Christ Church

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, O Lord, that in all our sufferings here upon earth, for the testimony of thy truth, we may stedfastly look up to heaven, and by faith behold the glory that shall be revealed; and, being filled with the Holy Spirit, may learn to love and bless our persecutors, by the example of thy first Martyr Saint Stephen, who prayed for his murderers to thee, O blessed Jesus, who standest at the right hand of God to succour all those that suffer for thee, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 7:55-60
The Gospel: St. Matthew 23:34-39

All that is known of St. Stephen’s life is found in the Acts of the Apostles, chapters 6 and 7. He is reckoned as the first Christian martyr–the proto-martyr. Although his name is Greek for “crown”, he was a Jew by birth; he would have been born outside Palestine and raised as a Greek-speaking Jew. The New Testament does not record the circumstances of his conversion to Christianity.

Stephen first appears as one of the seven deacons chosen in response to protests by Hellenist (Greek-speaking) Christians that their widows were being neglected in the distribution of alms. The apostles were too busy preaching the word of God to deal with this problem, so they commissioned seven men from among the Hellenists “of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom”, then prayed and laid hands on them. Stephen, the first among the seven, is described as “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit”. A few verses later, Stephen is said to be “full of grace and power [and] doing great wonders and signs among the people”.

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“And this shall be a sign unto you”

In the quiet calm of Christmas morning we celebrate Christ’s holy birth. There is a certain meditative quality to our gathering, it seems to me, after all the fuss and bother, the excitement and the expectancy of Christmas Eve. There is a certain uncertainty to our world and day, a world of fears and anxieties, to which the quietness of Christmas morning wonderfully counters. We are called to the truth of ourselves individually and collectively by our gathering at Bethlehem. The real and deep truth of our humanity notwithstanding the parade of atrocities globally is found in our communion with God in Jesus Christ. It is found in the humble yet awesome scene in Bethlehem.

We are no longer “assured of certain certainties” nor quite so “impatient to assume the world,” as T.S. Eliot puts it. Our world is a dark and disturbing place where we confront the disorder and the disarray of human hearts in acts of terrorism and destruction. Suddenly our cultural certainties seem far less certain; our cultural arrogance much more dangerous. How do we face such things? Do we simply retreat into the ghettoes of our churches, huddled behind closed doors of “certain certainties”, clinging to what we call our personal faith having despaired of the Faith itself? Or do we take a hold of this story contemplatively and enter more fully into its mystery and truth, the mystery and truth of the universal and catholic Faith?

“This shall be a sign unto you,” Luke tells us the angels say to the shepherds and so to us. We are one with the shepherds as the receivers of angels’ words. They are together the messengers of “good tidings of great joy”. “For unto you,” to you and me, “is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” A saviour – Jesus, Yeshua, means saviour. Christ means the anointed one of God. Words which we take for granted through their familiarity take on a special significance. What it all means is startling. It contrasts with all of the expected signs of salvation and exaltation. What does salvation mean? What does Christ the Lord mean? Salvation speaks to the wholeness and the completeness of our humanity, to our re-creation and redemption from sin. Christ the Lord speaks to the deep mystery of Christ as God, as “I am who I am” via the biblical circumlocution of Lord for the holy name of God revealed to Moses in the burning bush, the revelation of the principle upon which the being and the knowing of all things depend.

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The collect for today, the Nativity of our Lord, or the Birth-day of Christ, commonly called 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: Hebrews 1:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 1:1-14

Artwork: Caravaggio, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1609. Oil on canvas, Museo Regionale, Messina, Sicily.

“When all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of her swift course, then thy Almighty Word leaped down from heaven, from thy royal throne”

What does Christmas mean in a post-Christian and post-secular culture? Perhaps a time to reclaim something of its essential meaning. There are, to be sure, all of the many and varied traditions of family and community, of secular and social customs and practices that surround and often overwhelm us. What does Christmas really mean?

This is not the same question as what does Christmas mean to you and me individually and subjectively. What Christmas means to you and your family and circle of friends is important but results only in a kind of relativism which is unable to explain what anything means in itself. How do we think about Christmas and about its essential meaning?

“I am tired of hearing jingle bells,” someone said at the Capella Regalis concert here last Sunday night. That wasn’t on the programme. And yet that is one of the songs of the season, I suppose, just like Santa Claus is invariably and unavoidably part of the season, if not for many the heart of Christmas. We confront an almost overwhelming array of images that bombard our ears and eyes, not to mention their effect on our pocket books. It increasingly appears that Christmas is an economic event. Do your duty to the economy and spend, spend, spend. That is surely one of the reasons for the season! And yet, however much such things as giving and getting, buying and spending, consuming and consuming and consuming are a feature of the Christmas season now extending in the commercial world from at least Halloween to sometime late this afternoon, they don’t really explain anything. Why Christmas? Why a word that has inescapably a Christian religious reference in a post-Christian world?

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The collect for today, Christmas Eve (source):

Almighty God,
who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance
of the birth of thy only Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as we joyfully receive him as our redeemer,
so we may with sure confidence behold him
when he shall come to be our judge;
who liveth and reigneth with thee
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Titus 2:11-15
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:1-14

Christmas Eve
(a poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti)

Christmas hath darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answering music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Artwork: The Word Was Made Flesh, St. Paul’s Knightsbridge, London. Photograph taken by admin, 28 September 2015.

“My Lord, and my God”

Words of faith arise from doubt and uncertainty. The Feast of St. Thomas occurs on the shortest day and the longest night of the year in the week of the winter solstice that brings us to the Christmas festival of light and love. Somehow his feast helps us to think more deeply about the advent of Christ and its meaning, even to “melt the clouds of sin and sadness” and to “drive the dark of doubt away.”

“’What is Truth’, said jesting Pilate; and wouldn’t stay for an answer,” Sir Francis Bacon famously begins his celebrated essay On Truth. Like Pilate, Thomas asked a question of Jesus earlier in John’s Gospel just after Jesus spoke of “go[ing] to prepar[ing] a place for you … that where I am there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going” to which Thomas asks, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus responds famously “I am the way, and the truth and the life.” Unlike Pilate, Thomas, it seems, stayed for an answer and then again returned for an answer to his doubts and questions about Christ’s resurrection. “My Lord, and my God” are his profound words of faith that arise from the face-to-face encounter with the Risen Christ whose body bears the marks of his crucifixion.

It is that question and answer about the bodily reality of Christ that makes The Feast of St. Thomas an advent feast and catapults us into the mystery of the Incarnation. It serves as well to connect Christmas and Easter; the nativity and the resurrection are like two complementary mysteries, each illumining something of the deeper meaning of the other. The Gospel for his Feast day is the resurrection story of Jesus teaching the disciples behind closed doors and finally Thomas, too, about the resurrection, itself a testament to the Incarnation.

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

ALMIGHTY and everliving God, who for the more confirmation of the faith didst suffer thy holy Apostle Thomas to be doubtful in thy Son’s resurrection: Grant us so perfectly, and without all doubt, to believe in thy Son Jesus Christ, that our faith in thy sight may never be reproved. Hear us, O Lord, through the same Jesus Christ, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory, now and for evermore. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 2:19-22
The Gospel: St. John 20:24-29

St. Thomas’s name is believed to come from an Aramaic word meaning twin, but it is not known whose twin he was. He is included in all the lists of the twelve apostles, but he is mentioned most often in St. John’s Gospel, where he is called “Didymus” (“twin” in Greek) three times (11:16; 20:24; 21:2).

St. Thomas appears to have been an impulsive man. He says he is prepared to go with Jesus to the tomb of Lazarus even if it means death (John 11:16). At the Last Supper, however, he confesses his ignorance about where Jesus is going and the way there (John 14:5). In response, Christ said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

After the resurrection, Thomas was unwilling to believe his fellow disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead (John 20:24). He would not believe, he declared, unless he actually touched the wounds. Eight days later, Jesus gave “Doubting Thomas” the evidence he had asked for, whereupon Thomas confessed him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus then pronounces a blessing on all who have not seen and yet believe.

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“The Lord is at hand. In nothing be anxious”

Ready yet? Or are you still running madly about in circles in the mindless busyness that so often and so easily overtakes us? Perhaps we need this Sunday in Advent just like we need Advent more than we realise in order for Christmas to have any real meaning. “Repent ye, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand,” is the Advent mantra. It comes to further expression today in the notes of expectancy and joy, of wonder and peace signalled in the readings. “The Lord is at hand,” Paul says in Philippians with a sense of rejoicing, a “rejoic[ing] in the Lord alway”, he says.

And in the gospel reading from St. John, too, we seem to be going in circles, indeed to have come full circle. The passage this morning ends where the gospel reading for The Sunday Next Before Advent in our Canadian Prayer Book begins. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” John the Baptist says, pointing us to Jesus. There, on The Sunday Next Before Advent, it serves as a kind of transition between the ending of the Trinity season and the beginning of Advent. Here on The Fourth Sunday in Advent it signals the meaning of the one whose coming we await, the one who is at hand always.

We are going in circles just not mindlessly but mindfully, I hope. At least that is the purpose of the Church’s proclamation in Advent. Perhaps it is only now in an increasingly post-Christian and post-secular world that we can begin to enter more fully and more mindfully into the mystery of God with us now and always without the social veneer and cultural patina so often mistaken for the real thing. Perhaps we can begin to see how the Christian Faith simply intensifies the great religious mystery of our being with God that belongs to philosophical religion more generally and which allows for a principled discourse with other religions and even our post-secular culture, particularly in its multicultural confusions.

Our advent wreath is about a circle of light. It challenges the rather linear nature of our thinking and our doing, as if time were all and everything, itself a kind of mindlessness in the endless parade of the contingent and the random. It reminds us instead of how our lives are embraced in the eternity of God and that time has no meaning apart from its being gathered into the fullness of God’s truth and light, into the eternal present of God.

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Monday, December 20th, St, Thomas
7:00pm Holy Communion

Tuesday, December 21st
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Thursday, December 24th, Christmas Eve
7:00pm Children’s Crêche Service
9:30pm Christmas Communion Service

Friday, December 25th, Christmas Day
10:00am Christmas Communion Service

Saturday, December 26th, St. Stephen
10:00am Holy Communion

Sunday, December 27th, St. John the Evangelist / Sunday After Christmas
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Christmas Lessons & Carols

Upcoming Events:

Monday, December 28th, Holy Innocents
10:00am Holy Communion

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

The collect for today, the Fourth Sunday in Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

RAISE up, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us, thy bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; who with the Father and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 4:4-7
The Gospel: St John 1:19-29

Artwork: Bernardo Strozzi, Saint John the Baptist Interrogated about Christ, c.1618-20. Oil on canvas, Kedleston Hall, Derby, England.