Year: 2013

Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 17 – 23 June

Monday, June 17th
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, June 18th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Thursday, June 20th
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Friday, June 21st
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
3:30pm Holy Communion – Gladys Manning Home

Sunday, June 23rd, The Fourth Sunday After Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, July 20th
7:30pm Christ Church Concert Series: Ensemble Seraphina

During the month of July, Fr. Curry will be priest-in-charge of Avon Valley; during August, Fr. Tom Henderson will be priest-in-charge of Christ Church (798-8921).

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Prayers and liturgy

The Third Sunday After Trinity

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

O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, may by thy mighty aid be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 5:5-11
The Gospel: St. Luke 15:1-10

Artwork: The Parable of the Lost Coin, stained glass, St. Jacob’s Lutheran Church, Anna, Ohio.

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King's-Edgehill School Sermons, Sermons

Sermon for Encaenia 2013

“I am the vine; ye are the branches … abide in me.”

Somewhere, in the past year, a man or a woman stepped out of the countryside and slipped into one of the world’s cities and, with that one step, the demographics of the world changed from being mostly rural to being predominantly urban. How strange, then, to hear in the Scripture readings about the agrarian themes of seedtime and harvest, of vines and branches, the images of humanity’s engagement with the natural and created world. How strange, too, on this day of leaving to hear about abiding. Yet, we meet this morning in the beauty of the rural landscape of Nova Scotia for your graduation from this School from which you go to into an inescapably urban world.

You made it! In just a few hours you will no longer be students of King’s-Edgehill School but graduates, literally those who have made the grade and now step up and step out as alumni of the School. On this day, you are the pride of the School and the pride of your parents, guardians, grandparents and friends. Today marks a significant milestone in your lives. I suspect, however, that if parents and grandparents, and even you, were honest, it could be said that we hardly recognize you, so much have you changed, and I am not referring to guys in skirts!

We meet in the 225th year of the founding of this school. You are part of something far greater than yourselves which is now part of you. This School, set in the rural idylls of Nova Scotia, a kind of paradise, you might almost say (forget the bleak mid-winter, at least for the moment!), has been your place of cultivation and learning, your place of abiding. You step out, glad to be free and yet so much of who you are has been shaped by all that you have been a part of here whether for seven years or one. If it has any meaning at all, something abides in you from your time spent here.

These have been some of the most critical years of your formation. Education is nothing if it is not about the formation of character. Nothing could be more counter-culture, yet nothing could be more classical. As soon as education is turned into a means rather than an end it ceases to be education. At issue is what it means to be human. It is a pressing contemporary question. The Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, points out that our question is not simply about what it is that is right to do but about what it is that is good to be. Morality and metaphysics are inseparable; the ethical is also the philosophical.

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Prayers and liturgy

Basil the Great, Bishop and Doctor

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Basil the Great (c. 330-79), Bishop of Caesarea, Cappadocian Father, Doctor of the Church (source):

Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Basil of Caesarea, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; who livest and reignest for ever and ever.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 2:6-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:21-24

Artwork: Pierre Subleyras, Mass of St. Basil (Emperor Valens Before Bishop Basilius), 1743. Oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Barnabas the Apostle

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Barnabas the Apostle, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD God Almighty, who didst endue thy holy Apostle Barnabas with singular gifts of the Holy Spirit: Leave us not, we beseech thee, destitute of thy manifold gifts, nor yet of grace to use them alway to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 11:22-26
The Gospel: St. John 15:12-16Artwork: Paolo Veronese, The Miracle of Saint Barnabas, c. 1566. Oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity

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

The Gospel is Christ’s parable about the kingdom of God being likened to a great supper to which those who were invited all made excuse. The Epistle speaks about our hearts in relation to the truth of God revealed.

We are the ones who are invited to a great supper. Our churches stand as the banquet halls of the kingdom of God. “Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God,” we may say, as, indeed, did “one of them that sat at meat with Jesus.” Why, then, does Jesus tell this parable to one who was at meat with him about a great supper to which many were invited and yet no one who was bidden came? To make him and all of us realize the nature of our blessedness. It is found in our being with Jesus.

The point of the parable is clear. “Come, for all things are now ready,” we hear. God provides so much and more for us. But, more often than not, it is we who are unready and all because of our excuses. We turn to our own ways, to the ground, quite literally, and to the ways of dust and death. We ignore the vision and refuse the invitation.

The consequence would seem to mean “no feast” and all because of our refusals of God’s inviting grace, as if our convenience and self-interest were to take priority over God’s will. But our preoccupations and our indifference are simply the forms of our atheism, our denial of the will of God for us. No feast for us because there is no God for us. We are unaware of the wonder of grace.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 10 – 16 June

Monday, June 10th, Eve of St. Barnabas
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Tuesday, June 11th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:30pm Parish Council Meeting

Thursday, June 13th
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Saturday, June 15th
9:00am Encaenia Service – KES Chapel
10:15am Graduation & Prize Day Ceremonies – KES Campus

Sunday, June 16th, The Third Sunday After Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Morning Prayer
2:00pm AMD Service of the Deaf
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, July 20th
7:30pm Christ Church Concert Series: Ensemble Seraphina ($10 per person)

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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

Artwork: Cicely Mary Barker, The Parable of the Great Supper, 1935. Oil on canvas, Lady Chapel, St. George’s, Waddon (near Croydon).

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Prayers and liturgy

Columba, Abbot of Iona

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Columba (c. 521-597) Abbot of Iona, Missionary (source):

Almighty God,
who didst fill the heart of Columba
with the joy of the Holy Spirit,
and with deep love for those in his care:
grant to thy pilgrim people grace to follow him,
strong in faith, sustained by hope,
and made one in the love that binds us to thee;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 3:11-23
The Gospel: St Luke 10:17-20

Artwork: Saint Columba, MS Rawlinson B. 514, 16th century. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

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Prayers and liturgy

Boniface, Missionary, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Boniface (Wynfrith) of Crediton (c. 675 – 754), Bishop, Apostle to the Germans, Patron Saint of Germany, Martyr (source):

O God our redeemer,
who didst call thy servant Boniface
to preach the gospel among the German people
and to build up thy Church in holiness:
grant that we may hold fast in our hearts
that faith which he taught with his words
and sealed with his blood,
and profess it in lives dedicated to thy Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 20:17-28
The Gospel: St. Luke 24:44-53

Artwork: St. Boniface. Sandstone statue copied after 1857 from a damaged original of 1753 by Johann Kaspar Hiernle. Marketplatz, Mainz, Germany.

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