Christ Church

The collect for a Martyr, in commemoration of James Hannington (1847-85), first Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, Missionary to Uganda, Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Almighty God, by whose grace and power thy Martyr James Hannington was enabled to witness to the truth and to be faithful unto death: Grant that we, who now remember him before thee, may likewise so bear witness unto thee in this world, that we may receive with him the crown of glory that fadeth not away; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:12-19
The Gospel: St. Matthew 16:24-27

“I do as the Father has commanded me,
so that the world may know that I love the Father”

It is surely a kind of wonderful providence that our second lesson should encompass this morning’s Gospel at Holy Communion. A wonderful providence that confirms the essential point that the Holy Spirit “shall teach [us] all things and bring all things to [our] remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you,” Jesus says. Somehow that point is brought home to us in the collocation of these lessons. But are we listening?

Or shall we discover our unbelief and our disdain and dismissal of the “righteous man” whom we have afflicted, scorned and derided only to discover that “it was we who strayed from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness did not shine on us, and the sun did not rise upon us?” Such have we heard in our first lesson from Wisdom this evening. To hear that would be a saving knowledge, to be sure, but how much better to let God’s Word have its resonance in us and in our lives? For that is the point.

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“Go thy way, thy son liveth”

Seeing is believing, it is commonly said, but here is the story of someone who having heard believed and having heard again, believed yet again – all without seeing. Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us since “faith cometh by hearing” except that what is heard and believed stands in such stark contrast to what is wanted to be seen. “Except ye see signs and wonders,” Jesus says, “ye will not believe.” He names our expectation and its consequence – our unbelief. For where God is wanted to be tangibly present – immediately there for us, subject to us, as it were – faith has no meaning. The Word has no resonance in us.

In the Gospel, the demand is that Jesus should be physically present for an act of healing to be effective: “Come down ere my child die”. Something divine in Jesus is at once acknowledged and denied in the request. For where the Word is made captive to our desires, there the sovereign freedom of the Word can have no play upon our understanding. To acknowledge the sovereign freedom of the Word, on the other hand, means that our understanding is made captive to the Word and not the Word to the immediacy of our desires. Such acknowledgement is faith: “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen”. It has its play primarily upon our understanding and not upon our senses.

The captivity of our understanding to the Word gives meaning and purpose to our desires without which they are essentially nothing. Read the rest of this entry »

“He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance,
whatsoever I have said unto you.”

It is a powerful passage and one which takes us back to the Sundays of Easter leading to Pentecost, to the coming down of the Holy Spirit, hence the liturgical colour of red which connects the Holy Spirit with the Apostles who are sent in Jesus’ name. In other words, this powerful passage from the Gospel of St. John places us in the very heart of the Trinity; in short, in the communion of God who is the basis of our communion and fellowship with one another. We live only when we live with God.

That must seem a hard saying or at least a puzzling statement and yet it lies at the very heart of the Christian understanding of our life with God. Through the witness of the Scriptures, Jesus, who is the Word of God, has made known to us the things which God wants us to know and live. His word becomes the very basis of our life in his body, the Church. The Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude reminds us of the apostolic fellowship to which we belong precisely because of the power of the Holy Spirit “teach[ing us] all things and bring[ing] all things to [our] remembrance,” all the things which Jesus has said to us.

At first glance, such ideas might seem merely dogmatic and authoritative. But upon consideration, perhaps, you can begin to see their wisdom. Left to ourselves, it can be said, we are destructive monsters – the whole of the biblical witness bears testimony to this idea, an idea which is equally confirmed by experience itself.  We live in the midst of a bloody, violent and uncertain world, a world of our own making, to be sure. And yet, the Scripture readings of this day remind us of another kingdom, the kingdom of God, another city, the heavenly city, the City of God. They remind us of the apostolic fellowship of the Church which, if it is to be the Church, must stand upon the authority of God’s Word.

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“He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance,
whatsoever I have said unto you.”

It is a powerful passage and one which takes us back to the Sundays of Easter leading to Pentecost, to the coming down of the Holy Spirit, hence the liturgical colour of red which connects the Holy Spirit with the Apostles who are sent in Jesus’ name. In other words, this powerful passage from the Gospel of St. John places us in the very heart of the Trinity; in short, in the communion of God who is the basis of our communion and fellowship with one another. We live only when we live with God.

That must seem a hard saying or at least a puzzling statement and yet it lies at the very heart of the Christian understanding of our life with God. Through the witness of the Scriptures, Jesus, who is the Word of God, has made known to us the things which God wants us to know and live. His word becomes the very basis of our life in his body, the Church. The Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude reminds us of the apostolic fellowship to which we belong precisely because of the power of the Holy Spirit “teach[ing us] all things and bring[ing] all things to [our] remembrance,” all the things which Jesus has said to us.

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Monday, October 29th
4:45-5:15pm World Religions/Inquirer’s Class – Room 206, King’s-Edgehill School
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, October 30th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Thursday, November 1st, All Saints
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Sunday, November 4th, Trinity XXII/In the Octave of All Saints
8:00am Holy Communion (followed by Men’s Club Breakfast)
10:30am Holy Baptism & Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church
4:30pm Holy Communion – KES

Upcoming Events:

Sunday, November 11th, Remembrance Day
9:00am Holy Communion – Christ Church
10:00am Cenotaph Service – King’s-Edgehill School
11:00am Cenotaph Service – Windsor Cenotaph

Saturday, November 24th
4:30-6:30pm Annual Parish Ham Supper – Parish Hall

Sunday, December 2nd
Advent/Christmas Services of Carols and Lessons with King’s-Edgehill School
4:30pm Christ Church (Gr. 7-11)
7:00pm KES Chapel (Gr. 12)

Friday, December 21st
7:00pm Christ Church Concert Series: “With Kings To Bethlehem”, Capella Regalis, Men and Boys Choir, directed by Nick Halley

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Simon the Zealot and Saint Jude, Apostles, with Saint Jude the Brother of the Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head corner-stone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect for the Brethren of the Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O HEAVENLY Father, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: We bless thy holy Name for the witness of James and Jude, the kinsmen of the Lord, and pray that we may be made true members of thy heavenly family; through him who willed to be the firstborn among many brethren, even the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. Jude 1-4
The Gospel: St. John 14:21-27

Read more about Saint Simon and Saint Jude here.

Artwork:
(left) Bernardino Cametti, Saint Simon the Apostle, 1722. Marble, Chiesa Sant’Agostino, Opera del Duomo di Orvieto.
(right) Francesco Mochi, Saint Thaddeus [Jude] the Apostle, 1631-34. Marble, Chiesa Sant’Agostino, Opera del Duomo di Orvieto.

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

GRANT, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace; that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 6:10-20
The Gospel: St. John 4:46-54

Artwork: Franz Anton Maulbertsch, Christ and the Captain of Capernaum, c. 1765. Engraving, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Where are our hearts? What do we want, really and truly? Do we want what is really and truly to be wanted? Do we know what that might be?

We do and we don’t. What is really and truly to be wanted is the “Father’s good pleasure” bestowed through the good virtue of the Mother: the good pleasure of our heavenly Father; the good virtue of Mother Church. But we are all caught, in one way or another, in the ambiguity of our desiring.

There is our wanting, first, this thing and, then, that thing, each with an absolute desire, only to discover that no one thing can really satisfy. “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee,” Augustine said long ago, or as Mick Jagger put it somewhat more recently, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” The double negative is simply part of the double-sidedness of our desiring. We don’t know what we want – is it this or is it that? – because we don’t know what is really and truly to be wanted. Jesus calls this condition of ours, “anxiety”– at least that is the modern English word, at least since the seventeenth century for the state of our distractedness. We are distracted because we are literally “divided in our minds.” How much more so in what Alan Jacobs has called “the age of distraction”?

It is a powerful image really. Our eyes flit quickly from one object to another unable to focus on any one thing. We are distracted and often beside ourselves; in short, divided in our souls. Against this, Jesus, in Luke’s account, would gently recall us to ourselves. He would recall us to what is really and truly to be wanted in which everything else must find its place. He gently but firmly reminds us of the Providence of God, of God’s providential care for us. God sees all things in his single-minded love for us.

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“Everything is ready”

“Everything is ready”, it seems, but are we?  What does it mean to be ready for the banquet, for the wedding feast? What, indeed, is the wedding-garment without which, it seems, we are not ready; without which, it seems, we are out even when we think we are in; without which, it seems, we shall be “cast into outer darkness”  where  “there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth”?

The times are never so bad that a good man cannot live in them, though, no doubt, that raises the larger question about the struggle for the good in our lives. But the point, surely, is that the quality of the times in which we live cannot be the measure of virtue and character. No. It is rather the setting in which virtue is shown and character is proved. The question for Christians “at all times and in all places” is whether we will be defined by circumstances or defined by grace.  By grace, we mean the highest perfection of human virtue which is God’s work in us, come what may in the world around us. “Wherefore,” St. Paul bids us, “be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.”

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