Christ Church

“Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground”

What he wrote in the dust of the ground we do not know. We only know what he said which in turn was written down. They are some of the most powerful words of compassion and forgiveness ever written in the dust of our humanity. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone”. What has been written in the dust of your humanity during your time here at King’s-Edgehill?

The last day of the term, the last day of the school year, and for you, the last day of High School. Hooray! “O Frabjous Day, Callooh, Callay,” I hear you say. Finally, and, at last, I hear your parents quietly mutter while clutching their wallets and worrying about their stockmarket portfolios! In every sense, today marks a milestone, a sense of accomplishment, a kind of ending. Alleluias everywhere! Today you are the pride of the School, of your parents and grandparents, of relatives and friends, and of cultures and communities from all over the world. On this special day with so many of you who have come from far and near to celebrate, our school is even more a microcosm of the world than usual. A special day that requires a special designation. Hence Encaenia.

Encaenia is the traditional name for this service, just as the event which follows is properly known as Commencement, both terms conveying a sense of beginnings, it seems. Endings and beginnings recall us to the principles which belong to identity and purpose, to the true character of institutions and to our lives within them.

Encaenia is a Greek word that refers to a sense of renewal of purpose and identity, specifically, to a dedication service. Its origins lie in the annual dedications of holy places but has become associated with “the annual commemoration of founders and benefactors at Oxford University in June” (O.E.D) and by extension to the academic institutions derived from the medieval universities of Oxford and Cambridge throughout the English speaking world, even such places as King’s-Edgehill School here in Windsor. We are recalled to founding principles and ideals that remind us that we are part of something greater than ourselves without which we are less than ourselves.

Ah, merely a tradition then? No. If merely a tradition then nothing worthy of consideration let alone commitment. A living tradition is another thing and one which requires a certain mindfulness. Otherwise, we become quite literally traditors, traitors, those who betray what has been passed on to them by passing it over, that is to say, throwing it away as worth nothing. Living traditions are about our faithfulness to what has been passed on and to which we hold ourselves accountable. It is about letting them live out in us. Seeds are planted. Words are written in the dust of our being. And such is the real dignity of our humanity.

The crisis of our contemporary institutions is whether we will live from the animating principles that belong to their foundations or succumb to our technocratic obsessions that so dominate our minds and our lives and reduce everything to utility. All means and no ends. The challenge is to recover the primacy of the ethical and the intellectual.

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The collect for today, the Feast of St. Basil the Great (c. 330-79), Bishop of Caesarea, Cappadocian Father, Doctor of the Church (source):

Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Basil of Caesarea, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; who livest and reignest for ever and ever.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 2:6-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:21-24

Artwork: Saint Basil the Great, fresco, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome.

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

O LORD God Almighty, who didst endue thy holy Apostle Barnabas with singular gifts of the Holy Spirit: Leave us not, we beseech thee, destitute of thy manifold gifts, nor yet of grace to use them alway to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 11:22-26
The Gospel: St. John 15:12-16

Artwork: Saint Barnabas, stained glass, Norwich Cathedral. Photograph taken by admin, 3 October 2014.

(This commemoration has been transferred from 11 June.)

“Apart from me you can do nothing”

A strong and provocative statement, perhaps, but surely no less so than Jesus telling Nicodemus who came to him questioning in the night that “ye must be born again”, a phrase, I fear that has often been misunderstood if not hijacked to the agendas of a purely experiential religion of sentiment and feeling and its corollary of authority and self-righteous presumption devoid of thought. Does not Jesus also tell Nicodemus “marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again”? He goes on to talk of the great mystery of spiritual life. Ultimately, he speaks about the mystery of his own life, the mystery of the Trinity. “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not; how shall ye believe heavenly things?”

And yet, it is precisely heavenly things that he reveals in and through the things of this world. We are in the presence of the great mystery of God, the holy and blessed Trinity. “He therefore that would be saved let him thus think of the Trinity,” the great Creed of Athanasius puts it. What does that mean? To think of the Trinity in a certain way. What is that way? It is the very way which Jesus shows us, taking the things of this world and showing us that they only have life and meaning when they are lifted up into the life from which they come and to which they return. Apart from me you are nothing, we might say.

That way of thinking is the dance of apophatic and kataphatic theology. Fancy words, perhaps, but words which reveal the necessary and important way of thinking God. They are the forms of our negative and positive thinking about God, the counter to our idolatry and atheism. They are about our freedom and life.

God is nothing, meaning no thing like other things, no being like other beings. It is entirely proper to say that God is nothing if by that we mean something different from our world and day, from us and our being. That is negative theology. It distinguishes God utterly from everything else in the created order. The Creator is not the same as the created. And yet, there is a relationship between them that is also positive; nowhere more profoundly so than in the idea that we are made in the image and likeness of God. God reveals himself to us by way of the things of the world, perhaps most wonderfully in the parables of the kingdom. “The kingdom of heaven is like unto” this and that image from our world and day. That is positive theology. The Athanasian Creed dances us through the necessary paradoxes of reason without which our reason is dead and deadly, destructive and empty.

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Monday, June 12th
6:00-7:00pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, June 13th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

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

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

Saturday, June 17th
9:00am Encaenia Service – KES
10:15am Graduation & Prize Day Ceremonies – KES

Sunday, June 18th, First Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

The collect for today, the Octave Day of Pentecost, commonly called Trinity Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity: We beseech thee, that this holy faith may evermore be our defence against all adversities; who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 4:1-11
The Gospel: St. John 3:1-15

Artwork: Albrecht Durer, The Adoration of the Holy Trinity (Landauer Altar), 1511. Oil on poplar panel, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

“We do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.”

Pentecost. Whitsunday. A day of marvels and mysteries. A day of contrasts and contradictions. And that is the whole point. Wind and fire are elusive qualities, hard to contain and tie down, like Daedalus’ statues in Plato’s Meno – wonderful to look at but unless they are tied down by reason they run away from us as do all of our opinions. Pentecost challenges the religion of sentiment and emotion at the same time as it counters any and every idea of self-righteous importance and opinion, of presumption and pride. In so many ways, it is about a kind of growing up. A growing up into a more spiritual understanding of reality being led by the Spirit of truth who “will guide you into all truth.”

Pentecost means the fiftieth day, fifty days after Easter. It looks back to the ancient rituals of the harvest for Israel but takes on a whole new meaning in the descent of the Holy Ghost to give birth to the Church as the place of our abiding in the life of God. Such is the radical meaning of Pentecost. It is about our life in the spirit, our life with God. Through the descent of the Holy Ghost, something new and splendid happens which challenges and changes our whole outlook on life.

The story of Pentecost recapitulates the ancient story of the Tower of Babel. That story along with the story of the flood, speaks profoundly to our contemporary world and its concerns and confusions. Far more than just historical narratives expressed in mythological form, they are philosophical reflections on the major themes of identity and violence. Pentecost especially signals the redemption of Babel.

The story of the Tower of Babel is at once familiar and yet mostly misunderstood. It is only too often regarded as a just-so story, a story told to explain the diversity of tongues and cultures as if that were a kind of bad thing, as if there should be only one language, one culture. Think about that in relation to western culture which has assumed such a dominance of the world. The truth of the matter is that the story of the Tower of Babel is really a story about human presumption and arrogance. As Samuel Huntington notes in his book, The Clash of Civilizations, the belief in western culture as universal is “false, immoral and dangerous”. Babel means confusion. The confusion is us. We are Babel in our arrogance and ignorance. As Jonathan Sacks suggests in his magisterial work “Not In God’s Name”, if the story of the flood in Genesis is about “freedom without order”, then the story of the Tower of Babel is about “order without freedom.” At issue is their necessary interrelation and interdependence.

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Monday, June 5th
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, June 6th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

Wednesday, June 7th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, June 8th
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms

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

Sunday, June 11th, Trinity Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

The collects for today, The Day of Pentecost, being the fiftieth day after Easter, commonly called Whit-Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, who as at this time didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgement in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

O GOD, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon thy disciples in Jerusalem: Grant that we who celebrate before thee the Feast of Pentecost may continue thine for ever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit, until we come to thine eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 2:1-11
The Gospel: St. John 14:15-27

Artwork: Anthony van Dyck, Descent of the Holy Spirit, 1618-20. Oil on canvas, Sanssouci, Potsdam.

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Justin (c. 100 – 165), Philosopher, Apologist, Martyr at Rome (source):

O God our redeemer,
who through the folly of the cross
didst teach thy martyr Justin
the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ:
free us, we beseech thee, from every kind of error,
that we, like him, may be firmly grounded in the faith,
and make thy name known to all peoples;
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 Corinthians 1:18-30
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:1-8

Artwork: Theophanes the Cretan, St. Justin Martyr, early 16th century. Icon located at Stavronikita Monastery, Mouth Athos, Greece.