Year: 2015

Sermons

Sermon for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity

“For the maid is not dead, but sleepeth.”

There is no greater contrast than between the atrocities committed by radical Islamic terrorists, it seems, in Paris this weekend and the readings before us this morning; a contrast between death and destruction, on the one hand, and healing and wholeness, on the other hand. Troubling times that confront us with such contrasts.

Jesus spoke and arose. Jesus turned and saw her and said, “Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole.” Jesus came and said, “Give place; for the maid is not dead but sleepeth.” Jesus “went in and took her by the hand, and the maid arose.” A double healing.

The year runs out in the strength and the gentleness of healing in contrast to death and destruction. The year runs out with Jesus turning and taking us by the hand. Such is the truth and the power of the Word spoken and felt. At issue is whether we are dead or only asleep. The whole pattern of the Church year in the ordered readings of the Scripture is really about two things: God turning to us and our being turned to God. This simple yet powerful Gospel story captures the whole point of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. In a way, it is simply about the purpose and meaning of God’s turning to us in the intimate humanity of Jesus Christ.

In relation to that turning of God to us in Jesus Christ the question is whether we are affected and changed, whether there has been any turning from sin to grace, from death to life, in us; in short, whether we are dead or merely asleep. If the latter, then there is the hope of our being awakened; if the former, then there is the hope of being raised up, so that, in either case, we “might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” and that we “might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God,” as Paul exhorts us in his Letter to the Colossians. Powerful words, perhaps, even stirring words; words that can turn us about and change us. That is the whole point.

(more…)

Print this entry

Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 16 – 22 November

Monday, November 16th
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, November 17th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club – Coronation Room
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic: Why Islam Needs A Reformation Now (2015) and Paul Cobb’s The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (2014).

Thursday, November 18th
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Saturday, November 21st
4:30-6:00pm Annual Parish Ham Supper – Parish Hall

Sunday, November 22nd, Sunday Next Before Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
2:00pm AMD Service of the Deaf
4:00pm Evening Prayer

Upcoming Events:

Tuesday, December 1st
7:00pm Holy Communion & Advent Programme

Sunday, December 6th
4:00pm Advent Service of Lessons & Carols with KES (Gr. 7-11)

Sunday, December 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Concert Series
Capella Regalis presents “To Bethlehem with Kings”. $10.00.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

The Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Trinity

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

Catacomb of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter, Christ Healing Woman with Issue of BloodO LORD, we beseech thee, absolve thy people from their offences; that through thy bountiful goodness we may all be delivered from the bands of those sins, which by our frailty we have committed. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.

The Epistle: Colossians 1:3-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 9:18-26

Artwork: Christ healing woman with an issue of blood, Catacomb of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter, Rome, 4th century.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Charles Simeon, Pastor

The collect for today, the commemoration of Charles Simeon (1759-1836), Priest, Evangelical Divine (source):

O eternal God,
who didst raise up Charles Simeon
to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ
and inspire thy people in service and mission:
grant that we, with all thy Church, may worship the Saviour,
turn away in true repentance from our sins
and walk in the way of holiness;
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: Romans 10:8b-17
The Gospel: St. John 21:15-19

Charles SimeonCharles Simeon served as vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, from 1782 until his death. His zealous evangelical preaching was bitterly opposed by parish leaders, but proved immensely popular and influential among Cambridge undergraduates. He supported the British and Foreign Bible Society and helped to found the Church Missionary Society. His curate Henry Martyn became chaplain of the East India Company and one of India’s best-known missionaries.

Historian Lord Macaulay wrote of him, “If you knew what his authority and influence were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of England, you would allow that his real sway in the Church was far greater than that of any primate.”

A meditation on the life of Charles Simeon, by John Piper, is posted here.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Martin of Tours

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Martin (c 316-397), Monk, Bishop of Tours (source):

Almighty God,
who didst call Martin from the armies of this world
to be a faithful soldier of Christ:
give us grace to follow him
in his love and compassion for those in need,
and empower thy Church to claim for all people
their inheritance as the children of God;
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 Lesson: Isaiah 58:6-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25:34-40

Laurentini, Saint MartinOne of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, Martin was born to pagan parents and, although intending to become a Christian, followed his father into the Roman army. About three years later, in Amiens, France, came the famous incident portrayed in the painting seen here.

On a cold winter day, he met a beggar at the city gates. Drawing his sword, he cut his military cloak in two and gave half to the man. In a dream that night, he saw Christ wearing the half-cloak he had given away and saying, “Martin, yet a catechumen, has covered me with his garment”. Martin was baptised shortly thereafter.

After being discharged from the army, he met St. Hilary at Poitiers upon the latter’s return from exile in 360. Hilary provided a piece of land where Martin founded the first monastic community in Gaul. He lived there for ten years until 371, when he reluctantly accepted a call from the people of Tours to become their bishop.

(more…)

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Remembrance Day

A prayer of The Very Rev Eric Milner-White (1884-1963), Dean of York:

Lest We ForgetO Lord our God, whose name only is excellent and thy praise above heaven and earth: We give thee high praise and hearty thanks for all those who counted not their lives dear unto themselves but laid them down for their friends; beseeching thee to give them a part and a lot in those good things which thou has prepared for all those whose names are written in the Book of Life; and grant to us, that having them always in remembrance, we may imitate their faithfulness and with them inherit the new name which thou has promised to them that overcome; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Source: Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2004.

Brussels Cathedral, Memorial TabletThis memorial tablet to the British Empire dead of the First World War was unveiled in the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, Brussels, on 27 July 1927. Photograph taken by admin, 14 October 2014.

Print this entry

Sermons

Sermon for the Octave Day of All Saints’

“They desire a better country, that is, an heavenly one… for [God] hath prepared for them a city”

Fall, the season of harvest, the time of gathering, is also the time of barrenness, of the stark and grey emptiness of nature’s year. After the fruits of creation have been gathered in, the fields and gardens lie barren, desolate and emptied of their summer glory. The glorious and colourful array of the autumn leaves quickly give place to the sombre greyness of the twilight of the year.

Yet beyond the gathering of the fruits of creation, there is the spiritual gathering of the fruit of our lives to Christ even if we are in “the twilight of such day,/As after sunset fadeth in the west, / Which by-and-by black night doth take away,/Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest,” the twilight days and years of our lives, as Shakespeare puts it. The point is that there is a gathering of our souls into a communion and a community. It is a community of spirit, of love. If in Shakespeare’s sonnet (Sonnet 73) our perception of the passage of time makes “thy love more strong, /To love that well which thou must leave ere long,” in the Communion of Saints we are being called to the community of spirit in which our loves are eternal.

Jesus gathers us into the barn and grace of his kingdom. King and Shepherd, city and country are joined in his kingdom. He makes something glorious out of the seeming barrenness of our lives, come what may. There is a gathering of the fruit of human lives unto life eternal.

The Octave of All Saints celebrates the great festival of spiritual harvest, the gathering of all who have gone forth in Christ’s name and in whom we see something of the light of Christ shining forth through them. It extends to an Octave and to this day, The Octave Day of All Saints, which is about a kind of homecoming of spirit realized in “a better country, that is, an heavenly one,” in fact, “a city,” which is nothing less than a spiritual community and one in which we remember with gratitude those who have gone before us and into whose labour we have entered. That idea extends to Remembrance Day this week which is a kind of secular All Souls’ Day. We remember those who made the supreme sacrifice for their country in the defining conflicts of the twentieth century and now, too, the twenty-first century. We remember them to God in the Christian understanding.

(more…)

Print this entry

Sermons

Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity

“Whose is this image and superscription?”

What’s it all about? Can it be that we are defined, controlled and governed by money? Does everything comes down to money? “Money makes the world go round, of that we all are sure,” sings the chorus in Cabaret? Is the “cabaret of life, old chum,” simply the cash nexus as Thomas Carlyle first suggested and Karl Marx famously claimed? And if so, what does that make us?

“The love of money” is proverbially and scripturally said to be “the root of all evil”. Not money itself, but the love of money. Why? Because money is power. The misuse of money is the abuse of power. Money is twisted from a medium of exchange to being a form of domination and control. There is, at once, the use of money to dominate and manipulate others and the fact that money comes to dominate us. At issue are our loves, our desires.

The love of money causes us to forget who we are. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more prevalent than in our day. Whether we are rich or poor, employed or unemployed, pensioned or unpensioned, we are under a constant barrage of images that seek to persuade us that we are merely economic beings, that our worth and the meaning of our lives is to be measured materially and financially. This is not only destructive of human personality and the human community but destructive of the forms of honest and meaningful exchange so necessary to the welfare of souls and communities. Their end, our end, “is destruction, whose god is their belly” as Hebrews provocatively observes.

Money comes to possess us because we allow it to define the space in which we live out our lives. Means become ends which they cannot be. Economic ends fail for the simple reason that our lives and the worth of our lives cannot be reduced to an economic quantity. When we are defined economically, then we are but “bellies”, as it were, consumers (and, no doubt, “bellyachers” as well!). We are seduced into thinking that everything, including religion, must be a consumer product, a marketable commodity. The evil of money lies precisely in making us forget who we are.

(more…)

Print this entry

Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 9 – 15 November

Monday, November 9th
6:00-7:00pm Brownies/Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, November 10th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:30pm Parish Council Meeting

Wednesday, November 11th, Remembrance Day
11:00am Windsor Cenotaph, followed by Service at KES Cenotaph

Thursday, November 12th
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Sunday, November 15th, Trinity XXIV
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

Upcoming Events:

Tuesday, November 17th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club – Coronation Room, Parish Hall
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic: Why Islam Needs A Reformation Now (2015) and Paul Cobb’s The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (2014).

Saturday, November 21st
4:30-6:00pm Annual Parish Ham Supper – Parish Hall

Sunday, December 6th
4:00pm Advent Lessons & Carols with KES

Sunday, December 20th
7:00pm Capella Regalis presents “To Bethlehem with Kings”.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

The Twenty-Third Sunday After Trinity

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

O GOD, our refuge and strength, who art the author of all godliness: Be ready, we beseech thee, to hear the devout prayers of thy Church; and grant that those things which we ask faithfully we may obtain effectually; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 3:17-21
The Gospel: St Matthew 22:15-22

Boulogne, Tribute to CaesarArtwork: Valentin de Boulogne, The Tribute to Caesar, c. 1620. Oil on canvas, Palace of Versailles.

Print this entry