Year: 2015

Prayers and liturgy

John West, Missionary

The collect for a missionary, in commemoration of The Rev’d John West (1778-1845), Priest, first Protestant missionary to the Red River Valley, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

John WestO GOD, our heavenly Father, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thy blessed Apostles and send them forth to preach thy Gospel of salvation unto all the nations: We bless thy holy Name for thy servant John West, whose labours we commemorate this day, and we pray thee, according to thy holy Word, to send forth many labourers into thy harvest; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 12:24-13:5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 4:13-24a

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Prayers and liturgy

John Wycliffe, Scholar and Translator

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Wycliffe, (c 1320-84), Scholar, Translator of the Scriptures into English (source):

O Lord, thou God of truth, whose Word is a lantern to our feet and a light upon our path: We give thee thanks for thy servant John Wyclif, and those who, following in his steps, have labored to render the Holy Scriptures in the language of the people; and we beseech thee that thy Holy Spirit may overshadow us as we read the written Word, and that Christ, the living Word, may transform us according to thy righteous will; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Daniel 2:17-24
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:9-16

Madox Brown, The Trial of Wycliffe

Artwork: Ford Madox Brown, The Trial of Wycliffe A.D. 1377, 1893. Mural, Great Hall, Manchester Town Hall.

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Prayers and liturgy

Thomas Becket, Archbishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Thomas Becket (1117-1170), Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr (source):

O Lord God,
who gavest to thy servant Thomas Becket
grace to put aside all earthly fear and be faithful even unto death:
grant that we, caring not for worldly esteem,
may fight against evil,
uphold thy rule,
and serve thee to our life’s end;
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 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

St. Botolph's Church, Boston, Thomas BecketThomas Becket was a close personal friend of King Henry II of England and served as his chancellor from 1155. When the Archbishop of Canterbury died in 1162, Henry, seeing an opportunity to exercise control over the church, decided to have his chancellor elected to the post. Thomas saw the dangers of the king’s plan and warned Henry that, if he became archbishop, his first loyalty would be to God and not the king. He told Henry, “Several things you do in prejudice of the rights of the church make me fear that you would require of me what I could not agree to.” What Thomas feared soon came to pass.

After becoming archbishop, Thomas changed radically from defender of the king’s privileges and policies into an ardent champion of the church. Unexpectedly adopting an austere way of life in near-monastic simplicity, he celebrated or attended Mass daily, studied Scripture, distributed alms to the needy, and visited the sick. He became just as obstinate in asserting the church’s interests as he had formerly been in asserting the king’s.

Thomas rejected Henry’s claim to authority over the English Church. Relations with the king deteriorated so seriously that Thomas left England and spent six years in exile in France. He realised that he had to return when the Archbishop of York and six other bishops crowned the heir to the throne, Prince Henry, in contravention of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s rights and authority.

He returned to England with letters of papal support and immediately excommunicated the Archbishop of York and the six other bishops. On Christmas Day 1170 he publicly denounced them from the pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral. It was these actions that prompted Henry’s infamous angry words, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Innocents

“These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth”

The Feast of the Holy Innocents is perhaps the most challenging of the three Christmas holy days. It challenges the sentimental aspects of Christmas and opens us out to its deeper meaning. Like The Feast of Stephen, nothing of our world of cruelty and suffering is glossed over or hidden from view. Yet nothing could be more disquieting than the slaughter of the Holy Innocents, the killing of children simply because they happen to be in the way, simply as a policy of political expediency.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents open us out to some of the larger biblical features of the Christmas story, particularly the flight into Egypt seen as the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy that “out of Egypt have I called my Son”. But how and why is the child Christ in Egypt? Because of Joseph being warned in a dream about the wrath of Herod seeking to kill the child whom he thinks is a rival to his kingship, little knowing that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, and little knowing, too, like Pilate, that he has no power at all except it were given him by God. The story also looks back to the story of Moses, to the policy of infanticide enacted by Pharaoh as an attempt to control the Hebrew population.

Yet the real power and the poignancy of the story lies in its theological meaning, especially as indicated in the reading from The Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. We are privileged to see things there from a heavenly viewpoint and to learn something about suffering which otherwise remains simply unfathomable in our lives. Like “Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not”, we are often distraught and inconsolable and destroyed by the deaths of little infants or of those who never come to full birth. Such deaths are part of the tragedy of our humanity and yet this feast suggests that there is meaning to be found even in such loses.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Innocents

The collect for today, The Feast of the Holy Innocents, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast ordained strength, and madest infants to glorify thee by their deaths: Mortify and kill all vices in us, and so strengthen us by thy grace, that by the innocency of our lives, and constancy of our faith, even unto death, we may glorify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 14:1-5
The Gospel: St. Matthew 2:13-18

Caroto, Massacre of the Innocents and the Flight into EgyptWhen wise men from the East visited King Herod in Jerusalem to ask where the king of the Jews had been born, Herod felt his throne was in jeopardy. So, he ordered all the boys of Bethlehem aged two and under to be killed. On this day, the church remembers those children.

The Massacre of the Innocents is recorded only in St Matthew’s Gospel, where it is said to be fulfillment of a prophecy of Jeremiah.

The church has kept this feast day since the fifth century. The Western churches commemorate the innocents on 28 December; the Eastern Orthodox Church on 29 December. Medieval authors spoke of up to 144,000 murdered boys, in accordance with Revelation 14:3. More recent estimates, however, recognising that Bethlehem was a very small town, place the number between ten and thirty.

This episode has been challenged as a fabrication with no basis in actual historic events. James Kiefer has a point-by-point presentation of the objections with replies in defence of biblical historicity.

This is an appropriate day to remember the victims of abortion.

Artwork: Giovanni Francesco Caroto, Massacre of the Innocents and Flight into Egypt, 1527. Oil on wood panel, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. John the Evangelist

“Even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written”

Books and books, a world of books and a world of words but even and always more than the world. Christmas celebrates something more than ideas and words wafting about on the wind or drifting in and out of our minds. Christmas celebrates the Word made flesh. The three holy days of Christmas underscore something of the radical meaning of the Incarnation: first, with The Feast of Stephen reminding us of the integral connection between Christmas and Easter, and, especially, of the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins which belongs to our Christian witness; now, secondly, with The Feast of St. John the Evangelist; and, then, thirdly, with The Feast of the Holy Innocents.

The Feast of St. John the Evangelist recalls us to the great mystery of Christmas wonderfully signalled in The Prologue of his Gospel read on Christmas Eve. It recalls us to his teachings, his doctrine, found at once in his Gospel and in his Epistles. The Epistle reading from 1st John echoes the great Gospel of Christmas and serves as a kind of homily or commentary about the meaning of the Incarnation, something which John is especially concerned to proclaim, to think and to contemplate. “That which was from the beginning” namely “the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” is that, he says, “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life”, that is what “we declare unto you.” And why? “That ye also may have fellowship with us … and that your joy may be full.”

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 28 December – 3 January

Friday, January 1st 2016, Octave Day of Christmas/Circumcision of Christ/New Year’s Day
10:00am Holy Communion

Sunday, January 3rd, Second Sunday after Christmas
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sunday After Christmas Day

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

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 4:1-7
The Gospel: St Matthew 1:18-25

Pierre Parrocel, Dream of St. JosephArtwork: Pierre Parrocel, The Dream of Saint Joseph, early 18th century. Oil on canvas, Cathédrale Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Castor de Nîmes.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint John the Evangelist

The collect for today, the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

MERCIFUL Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine of thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 1:1-5
The Gospel: St. John 21:19-25

St. Nicholas' Church, Ghent, St. JohnJohn and his brother James (St. James the Greater) were Galilean fishermen and sons of Zebedee. Jesus called the two brothers Boanerges (“sons of thunder”), apparently because of their zealous character; for example, they wanted to call down fire from heaven on the inhospitable Samaritans. John and James, together with Peter, belonged to the inner group of the apostles who witnessed the Transfiguration and the agony in Gethsemane. It was John and Peter whom Jesus sent to prepare the final Passover meal.

In the lists of disciples, John always appears among the first four, but usually after his brother, which may indicate that John was the younger of the two.

According to ancient church tradition, St. John the Evangelist was the author of the New Testament documents that bear his name: the fourth gospel, the three epistles of John, and Revelation. John’s name is not mentioned in the fourth gospel (but 21:2 refers to “the sons of Zebedee”), but he is usually if not always identified as the beloved disciple. It is also generally believed that John was the “other disciple” who, with Peter, followed Jesus after his arrest. John was the only disciple at the foot of the cross and was entrusted by Christ with the care of his mother Mary.

After Christ’s resurrection and ascension, John, together with Peter, took a leading role in the formation and guidance of the early church. John was present when Peter healed the lame beggar, following which both apostles were arrested. After reports reached Jerusalem that Samaria was receiving the word of God, the apostles sent Peter and John to visit the new Samaritan converts. Presumably, John was at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). He is not mentioned later in the Acts of the Apostles, so he appears to have left Palestine.

Christian writers of the second and third centuries say that St. John lived in Asia Minor in the last decades of the first century, acting as a kind of patriarch to the churches there. Both Justin Martyr (c. 100-165) and Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130-200) say that John lived in Ephesus and wrote his gospel there. It is believed that he died a natural death at a very old age around the end of the first century. That would make St. John the only apostle who did not die a martyr.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Stephen

“Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”

The Feast of Stephen comes right after the great festival of Christ’s holy birth. It illustrates something of the deeper meaning of the mystery of Christmas.

St. Stephen is the proto-martyr, the first Christian martyr, to be sure, but the word ‘proto’ here signifies something more. He is not only the first but also the prototype of all martyrdom. Martyrdom is about witness. Stephen shows us what Christian witness really means. And I don’t simply mean by being stoned to death, either literally or metaphorically! What, then, is the witness of St. Stephen which serves as the prototype of all Christian witness? Simply what is captured in the medieval carol of this season and, more specifically, of this day, “Good King Wenceslas look’d out/ On the Feast of Stephen”.

And what did he see? “A poor man…gath’ring winter fuel”. And what did the king do but set out with his page, his servant, with food and wine to attend to the poor man? The story of the carol tells us of the fears and uncertainty of the page-boy about the journey and of the answer of the kingly saint to “mark my footsteps, my good page, / Tread thou in them boldly” and so “in his master’s steps he trod”. The carol concludes by pointing out the moral that “Ye who now will bless the poor, / Shall yourselves find blessing”. True but only if we follow in the master’s steps. In a way, the carol is a parable of Christmas itself. Christ has come to our poor and impoverished humanity in the early winter of our discontent. He has come with food and wine and those who would be his followers must mark his footsteps and follow in them bearing the gifts of Christ to others as well.

Something of what that means is signaled in the Feast of St. Stephen as a parable of the Christmas message. “Christ”, as another carol, puts it, “was born for this”, meaning death and rejection, sacrifice and crucifixion. And by extension, it means that Christ’s holy birth embraces all the miseries and sorrows of our lives as well as the forms of persecution and evil that are either visited upon ourselves by others or that we visit upon ourselves and others in our rejection of God.

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