Month: July 2016

Sermons

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity

“You have received a spirit of sonship, in which we cry aloud, Abba, Father”

“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well”, Dame Julian of Norwich, the famous mystic and theologian said in the 14th century. Hardly a time one might think of as being well and good. It was a time when northern Europe was convulsed by plagues and death was rampant and regnant. Is her famous saying simply a kind of desperate optimism? Or is it based upon a deeper understanding of the world and our humanity in relation to God?

I think it is the latter. It is a profound insight into the idea of Divine Providence which always sees the goodness of God at work in everything. It belongs to the radical idea of God himself. Perhaps, therein lies our modern dilemma. We have lost the confidence in thinking God and his ruling providence. We are too much enamoured of our own desires and fantasies in the projections of our will and power upon the world and upon ourselves. Therein lies the way to misery because we have forgotten God and find ourselves in what Amin Maalouf rightly calls a “disordered world”.

This morning’s readings help us to think about Divine Providence in challenging ways. The passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans locates our Christian identity in Christ’s sonship and makes it clear that our being “children of God” requires the idea of suffering with God, suffering with Christ. Somehow even suffering becomes something good and not just an evil. We are the “children of God” who are the “heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ”, Paul says, “if so be that we suffer with him” for only so can it be “that we may also be glorified with him”. Powerful words that counter the prevailing assumptions about suffering and death in our world and day. They are words, too, that are based upon the idea of God and God’s Providence as being the real truth of human experience.

But how can we think this? Only because of the witness of the Scriptures to the story of Jesus Christ. Notice that what Paul is saying goes beyond the simple oppositions of flesh and spirit. Led by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Father and the Son, we learn about our essential sonship precisely through what happens in the world of human experience. We are not in flight from the world and the flesh as if it were something evil. That would be a kind of Gnosticism. No. What changes is how we see ourselves in the world. We are, Paul is saying, to know ourselves in Christ and he in us. That changes how we experience the world and ourselves. It makes it possible to live in a principled way in a fallen and dismal world and even in a fallible church where councils have and may err, particularly when the forms of our spiritual understanding and identity are forgotten or compromised.

(more…)

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

The Eighth Sunday after Trinity

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

O God, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth: We humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which be profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 8:12-17
The Gospel: St. Matthew 7:15-21

Doré, Jesus Preaching on the MountArtwork: Gustave Doré, Jesus Preaching On the Mount. Oil on canvas, Private collection.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Swithun, Bishop

he collect for today, the Feast of Saint Swithun (d. 862), Bishop of Winchester (source):

Almighty God,
by whose grace we celebrate again
the feast of thy servant Swithun:
grant that, as he governed with gentleness
the people committed to his care,
so we, rejoicing in our inheritance in Christ,
may ever seek to build up thy Church in unity and love;
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.

With the Epistle and Gospel for a Bishop or Archbishop, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

Southwark Cathedral, St. SwithunArtwork: Saint Swithun, stained glass, Southwark Cathedral, London. Photograph taken by admin, 20 October 2014.

Print this entry

Sermons

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity

“I have compassion on the multitude”

Compassion. It is a rich and wonderful word and one which is frequently bandied about in the therapeutic culture of our world and day. What does it mean? Literally, it is about suffering with others or at least being able to identify with the sufferings of others. The word is used a number of times in the Gospels where it takes on a much more radical meaning than its use in our contemporary culture. In the Gospels the word is used entirely with respect to human redemption. As such it extends beyond any worldly sense of sentimental kindness. It speaks to the radical healing and restoration of our wounded and broken humanity. It is really about “the quality of mercy which is not strained”, as Portia puts it in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. In other words, it is not limited or constrained by the finite world of our everyday experiences, our experience of suffering and pain. No. This mercy seasons or perfects human justice and human care. How? Because compassion in the Christian perspective cannot be understood apart from the passion of Christ.

Compassion belongs to the idea of redemptive suffering. What is that about? Simply this. God and God alone can bring good out of evil, out of our evil. That, too, by the way, is why Jesus can command us to love our enemies as we heard last week. Compassion belongs to the radical goodness of God which is greater than all and every evil. To let that idea take a hold of our minds and souls changes us and allows us to face the hard and harsh realities of a world of suffering, both our own and that of others.

Christ is said to “have compassion” or says himself that “I have compassion” a number of times in the Gospels, sometimes in relation to the healing of infirmities or illnesses, sometimes in relation to the raising of the dead, as in the story of the widow of Nain where Christ’s compassion upon seeing her leads to the restoration of her only son, and sometimes in relation to our humanity collectively speaking as in the stories of the feeding of the multitudes in the wilderness. Yet, most importantly, the word is used to establish an ethic of compassion for us in the powerful parable of the Good Samaritan.

(more…)

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

The Seventh Sunday After Trinity

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

LORD of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of thy great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 6:17-23
The Gospel: St. Mark 8:1-9

Francesco Bassano the Younger, Miracle of the Loaves and FishesArtwork: Francesco Bassano the Younger, Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, early 1580s. Oil on canvas, Hermitage, Saint Petersburg.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Stephen Langton, Archbishop

The collect for a Bishop or Archbishop, on the Commemoration of Stephen Langton (c. 1150-1228), Archbishop of Canterbury from 1207, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Stephen Langton to be a Bishop in thy Church and to feed thy flock: We beseech thee to send down upon all thy Bishops, the Pastors of thy Church, the abundant gift of thy Holy Spirit, that they, being endued with power from on high, and ever walking in the footsteps of thy holy Apostles, may minister before thee in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

Southwark Cathedral, Stephen LangtonArtwork: Stephen Langton, stained glass, Southwark Cathedral, London. Photograph taken by admin, 20 October 2014.

Print this entry

Events

Christ Church Book Club, 2016-17

The new list of discussion books for Christ Church Book Club has been released. The next series will kick off on Tuesday, 20 September, at 7:00pm, when the featured books will be The Nature of the Beast, by Louise Penny, and All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr.

Click here for more details, including the full schedule of books.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Thomas More, Martyr

The collect for today, the commemoration of Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Lord Chancellor of England, Scholar, Reformation Martyr (source):

St. Dunstan's Church, Thomas MoreAlmighty God,
who strengthened Thomas More
to be in office a king’s good servant
but in conscience your servant first,
grant us in all our doubts and uncertainties
to feel the grasp of your holy hand
and to live by faith in your promise
that you shall not let us be lost;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 3:13-16
The Gospel: St. Mark 12:13-17

A meditation of Thomas More, written in the Tower of London a year before he was beheaded:

Give me your grace, good Lord, to set the world at nought,
to set my mind fast upon you and not to hang upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary.
Not to long for worldly company,
little and little utterly to cast off the world, and rid my mind of the business thereof.
Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
but that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking God,
busily to labour to love him.
To know own vility and wretchedness,
to humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God,
to bewail my sins passed;
for the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here,
to be joyful of tribulations,
to walk the narrow way that leads to life.
To bear the cross with Christ,
to have the last thing—death—in remembrance,
to have ever before my eye death, that is ever at hand;
to make death no stranger to me;
to foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell;
to pray for pardon before the Judge comes.
To have continually in mind the passion that Christ suffered for me;
For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks,
to buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness;
To cut off unnecessary recreations.
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all–
To set the loss at nought for the winning of Christ.
To think my worst enemies my best friends,
for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good
with their love and favour as they did with their hatred and malice.

Source of collect: For All the Saints: Prayers and Readings for Saints’ Days, compiled by Stephen Reynolds. Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2007, p. 215.

Artwork: Thomas More, stained glass, St. Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury.

Print this entry

King's-Edgehill School Sermons, Sermons

Sermon for King’s-Edgehill School Reunion

“One thing is needful”

Reunions are about companions getting back together, about friendships shaped and formed by common memories and associations that belong to the reason and purpose of institutions. The word, companions, has its roots in the sharing of bread, com panis. I am sure that there has been much in the way of the sharing of bread and, by extension, no doubt, wine, during the time of your reunion!

2016 marks a special year. It is, if I may be so bold to suggest, the Year of Edgehill. It marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of Edgehill in June of 1891. That alone is cause for celebration but it is also the 40th anniversary of the amalgamation of King’s and Edgehill to form King’s-Edgehill School; and that, too, is cause for celebration.

Sir Kenneth Clark in his celebrated BBC TV documentary, Civilisation, comments that civilisation greatly declines in the absence of women. It is, he says, “absolutely essential to civilisation that the male and female principles be kept in balance”. In the Year of Edgehill we celebrate the qualities of Edgehill School for Girls. They are the qualities of grace and elegance, a certain class and refinement, a kind of dignity. Those qualities are the gifts which Edgehill brought to King’s and which strengthened and deepened the ideals of gentleness, learning, and manhood, or better humanitas. I would like to suggest that it is captured in a word, sprezzatura. It is Castiglione’s word from The Book of the Courtier, a book about civilised life and behaviour, about a kind of courtliness. Sprezzatura is about doing difficult things with consummate grace and ease; in other words, making the difficult look easy. Such is the grace and charm of Edgehill and what Edgehill brought to King’s.

It is not simply about manners and morals but the deeper principles upon which those qualities depend such as the defining ideals of King’s and Edgehill. They are expressed in their complementary mottoes. Fideliter, ‘faithfulness’, is the Edgehill motto befitting what was originally a Church School for Girls but as joined with King’s motto, Deo Legi Regi Gregi, ‘For God, for the Law, for the King, for the People’, it suggests something of the content of that faithfulness. It has very much to do with character and service, with leadership and sacrifice.

(more…)

Print this entry

Sermons

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity

“Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him”

Friends and enemies. Life and death. Peter and Paul. There is richness to our reflections this morning. The Sixth Sunday after Trinity falls this year within the Octave of the great feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, a feast which reminds us ever so strongly of the apostolical and catholic character of the Christian church, her very being, we might say. And yet we seem to confront a series of opposites. There could be, it seems, no greater contrast than between Peter and Paul, the one a poor fisherman, the other, a proud scholar. And yet, as Augustine argues, “they were as one”. What unites them? Christ Jesus. What does that mean? It means that Christ Jesus has overcome all the oppositions, enmities and animosities that are present in the world and in our souls. Such is the strong and rather special teaching of the Gospel. “Love your enemies”, Jesus says, commanding us to do what seems to be utterly impossible especially in a world increasingly defined by strife and tension, uncertainty and conflict, a world of many, many hates. How can we love our enemies? Because Christ loves us.

The truth and unity of the church is found in the confession of Christ and that makes all the difference. “No one can say, Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit”, Paul will say, even as Peter famously confesses to Jesus, “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God”. “Flesh and blood”, Jesus will say, “has not revealed this to you but my Father who is in heaven”. One of the most dominant metaphors for God in the Old Testament is God as the Rock, the rock which like a father has begotten you, the rock which like a mother has brought you to birth, as the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy puts it. “That rock was Christ”, Paul proclaims, having in mind the wilderness journey of Israel and the stricken rock out of which comes life-giving water. The image is at once static and solid and dynamic and life-giving. Christ, too, is the stricken rock out of whose wounded side water and blood pour forth, the symbols of the sacraments by which we live from him who died and lived again. Jesus will say to Simon Peter, “you are the rock upon which I shall build my church”.

(more…)

Print this entry