Year: 2009

Sermons

Sermon for Rogation Sunday

The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon for The Fifth Sunday After Easter/Rogation Sunday.

“In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer,
I have overcome the world.”

We are a practical people, or, at least, so we like to think. And yet, it is about the practical that we seem to have the greatest problems and the greatest worries. Ours is a fearful and uncertain world, a fearful and uncertain world about practical things such as the economy and the environment. Whether anything can or cannot be done about them is our fear and worry.

Behind our practical preoccupations with jobs and the economy, work and the environment, lie a host of assumptions about ourselves and our relation to the world. Some of those assumptions need to be challenged, corrected and overcome. “In the world,” Jesus says, “ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

Such a statement seems to imply that the world is the enemy. Yet, what is meant here is our attachment to the world seen as standing over and against God; preferring our material comforts and concerns, our immediate practical interests, as it were, to the spiritual and intellectual principles that properly define and dignify our lives. For here is the paradox. There are no practical solutions to theoretical problems and our problems, in a way, are wholly theoretical, by which I mean that they have to do with the assumptions that underlie our practical preoccupations; in short, our attitudes and approaches to our world and day. Our neglect of things spiritual and intellectual results in our fearful paralysis about things practical.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 18-24 May 2009

Tues., May 19th, Rogation Tuesday
3:30pm Holy Communion – Windsor Elms
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Holy Communion

Thursday, May 21st, Ascension Day
1:30-3:00pm Seniors’ Drop-In
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, May 22nd
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
3:30pm Holy Communion – Gladys Manning Home

Sunday, May 24th, Sunday After Ascension
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
2:00pm AMD Service of the Deaf
4:30pm Evening Prayer or Holy Communion at King’s-Edgehill School

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fifth Sunday After Easter

The collect for today, The Fifth Sunday After Easter, commonly called Rogation Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O Lord, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St James 1:22-27
The Gospel: St John 16:23-33

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Sermons

Sermon for Evensong, Fourth Sunday After Easter

The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon at St. George’s Round Church, Halifax, for Choral Evensong, Easter IV.

“And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus.”

First, allow me to thank your Rector, Fr. Westhaver for the privilege of being here this evening, and secondly, allow me to compliment the choir for such a wonderful musical offering of the “Five Mystical Songs” of Ralph Vaughan Williams based on the poems of George Herbert.

Given the fears, worries and uncertainties about swine flu and the media attention on King’s-Edgehill School, where I am the Chaplain and teach, it seemed to me that “Touch me not” might not be an appropriate text for the sermon! We will have to make due with “a certain beggar named Lazarus.”

“Lazarus, come out!” Jesus says, but that is to another Lazarus, an actual figure and a friend of Jesus in The Gospel of St. John and not the fictional figure of the parable which Jesus tells which we heard tonight from The Gospel of St. Luke. Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, had been dead four days and buried for three, “Lord, he stinketh,” Martha tells Jesus. It is the setting for Jesus words, “Lazarus, come out;” he is restored to life, a resuscitation anticipating Jesus’ own Resurrection and a sign of divine love. “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awake him,” Jesus says, and, lest there be any ambiguity about the phrase, he tells the disciples plainly, “Lazarus is dead.” He goes to awaken him, to bring life and healing, the renewal of fellowship and joy, but only out of the encounter with suffering and sorrow. “Jesus wept. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’” Healing and resurrection flow out of the generosity and compassion of divine love.

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Sermons

Sermon for The Fourth Sunday After Easter

The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon for The Fourth Sunday After Easter (8:00 am service).

“Noli me tangere” – “Touch me not”

We are all like Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb of Jesus, I suppose. Whatever and whomever we love, we want to hold onto; in short, to possess. Too much of our love for one another is really only for ourselves. Our love is not really for them; it is for ourselves. It is always ourselves – our self-love – which gets in the way of the deeper lessons of love. We have, like the disciples, a hard time letting go.

Yet, love is not love when it is possession. Christ has not given himself for us so that we might possess him. If anything it is the other way around. We belong to him. He does not belong to us. And yet, our belonging to Christ is no possessive love, for his love by which we are his is self-less love. It sets us in motion. And it makes us more, not less, than ourselves. When individuals and churches become obsessed with questions about personal salvation, then they are in danger of wanting to possess Christ and to keep him to themselves, against all others.

But that is not what Christ wants for us. He does not want us to possess him but to enter into the freedom of his love for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. He who cannot be contained by the grave of death can hardly be contained by us.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saints Cyril and Methodius

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Cyril (826-69) and Saint Methodius (c. 815-85), Apostles to the Slavs (source):

O Lord of all,
who gavest to thy servants Cyril and Methodius
the gift of tongues to proclaim the gospel to the Slavic people:
we pray that thy whole Church may be one as thou art one,
that all who confess thy name may honour one another,
and that from east and west all may acknowledge one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
and thee, the God and Father of all;
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: Ephesians 3:1-7
The Gospel: St Mark 16:15-20

Saints Cyril and MethodiusSt Cyril and St Methodius were brothers born in Thessalonica who went to Constantinople after being ordained priests. (Cyril was baptised Constantine and did not become known as Cyril until late in his life.) Around AD 863, Emperor Michael II and Patriarch Photius sent the brothers as missionaries to Moravia, where they translated into Slavonic the Gospels, the Psalms, and the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. With his brother’s help, Cyril created an alphabet that later developed into Cyrillic, thus laying the foundation for Slavic literature.

German missionary bishops in the area celebrated the liturgy in Latin and opposed the brothers’ use of the vernacular. In 867, Cyril and Methodius participated in a debate in Venice over the use of Slavonic liturgy and were soon received with great honour in Rome by Pope Hadrian II, who authorised the use of Slavic tongues in the liturgy.

In 868, Cyril became a monk and entered a monastery in Rome, but died soon afterward and was buried in the church at San Clemente. Shortly after Cyril’s death, Methodius was consecrated archbishop of Sermium and returned to Moravia where he ministered for another fifteen years. He continued the work of translation and evangelisation, while continuing to face opposition from German bishops. Before his death in 885, he and his followers completed translations of the Bible, liturgical services, and collections of canon law.

St Cyril and St Methodius are honoured for evangelising the Slavs, organising the Slavic church, and pioneering the celebration of liturgy in the vernacular. For these reasons, in 1980 Pope John Paul II named them, together with St Benedict, patron saints of all Europe.

c/p: Nova Scotia Scott

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 11-17 May 2009

Tuesday, May 12th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:30pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, May 14th
1:30-3:00pm Seniors’ Drop-In

Saturday, May 16th
2:00pm Holy Matrimony – Hensley Memorial Chapel: Leah Chesley & Adam Burns

Sunday, May 17th, Easter V/Rogation Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:30 pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday After Easter

The collect for today, The Fourth Sunday After Easter, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St James 1:17-21
The Gospel: St John 16:5-15

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Gregory of Nazianzus

St Gregory of NazianzusThe collect for today, the Feast of St Gregory of Nazianzus (329-89), Monk, Bishop, Theologian, Doctor of the Eastern Church (source):

Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who livest and reignest for ever and ever.

For the Epistle: Wisdom 7:7-14
The Gospel: St John 8:25-32

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Prayers and liturgy

An Eastertide Meditation

An Eastertide Meditation

There is something quite special and wonderful about the Easter season. The Scripture readings at Holy Communion during the forty days of Easter assist us in our understanding of the radical nature of the Resurrection. It changes everything. It changes our outlook on life and death, our outlook on ourselves and one another. It does so by offering us a larger view of our humanity and the world. We are more, though not less than our bodies. And the world is God’s world.

The world exists for God and not simply for us. This goes a long ways towards countering the dreaded and dreadful fatalisms of our world and day. We are only too much aware of the power of our technocratic reason – the reason which expresses itself in power over nature and over ourselves. Reason, itself the image of God in us, is viewed as an instrument of the will to power. This results in the exploitation of nature rather than the nurture of nature and it also results in the destruction of nature. Both the exploitation of nature and our fears about our destruction of nature have to do with our assumptions about human reason seen as an instrument of the will. Both viewpoints are destructive of our humanity, too.

The Scriptures counter these approaches by recalling us to our creatureliness and to our place in the order of creation and by reminding us of God’s larger purposes for his creation and for our humanity. Perhaps, the poet, Thomas Traherne, puts one of the themes of Eastertide best when he says “you never love the world aright until you love it in God.” The world which God cares for, is the world in which we live. The Resurrection teaches us to care for one another and for the world which God cares for.

Fr. David Curry

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