Christ Church

Christ is Risen. Alleluia, Alleluia!

The Church’s ancient proclamation captures the joy and the excitement of this day. But make no mistake, the Resurrection is not some sort of clap-happy event, a happy ending to an otherwise sad and bitter tale. No. The joy and the excitement of Easter are born out of the Passion and Death of Christ. No Passion, no Resurrection. No Good Friday, no Easter day. The intensity of the Passion gives rise to the joyfulness of the Resurrection.

The Resurrection is a bodily event. But it gives rise to a new understanding of everything. There is, we might say, a resurrection of the understanding. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is, as I am fond of saying, radical new life. Radical is the right word, actually. It refers to the root of things, the radix. The Resurrection goes to the root of all life itself. That root is the reciprocal love of the Son for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit.

The God who creates ex nihilo – out of nothing – recreates out of the greater nothingness of sin and death. The Cross has made visible that greater nothingness. The full force of sin and evil are revealed in the crucified Christ. The greater nothingness is the vanity of our wills as against everything that is good – against one another in the human community, against the good order of creation, and against God himself. But the Cross has also made visible the far greater love of God both for us and in itself.

If the message of Good Friday is that God is dead, then the message of Easter is that death is conquered, death is dead. “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;/death hath no more dominion over him.” Christ is risen from the dead never to die again. The meaning of death itself is changed. The tomb is not only empty; it has become the womb of new life. The unending life of the Resurrection is accomplished in and through the darkness of death. Christ is Risen!

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Monday, April 1st, Easter Monday
10:00am Holy Communion
7:30pm Christ Church Concert Series: Acadia Percussion

Tuesday, April 2nd, Easter Tuesday
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Holy Communion

Thursday, April 4th, Easter Thursday
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Sunday, April 7th, Octave Day of Easter
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:

Tuesday, April 16th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Balthasar’s Odyssey and Disordered World, by Amin Maalouf

Saturday, April 27th
7:00-9:00pm Newfoundland & Country Evening of Musical Entertainment

Saturday, May 11th
4:30-6:00pm Annual Parish Lobster Supper ($25 per ticket)

The collect for today, Easter-Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962) :

ALMIGHTY God, who through thine only begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life: We humbly beseech thee, that as by thy special grace thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Colossians 3:1-11
The Gospel: St. John 20:1-10

Artwork: Titian, The Resurrection, 1542-44. Oil on canvas, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino.

“Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?”

The kiss of Judas is the archetype of all betrayal. Holy Week in all of its intensity and drama has set before us the pageant of all our betrayals. What we contemplate is the Judas within each of us. How is this possible? Because of the love of God which is greater than our betrayals, because Truth has more power than all sin and evil. Betrayals, after all, are themselves an acknowledgment of a truth which we have denied. Even more, as we see in the pageant of the Passion, that truth is so much before us even in denial that we seek to destroy it. We kill God.

God is dead. That is the disturbing wonder of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. And yet the death of God in Christ – for the death of God only has meaning through the Incarnation – accomplishes a strange marvel. There is the quiet peace of this holy day. It is the peace of Paradise. All the rage and spite, all the bitter agony and ugly violence of Good Friday is past and gone. We have, literally, done all that we could to annihilate God from the horizon of our minds. We have, literally, in the crucifixion of Christ done all that we could to deny the dignity of our humanity. It is not just  God who is dead in Christ; we are dead in ourselves and dead to God.

All our wild sin and evil has had its say. It all amounts to what it is. It is nothing. It is all a denial of what truly is, a denial of God and creation, a denial of all that is true and good about ourselves as well. “Nothing is but what is not,” indeed, to adapt Shakespeare’s phrase from Macbeth. And yet, there is the peace of Holy Saturday, the sense of paradise. Why? Precisely because the fury and folly of sin and evil has done its worst; there is, literally, nothing more that we can do by way of sin and destruction.

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The collect for today, Easter Even, or Holy Saturday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that, through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 3:17-22
The Gospel: St. Matthew 27:57-66

Artwork: Michelangelo, The Deposition (or The Florentine Pietà), 1547-53. Marble, Museo dell’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence. Photograph taken by admin, 14 May 2010.

“Christ our Lord became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”

“While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Such is the mystery of this day, the double mystery of our disobedience and Christ’s obedience, his obedience unto death, a death that is somehow a blessing for us. How shall we think about Good Friday? The Scriptures unveil the great spectacles of obedience and disobedience that help us to ponder the deep mystery of human redemption in the passion and death of Christ. We ponder the mystery of Christ crucified.

The words of the Crucified challenge and confront us in our complacency and our cynicism and in our folly and our despair. These words which illumine so much of our understanding of the Scriptures and human life are also illumined by the whole pageant of God’s Word written.

The stories of Isaac and Absalom are the stories of obedience and disobedience that provide an interpretative framework for our reflection together on the mystery of human redemption.

The story of the Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac belongs historically and traditionally to the sorrowful and serious theological considerations of Good Friday. A most disturbing story, think how troubled Søren Kierkegaard was by this story, for example, it nonetheless helps us to think about Christ’s crucifixion. In Genesis, God puts Abraham to the test, to an almost unbelievable and utterly disturbing test, bidding him sacrifice his only son, the son whom he loves, the son of God’s promise to him and Sarah, the son through whom “all your descendants shall be named” and “through whom all nations of the earth shall be blessed.”

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A set of Good Friday readings and meditations based on Christ’s Seven Last Words from the Cross, can be downloaded here (pdf document). The meditations are by Fr. David Curry.

The collects for today, Good Friday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, we beseech thee graciously to behold this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church is governed and sanctified: Receive our supplications and prayers, which we offer before thee for all estates of men in thy holy Church, that every member of the same, in his vocation and ministry, may truly and godly serve thee; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Hebrews 10:1-25
The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint John
The Gospel: St. John 18:33-19:37

Artwork: Crucifixion, c. 1877, stained glass, St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh. Photograph taken by admin, 24 July 2004.

“Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?”

It has been our mantra, the interpretative text for our Holy Week meditations. It speaks profoundly to this day, the beginning of the Triduum Sacrum, the three great Holy Days of Christ’s Passion. In our Anglican tradition, we immerse ourselves in the reading of all of the accounts of the Passion. Luke’s Passion is read on the Wednesday and the Thursday of Holy Week. It is from Luke that we get this defining word of betrayal.

Maundy Thursday is a day of complexity and confusion. Maundy is the Englishing of the Latin mandatum, meaning commandment. The novum mandatum, the new commandment, is Jesus’ word to us at the Last Supper, on the night in which he was betrayed. What is the new commandment? That we should love one another as he has loved us. The Passion of Christ signals to us exactly what that means. It means sacrifice and service.

Those two concepts mark the solemn ceremonies of this day. Christ institutes the Holy Communion, identifying himself with the bread and the wine of the Passover celebration and thereby inaugurating the new covenant that will be realized through his death and resurrection. He inaugurates this new reality in the face of our betrayals and he also insists on washing the feet of the disciples. It signals the servant ministry of the Gospel. “I am among you as one that serves.”

Sacrifice and service. And yet, betrayals.

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The collects for today, Thursday in Holy Week, commonly called Maundy Thursday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also he made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O GOD, who in a wonderful sacrament hast left unto us a memorial of thy passion: Grant us so to reverence the holy mysteries of thy Body and Blood, that we may ever know within ourselves the fruit of thy redemption; who livest and reignest with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 11:23-29
The Continuation of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke
The Gospel: St. Luke 23:1-49

Artwork: Tintoretto, Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples, 1548-49. Oil on canvas, Prado, Madrid.