Day: June 13, 2010

Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity

“If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart”

In the early days of the Trinity season, St. John’s First Epistle is read in conjunction with some of the most convicting and compelling parables of Jesus as presented by St. Luke in his gospel.  Last Sunday, it was the story of Dives and Lazarus, a parable told to convict us about our indifference to God and to one another and to convince us about acting out of the vision of love that we have been given to see in the witness of the Scriptures. It means our care for one another out of God’s care for us.

Today’s Gospel is about an invitation – an invitation to a banquet, a great supper to which many are invited. The interest of the parable lies in the excuses which keep us from the banquet; in short, the ways in which we attempt to justify our absence from the divine feast of love. We are indifferent towards the needs of Lazarus lying at our gate because we are indifferent to the lessons of God in his Word, the Holy Scriptures. We refuse the invitation to the heavenly and divine banquet of love because we are pre-occupied with all the matters of our everyday life.

These two parables, seen in the light of the Epistle, speak profoundly, it seems to me, to our world and day. How? Because, let’s face it, in North America, at least, there is hardly a congregation that doesn’t want the sermon to be (a) entertaining and funny whether it is about God or not and preferably not; and (b) relevant to ourselves and the latest issue du jour which really means that Scripture and Sermon are meant to confirm or affirm some aspect or other of our quotidian lives, our everyday lives.

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King's-Edgehill School Sermons, Sermons

Sermon for Encaenia 2010

“Take with you words”

“Take with you words,” the great love-prophet of the Hebrew Scriptures, Hosea, exhorts us. In a way, what else is there to take but words from your years at King’s-Edgehill? And yet it is the struggle, the agone, of intellectual life, to take the words which we have heard into ourselves and to let them shape our lives. It has been the challenge and the goal of your time here.

Today you are the pride of your parents and grandparents, your teachers and coaches, your chaplain and headmaster. In just a few hours you will no longer be students but alumni of this School which, in one way or another, has been so much a part of your life whether for six years or one. What you take with you are, indeed, words which, like seeds planted in the soul of your being, shall in time “flourish as a garden” and “blossom as a vine” whose “fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon.” Let’s not be too literal about that last metaphor!

But Hosea’s point in the lesson which Victoria read is wonderfully clear. Words that return us to truth keep us in the truth which they signify. They live and grow in us like flowers in a garden. But only if we attend to them regardless of the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

The year was 524 AD. The place was Pavia, Italy. In a prison. Therein languished a most remarkable figure whose name was Boethius. At once a scholar and a dedicated public servant, he was thrown into prison, arraigned on false charges by the Arian King, Theodoric the Ostrogoth, awaiting execution. He was a victim of the vagaries of the politics and power in the days of the waning and decay of the Roman Empire. And, just like all of us when we are having what is a little bit more than a bad hair day (okay, so some don’t have bad hair days!), he was feeling rather sorry for himself.

His ambition had been twofold; first, to translate all the works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin and secondly, to serve the public good both as a Christian and in accord with Plato’s concept that philosophers cannot ignore the demands of the practical and the political. Reason or learning should govern both in the soul and in the body politic. And yet, for all of that, Boethius, falsely accused, faced execution.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 14-20 June

Tuesday, June 15th
3:30pm Holy Communion – Windsor Elms
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-7:30pm Brownies’ Meeting – Parish Hall

Thursday, June 17th
2:00pm Prayers & Praises – Windsor Elms

Sunday, June 20th, Third Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:30pm Evening Prayer at Christ Church

General Synod has upheld its commitment to the Anglican Communion by way of a resolution that calls for the reception, study and adoption of the Anglican Communion Covenant at the 2013 Synod. For this, such as it is, we should give praise.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday After Trinity

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

O LORD, who never failest to help and govern them whom thou dost bring up in thy stedfast fear and love: Keep us, we beseech thee, under the protection of thy good providence, and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St John 3:13-24
The Gospel: St Luke 14:15-24

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