Month: September 2016

Sermons

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

“Friend, go up higher”

What’s this? Upward mobility for Christians? Ambition or presumption? Neither. It’s really about the hope of transformation. It is really about our Christian vocation. We are called to something more that counters all the fearful fatalisms of our world and day as well as the endless narcissisms of our self-obsessions. It signals ever so profoundly the necessary condition of soul for the realization of God’s will and purpose for our lives. The necessary condition is humility. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”

The operative words in the Gospel reading are “friend” and “go up higher”. The Epistle from Ephesians reminds us of our baptismal identity and vocation; “walk[ing] worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called”, for “ye are called in one hope of your calling” for there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” In our baptisms we have been called up higher but only through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; such is the heart of baptism. We are identified with Jesus in his free-willing identity and sacrifice for us. We live from him and with him in the Holy Eucharist, the spiritual and sacramental means of his continuing presence with us in our lives.

Jesus calls us “friends”. He does so not merely by way of a parable but also more directly. He calls us friends at the height of his passion, on the night of our betrayal. God makes us his friends when we were his enemies! This turns the ancient world on its head. It turns our world on its head. We live in a hopeless and fearful world. Here is the antidote to our hopelessness and fear. It challenges us to redeem us. It calls us up but only by our being lifted up by him and in him.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 19 – 25 September

Monday, September 19th
6:30-8:00pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, September 20th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Coronation Room, Parish Hall: Christ Church Book Club – Louise Penny’s The Nature of the Beast (2015) and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See (2014).

Wednesday, September 21st
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, September 22nd, St. Matthew (transf.)
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, September 23rd
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
6:00-9:00pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, September 25th, Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
2:00pm AMD Service of the Deaf

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Prayers and liturgy

The Seventeenth Sunday After Trinity

Kharlamov, Christ Enthroned as Heavenly KingThe collect for today, the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

LORD, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:1-11

Artwork: Nikolai Kharlamov, Christ Enthroned as Heavenly King, 1890s. Church of Our Saviour on the Spilt Blood, St. Petersburg.

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Prayers and liturgy

Ninian, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Ninian (c. 360 – c. 432), Bishop of Galloway, Apostle to the Picts (source):

Almighty and everlasting God,
who didst call thy servant Ninian to preach the gospel
to the people of northern Britain:
raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land,
heralds and evangelists of thy kingdom,
that thy Church may make known the immeasurable riches
of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Isaiah 49:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:16-20

Saint Ninian windowNinian was the first apostle of Christianity in Scotland. Born in Cumbria to Christian parents, he went to Rome for his education. After being ordained a priest and then a bishop, Ninian was commissioned by Pope Siricus to return to Britain to preach the Christian faith.

Tradition holds that Ninian’s mission to Scotland began in 397, when he landed at Whithorn on Solway Firth. The stone church he built there was known as Candida Casa (“White House”). Recent archaeological excavations in that area have found white masonry from what could be an ancient church.

Saint Ninian’s ministry was centred in the Whithorn and Galloway areas of Scotland, but he is also remembered for bringing the gospel to the “southern Picts”—people living in the areas now known as Perth, Fife, Stirling, Dundee, and Forfar.

As early as the 7th century, Christians were making pilgrimages to St. Ninian’s shrine. By the 12th century, a large cathedral had been built at Whithorn, but it fell into ruins after the Reformation. Yet today, pilgrims still travel there to visit St Ninian’s Cave, where the saint would go when he needed to pray in solitude.

During his 2010 visit to the United Kingdom, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Scotland on Saint Ninian’s Day.

Saint Ninian’s Cathedral, Antigonish, Nova Scotia (“New Scotland”), is the Episcopal Seat for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Antigonish. This prayer is posted at the Cathedral website:

Lord our God, You brought to Scotland the faith of the apostles through the teaching of St. Ninian. Grant that we, who have received from him the light of your truth, may remain strong in faith. We ask this through our Lord, Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

Artwork: Saint Ninian, stained glass, Saint Margaret’s Chapel, Edinburgh Castle. Photograph taken by admin, 24 July 2004.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Cross

“And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me”

There is something quite wonderful about saints’ days and holy days, whether major or minor. They often bring out connections and associations which belong to the spiritual coherence of our life together in the body of Christ, the Church. In September, for example, there is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary that already points us towards the Nativity of Christ at Christmas. Though there is not a shred of biblical or scriptural reference to Mary’s birth, only later legends and many depictions in art, it is a necessary and reasonable deduction that she was born and that her birth (like her conception) is part of the divine economy, part of God’s plan and purpose for our humanity. She is the chosen vehicle and vessel through whom God becomes man and those ideas as tied to the Annunciation illumine the mystery of the Incarnation. Her active acquiescence to the divine will conveyed by angel’s words is the essence of faith. “Be it unto me according to thy word.” The purpose of her whole being is discovered in her willing the divine will for our salvation.

That in turn leads to another feast, The Feast of the Holy Cross. It actually refers to the post-biblical event of the supposed discovery or invention and subsequent exaltation of the true Cross by the Empress Helena in the fourth century. It is a way of calling our attention to the deeper purpose of Christ’s Incarnation. His conception and birth through Mary is now seen in the light of his passion. The passion concentrates on the cross. The Feast of the Holy Cross focuses our attention on the purpose and meaning of the cross.

At once a hideous and uncouth thing, a symbol of the reality of cruelty and torture, of death and shame, it has become the means of our being joined to Christ, to our being gathered to him in love and joy. But only if we look upon the cross. In his being lifted up on the cross and our looking upon him there is the hope of our being lifted up into the love of God.

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Prayers and liturgy

Holy Cross Day

The collect for today, Holy Cross Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O BLESSED Saviour, who by thy cross and passion hast given life unto the world: Grant that we thy servants may be given grace to take up the cross and follow thee through life and death; whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit we worship and glorify, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

With the Epistle and Gospel of Passion Sunday:
The Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20:20-28

Limbourg Brothers, Exaltation of the Cross
Artwork: Limbourg Brothers, The Exaltation of the Cross, c. 1416. Illumination (from Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry), Musée Condé, Chantilly.

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Prayers and liturgy

Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Cyprian (c. 200-258), Bishop of Carthage, Martyr (source):

Master of Meßkirch, St. CyprianO holy God,
who didst bring Cyprian to faith in Christ
and didst make him a bishop in the Church,
crowning his witness with a martyr’s death:
grant that, following his example,
we may love the Church and her doctrine,
find thy forgiveness within her fellowship,
and so come to share the heavenly banquet
which thou hast prepared for us;
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 St. Peter 5:1-4,10-11
The Gospel: St. John 10:11-16

Artwork: Master of Meßkirch, Saint Cyprian, 1535-40. Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

“And when the Lord saw her he had compassion on her”

It is a phrase that Luke especially uses. It connects the idea of seeing and then acting, yet acting in a very important way. Acting with compassion. A powerful word, it has been co-opted by the contemporary therapeutic culture in ways that overlook its more radical meaning and character. Compassion is not something that we have of ourselves or simply from ourselves in the Christian understanding. It is something given by God, something alive and at work in us through grace.

That is the lesson of the Parable of the Good Samaritan where the phrase is used about the “certain Samaritan”. Priest and Levite see and pass by the man wounded and half-dead lying on the roadside. So do most of us in relation to the heart-rending sorrows and sufferings of so many in our world, even in our own communities. It is not just that we are cold-hearted and mean-spirited though sadly enough that is only too often present in us. More significantly, I think, there is an implicit recognition of the limits of human charity, a recognition that we can’t solve or even begin to think we can help everybody who is in need. There are inescapably finite limits to human charity. Undeniably so.

But that doesn’t provide an excuse to do nothing. Quite the opposite. “The poor you have with you always,” Jesus reminds us, “and you can do for them what you will.” Something remains for us to do. We are compelled to acts of charity by the compassion of Christ. “Go and do thou likewise”, Jesus says to the lawyer about the actions of the “certain Samaritan” who saw and had compassion on the man wounded and lying half-dead on the roadside, half-way between Jerusalem and Jericho, the heavenly and the earthly cities respectively. In the radical understanding of the Parable, Christ is the Good Samaritan, the one in whom the love of God and the love of neighbour, meaning our humanity, is most fully and completely realized. It is not so in us except we are in Christ; he in us and we in him. In Christ, God sees us and has compassion on us, seeing Christ in us; in Christ, we see and act with compassion towards one another, albeit in limited ways, yet seeing Christ in one another.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 12 – 18 September

Monday, September 12th
6:30-8:00pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, September 13th, Eve of Holy Cross
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Wednesday, September 14th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Friday, September 16th
6:00-9:00pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, September 18th, Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, September 20th
7:00pm Coronation Room, Parish Hall: Christ Church Book Club – Louise Penny’s The Nature of the Beast (2015) and Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See (2014).

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity

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

O LORD, we beseech thee, let thy continual pity cleanse and defend thy Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without thy succour, preserve it evermore by thy help and goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 3:13-21
The Gospel: St. Luke 7:11-17

Ivaldi, Resurrection of the Son of the Widow of NainArtwork: Pietro Ivaldi, Resurrection of the Son of the Widow of Nain, 1862. Fresco,
Oratory of Saints Sebastian and Rocco, Campo Ligure, Province of Genoa, Italy.

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