by CCW | 29 April 2011 23:00
# 1
We meet this afternoon in this place of meeting. It is a place of celebration and a place of encounters. Our year at King’s-Edgehill, too, has been about encounters with ideas and actions, about encounters with God and with one another, about encounters with the things that challenge us and that take us beyond ourselves. Only so, can we be more and be more for others.
# 2
There have been the encounters with other athletes and other teams, encounters that are about contest and competition, about striving to win. No one wants to lose. And yet in the battles lost and won, there is a further encounter. We encounter things about ourselves, about character and responsibility, about compassion and strength, about determination and service. Dignity and respect are big terms that belong to the educational project at the school. They are learned in and through these encounters.
# 3
There have been the more bizarre encounters of a cross-cultural sort. Encounters with pumpkins in a lake and with others racing pumpkins across Lake Pisiquid, for instance. Try telling that one to your grandchildren someday! But there was the pumpkin victory of Tobias of Germany together with Francis of Bermuda over a pumpkin field of Canadian contestants. And there was the headmaster and his pumpkin … well, perhaps we won’t go there!
# 4
The lesson which Kerri read refers to an encounter which defines the Jewish people and, by extension, Christians and Muslims. It is the story of God’s liberation of the ancient people of Israel to become the people of God. God overthrows the forces of Pharaoh at the Red Sea. The contest is between the forces of nature and the human drive for domination over others, on the one hand, and the transcendent power of God for whom nature is but the cloak of his glory and the nations of the earth are but as a drop in the bucket, on the other hand. Read in the light of Easter, the story is about God’s redemptive purpose for our humanity. It is about being defined by God and not simply by nature and human ambition.
# 5
But we encounter in this Exodus story the disturbing idea that “the Lord is a man of war.” It is an image and a metaphor that relates to the constant spiritual struggle or jihad, to use an Arabic term, of good and evil in our souls and in our lives. As T.S. Eliot puts it:
The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all my years, one thing does not change.
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.
Forgetful you neglect your shrines and churches.
Every encounter involves a challenge and a struggle through which we learn the ethical imperatives about good and evil, about right and wrong. The struggle is to remember and not to forget.
# 6
There have been the encounters with different cultures and different peoples both in the School and around the world, encounters with the peoples of Kenya, encounters with Riiny Ngot, one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan, who spoke to us about the horrific ordeal of his 1,000 mile trek across the wilderness spaces of Africa. There were encounters with the ideas and principles of the different world religions, respectively of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
# 7
There were the encounters with nature whether it was dog-sledding in the cold, frozen vastness of Northern Ontario or climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. In these encounters we discover things about ourselves and about the larger world in which we find ourselves. We learn about service and commitment to others, literally building schools. We learn about dignity and respect, even if it means going without hot showers for several days!
# 8
In the lesson which Jonte read, we hear of a most amazing encounter. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb of Jesus expecting to find a dead body. She encounters, instead, something which she did not expect and so did not recognize at first. She encounters the Risen Christ. The wonder of the encounter is about the change it makes. She has come in grief and sorrow; she leaves in joy and gladness. She came alone and in despair; she leaves to proclaim good news and hope to others. Her encounter has changed her but in ways that make her more truly herself. She has become something more, even “an apostle to the apostles.”
# 9
The point is that in the encounters of this past year in athletics, in cadets, in the arts and theatre, in music and dance, in academics and in chapel; in short, in all of the rich and varied activities of the year at King’s-Edgehill, we are being changed into something more; “a sea-change into something rich and strange,” as Shakespeare puts it in his play, The Tempest. The challenge in all of these encounters is for us to be better people who have embraced the educational ideals of “gentleness and learning, dignity and respect.” These are the things that belong to our life and identity at King’s-Edgehill. These are the things that make us something more and something more for others.
(Rev’d) David Curry
KES Church Parade,
April 29th, 2011 (3:00pm)
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