the unity of heart and mind and which are properties or qualities of the Messiah in us. The Hebrew text as we have it from a much later period than the Greek translation of it, called the Septuagint, names six gifts but the Septuagint itself speaks of the seven gifts of the Spirit.

But what are these so-called gifts, these qualities of soul that participate or share in the divine nature itself? “The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.” The Septuagint, probably out of sense of the rhetorical patterns of the Greek language, couples “piety” or devotion with knowledge and makes “the fear of the Lord” a kind of concluding principle. The fear of the Lord refers to honouring or worshipping God.

They are all intellectual and spiritual gifts which come from God and speak to heart and mind. That is significant with respect to theological anthropology, namely, how we understand our humanity in the sight of God. Critical to that theological understanding is the idea of the integration of heart and mind, suggested in the sevenfold gifts of the Spirit. That these gifts are directly associated with the Messiah signify that these gifts ultimately derive from the Word and the Spirit of God and unite us with God. In other words, these spiritual gifts are principles that come from God to us and that speak to the greater dignity and truth of our humanity as seen in the sight of God.

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The collect for today, the Feast of St. Andrew, Apostle and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, who didst give such grace unto thy holy Apostle Saint Andrew, that he readily obeyed the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and followed him without delay: Grant unto us all, that we, being called by thy holy word, may forthwith give up ourselves obediently to fulfil thy holy commandments; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 10:8-18
The Gospel: St. Matthew 4:18-22

A native of Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee, Andrew was a fisherman, the son of the fisherman John, and the brother of the fisherman Simon Peter. He was at first, along with John the Evangelist, a disciple of John the Baptist. John the Baptist’s testimony that Jesus was the Christ led the two to follow Jesus. Andrew then took his brother Simon Peter to meet Jesus. In Eastern Orthodox tradition, St. Andrew is called the Protokletos (the First Called) because he is named as the first disciple summoned by Jesus into his service.

At first Andrew and Simon Peter continued to carry on their fishing trade, but the Lord later called them to stay with him all the time. He promised to make them fishers of men and, this time, they left their nets for good.

The only other specific reference to Andrew in the New Testament is at St. Mark 13:3, where he is one of those asking the questions that lead our Lord into his great eschatological discourse.

In the lists of the apostles that appear in the gospels, Andrew is always numbered among the first four. He is named individually three times in the Gospel of St. John. In addition to the story of his calling (John 1:35-42), he, together with Philip, presented the Gentiles to Christ (John 12:20-22), and he pointed out the boy with the loaves and fishes (John 6:8).

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Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Sunday Next Before Advent.

“Master, where dwellest thou?”

The Sunday Next Before Advent is a day of double prepositions. It signals at once an ending and a beginning in the Lesson from Jeremiah and in the Gospel from the end of the first Chapter from John. Yet, for centuries upon centuries, the Gospel read on this day was from “the Bread of Life discourse” near the beginning of Chapter Six of John’s Gospel. It is the story of the miraculous feeding of the multitude in the wilderness also read on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, albeit with a different point of emphasis, namely, the idea of God’s provisions for his people in the wilderness. As read for centuries on this Sunday, the emphasis is more on the idea of the fullness of redemption, the gathering up of all of the broken fragments of our lives into the life of God; hence the sense of ending. “Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost.”

The change to the Gospel which you heard this morning was one of the few changes made in the 1962 Canadian revision to the Prayer Book. It suggests the Advent theme of God’s turning to us, the Advent pageant of God’s Word coming to us as light in the darkness of our hearts and our world. But that doesn’t entirely eclipse the idea of an ending in the sense of meaning and purpose which is found in our dwelling with God and God with us. Thus the readings are complementary and belong to the transitions from one form of spiritual emphasis to another that are inescapably interrelated; the themes of justifying righteousness and sanctifying righteousness that belong to our incorporation into the life of Christ and to the hope of heaven, our end in glory.

“Come and see,” Jesus says to the disciples of John and to us. Ultimately, it is an invitation to the banquet of divine love opened out to us through the pageant of God’s Word. Advent signals the coming of God’s word to us. The constant struggle of our lives is about learning to live in and from that Word. The task of the Church is simply to proclaim the Word of God faithfully and sacramentally. Today marks a kind of gathering or summing up of the past year of grace even as it catapults us into a new year; a time of endings and beginnings. “In my beginning is my end” and “in my end is my beginning” (T.S. Eliot, East Coker, Four Quartets).

God’s word coming to us is given as the principle of our abiding in the love of God. As George Herbert says, “the crosse taught all wood to resound his name” and that is very much signaled in the architecture wherein the wood of this Church resounds with the name of Christ so that his word may have its resonance in us.

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Tuesday, November 28th
7:00pm Gift-wrapping session for the Mission to Seafarers – Parish Hall

Thursday, November 30th, St. Andrew’s Day
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, December 1st
2:15pm Advent/Xmas Lessons & Carols
Junior School: Hensley Memorial Chapel, KES

Sunday, December 3rd, First Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Services:

Monday, December 4th
2:30pm Advent/Xmas Lessons & Carols
Gr. 10 & 11: Hensley Memorial Chapel, KES

Thursday, December 7th, Eve of the Conception of the BVM
7:00pm Advent Programme I

Saturday, December 9th
Advent Quiet Day – Fr. Curry at St. George’s, Halifax, 9am – 1:30pm

The collect for today, the Sunday Next before Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

STIR up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Jeremiah 23:5-8
The Gospel: St. John 1:35-45

Artwork: Giovanni Bellini, Christ Blessing, c. 1460. Tempera on panel, Louvre, Paris.

The collect for a virgin or matron, on the Feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria (early 4th century?), Virgin and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD Most High, the creator of all mankind, we bless thy holy Name for the virtue and grace which thou hast given unto holy women in all ages, especially thy servant Catherine; and we pray that the example of her faith and purity, and courage unto death, may inspire many souls in this generation to look unto thee, and to follow thy blessed Son Jesus Christ our Saviour; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 9:36-42
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:38-42

According to her legend, St. Catherine lived in Alexandria when Emperor Maxentius was persecuting the church. A noble and learned young Christian, Catherine prevailed in a public debate with philosophers who tried to convince her of the errors of Christianity. Maxentius had her scourged, imprisoned and condemned her to death. She was tied to a wheel embedded with razors, but this attempt to torture her to death failed when the machine (later a Catherine wheel) broke and onlookers were injured by flying fragments. Finally, she was beheaded. Tradition holds that she was martyred in 305.

The cult of Saint Catherine arose in the Eastern Church in the 8th or 9th century and spread to the West at the time of the Crusades. She is not mentioned in any early martyrologies. No reliable facts concerning her life or death have been established. Most historians now believe that she probably never existed.

St. Catherine is often portrayed holding a book, symbolic of her great learning. She is the patron saint of libraries and librarians, teachers and students.

Artwork: Fernando Yáñez de la Almedina, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, c. 1510. Oil on panel, Prado, Madrid.