Day: September 22, 2013

Sermons

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, 2:00pm service for Atlantic Ministry of the Deaf

“Friend, go up higher”

It is one of my favourite Scripture passages. It’s not about ambition or pretension. It’s about the hope of transformation. It conveys the sense that we are, indeed, called to something more, that we have a destiny beyond what we know is before us but will not face, namely, the grave and gate of death. And it signals ever so profoundly the necessary condition of soul for the realization of God’s will and purpose for our lives. The necessary condition is humility.

Here is a Scripture reading in which the operative words are “friend” and “go up higher”. Jesus calls us “friends”.  He does so here by way of a parable but elsewhere more directly. He calls us friends at the height of his passion, on the night of our betrayal. That is the wondrous thing that passes human understanding. God has made us his friends when we were his enemies! This turns the ancient world on its head. It turns our world on its head. We live in a hopeless and fearful world. Here is the antidote to our hopelessness and fear. It challenges us so that it can redeem us.

We are called out of ourselves and we are called to God. We are called to the service of God in our life together with one another in the body of Christ. It is really the purpose of our being here today, a purpose which is meant to extend into every aspect of our lives.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

“Friend, go up higher”

Spatial metaphors abound in the Scriptures. “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho” or “We go up to Jerusalem”, to take but two familiar examples, the one from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the other from Quinquagesima Sunday just before Lent. The meaning of our comings and goings are captured in these metaphors; they are about the ups and downs of our lives but, even more, they are images about the nature of our relationship with God and with one another; in short, they are about sin and grace, about death and resurrection.

The Scriptural readings for today emphasize our identity in Christ. His grace defines us and in very dynamic ways. The Collect bids us pray to God that his grace “may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works.” Prevent here does not mean ‘hinder’ or stand in our way; no, it is about the grace of God going before us and then, following or coming after us. The point, too, is that our good works are nothing but the effects of God’s grace in us. It is really all about God’s grace but that does not eclipse, destroy or deny the reality of our human nature; quite the opposite, it is about its perfection. To use a wonderful theological phrase from Aquinas, “grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.”

What is required of us? Humility. There can be no perfecting of our being, no going up higher, no being raised up to glory, without humility. In a way, it is the way of grace in us making us lovely where once we were unlovely. Religion cannot be about mere duty, checking off the boxes of all the forms of social and political correctness, as it were. It is radically and fundamentally about the transforming power of God’s grace. This is the powerful point of the parable which Jesus tells as the counter to the ways in which we trust in our own presumption about what is acceptable and proper, our own judgments about ourselves and others, which is really about our own pride. Pride cuts us off from God and one another. It often disguises itself in how we think and look at others, thinking ourselves invariably to be better than others and deserving of special attention.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 23 – 29 September

Tuesday, September 24th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Thursday, September 26th
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Saturday, September 28th
7:00 – 9:00pm Newfoundland & Country Evening of Musical Entertainment – Parish Hall

Sunday, September 29th, St. Michael and All Angels (Trinity XVIII)
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Special Choral Evensong, St. Mary’s Crousetown, sponsored by the Prayer Book Society, Fr. Curry officiating.

Upcoming Events:

Friday, October 18th
7:30pm Christ Church Concert Series I, Violin(s) & Piano, Nellie & Stan Chen

Friday, November 1st
3:00pm 225th Anniversary Service of the Founding of King’s Collegiate School (now King’s-Edgehill)

Friday, December 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Concert Series II, Capella Regalis presents “To Bethlehem with Kings”

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Prayers and liturgy

The Seventeenth Sunday After Trinity

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

LORD, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:1-11

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