Year: 2017

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

Anthony van Dyck, Christ of the CoinArtwork: Anthony van Dyck, Christ & the Coin of Tribute (Christ of the Coin), 1625. Oil on canvas, Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 12 November

Because God is God

A moment’s reflection on the Scripture readings of the past few weeks suggests how powerfully they speak to many of the current confusions and uncertainties in our culture. Just recently we have been pondering the spiritual journey that takes us from the Covenant with Noah to the Abrahamic Covenant, from Moses and the Burning Bush to the Mosaic Covenant in The Ten Commandments, the moral code for our humanity, as it were, written in stone. This provides the background, too, for The Beatitudes which presuppose the Law and perfect it, at least in the Christian understanding. At the very least, they stand in a complementary relation to each other.

“I Am Who Am” is God’s revelation of himself as the ultimate principle of thinking and knowing without which there can be no causality at all. That leads in the thinking of Exodus to the further revelation of God’s will for our humanity in the ethical principles of The Ten Commandments, themselves a coherent set of interrelated concepts that speak to the nature of our humanity individually and communally and always in relation to God as the causal principle of all and every good. Not unlike Plato’s arguments about the ethical and intellectual priority of the Good in which the being and the knowing of all things depend.

This way of thinking is framed as a rejection of the fearful uncertainties of the ancient Mesopotamian world and its legacy wherever the movement of thought goes from chaos to order. For the ancient Sumerians, for instance in The Epic of Gilgamesh, this sense of fearful uncertainty about reality is imaged in figures like Humbaba the unknowable, the Bull of Heaven which Ishtar unleashes upon the City of Uruk symbolizing drought, and the ancient flood story which threatens even the Gods. In all of those images, chaos is seen as always fearfully present and as capable of upending everything. Even the gods are a most uncertain quantity. Quite apart from any sort of confidence even simply in “natural processes”, all is basically “random” even though the ancient Sumerians, much like our own culture, were remarkably practical about many things from irrigation to sailing to wine-making. The first major technological revolution speaks to its latest iteration and, yet, with a similar degree of uncertainty.

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Prayers and liturgy

Hilda, Abbess

St. Hilda Ashford, St. HildaThe collect for today, the Feast of St. Hilda (614-680), Abbess of Whitby (source):

O eternal God,
who madest the abbess Hilda to shine as a jewel in England
and through her holiness and leadership
didst bless thy Church with newness of life and unity:
so assist us by thy grace
that we, like her, may yearn for the gospel of Christ
and bring reconciliation to those who are divided;
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: Ephesians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 19:27-29

Artwork: St. Hilda, stained glass, St. Hilda’s Church, Ashford, England.

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Prayers and liturgy

Hugh, Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Hugh (1135-1200), Bishop of Lincoln (source):

O God,
who didst endow thy servant Hugh
with a wise and cheerful boldness
and didst teach him to commend to earthly rulers
the discipline of a holy life:
give us grace like him to be bold in the service of the gospel,
putting our confidence in Christ alone,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Titus 2:7-8,11-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:42-47

Francisco de Zurbarán, St. Hugh of LincolnHugh, from Avalon in France, was a Carthusian monk before he became Bishop of Lincoln in 1186. The Cathedral had been badly damaged in an earthquake the year before he arrived and Bishop Hugh encouraged the building of a larger, grander building, once acting as a labourer himself.

Hugh was a holy man, not afraid to challenge even kings. He stood up to Henry II, Richard I and latterly John, warning him that he must rule his subjects in accordance with God’s will. Eventually John was forced in 1215 to sign the Magna Carta, which recognized the rights of the church, the barons and freemen. Lincoln Cathedral owns one of the 4 surviving original copies of the Magna Carta.

Bishop Hugh was a good administrator as well as a hard-working and inspirational leader, renowned for his holiness and austere way of life. Although he had a huge diocese to run, he cared particularly for the poor and outcast, including lepers, and was a protector of Lincoln’s Jews during a period of persecution.

Whenever possible, Hugh left the grand palace beside the Cathedral and stayed at his manor at Stow, north of the city. Hugh loved animals, and befriended a swan which lived on his moat there. The swan, which was said to rest its head on his chest, became Hugh’s symbol.

Hugh died in 1200 and was made a saint only twenty years later because of his outstanding holiness.

Artwork: Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Hugh of Lincoln, 1637-39. Oil on canvas, Museum of Cadiz, Spain.

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Prayers and liturgy

Margaret, Queen

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Margaret (1046-1093), Queen of Scotland, Philanthropist, Reformer of the Church (source):

O God, the ruler of all,
who didst call thy servant Margaret to an earthly throne
and gavest to her both zeal for thy Church and love for thy people,
that she might advance thy heavenly kingdom:
mercifully grant that we who commemorate her example
may be fruitful in good works
and attain to the glorious crown of thy saints;
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: Proverbs 31:10-11, 20, 26, 28
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:44-52

William Hole, The Landing of St. Margaret at QueensferrySt. Margaret was born in Hungary to a Saxon noble family in exile. In 1057, she and her family were able to return to England, but they were forced to move to Scotland following William the Conqueror’s invasion in 1066. A few years later, the princess Margaret married Malcolm Canmore, King of the Scots, in Dunfermline.

Queen Margaret was married to Malcolm for almost twenty-five years; her death followed his by only a few days. She bore six sons and two daughters. Three sons ruled as kings of Scotland—Edgar, Alexander I, and David I (later saint)—while a daughter, Matilda, became the queen of Henry I of England.

Margaret, an inspirational monarch of great Christian devotion, undertook many works of charity. She protected orphans, provided for the poor, visited prisoners in her husband’s dungeons, cleansed the sores of lepers, and washed the feet of beggars. She encouraged and enabled the founding of monasteries, churches, and hostels. Her excellent education served Scotland well, for under her influence the Scottish court became known as a place of culture and learning.

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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.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity

“So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you,
if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses”

Powerful words about the power of forgiveness. It is, I fear, often in short supply in our contemporary culture where the power over words trumps the truth of words and where forgiveness is largely a forgotten concept. Yet it remains one of the most distinctive features of the Christian religion. “Forgive and ye shall be forgiven.” “Forgive even as ye have been forgiven.” Can there be any more powerful words than these in our broken and disordered world?

The great good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as Paul intuited and knew, is that it is the truest liberation from the prison of ourselves. It is entirely about how we are “partakers of God’s grace,” not by any merit on our own but by virtue of the supreme goodness of God himself. In a paradoxical way, that is the message of the Gospel for this Sunday in the late days of the Trinity season. Forgiveness is shown; then forgiveness is rejected. How great is the forgiveness shown; how much greater is the forgiveness denied, but, paradoxically, that illustrates the absolute necessity of divine forgiveness, its infinite power and truth and its movement in us. Forget that or worse, deny it and Hell is the only conclusion, for whatever one might mean by that, it can only mean something negative in and of itself.

The consequences are huge. It is the fullest possible illustration of the denial of God’s goodness. But the Gospel is told to awaken us to the fullest possible understanding of the loving-kindness of God towards us. Such is the point of the parable of the unforgiving servant; the one who is forgiven does not himself forgive others and so negates what he himself receives. The fault lies in contradicting by your actions what God’s actions have bestowed upon you. And yet, God’s forgiveness is inexhaustible; hence, the deliberate exaggeration of seventy-times seven. You have to want it, however, and not deny it. In denying its power and truth, you deny yourself and others.

It is a sad testament to our confused and confusing time that this is an all too frequent occurrence and one which belongs to the narcissism and nihilism rampant in our world and day. Those factors rule out the very possibilities of forgiveness because they deny the truth of the self in relation to others. This is all part of the problem of the radical instability of the self. It thinks it is something when it is nothing and turns the other into an enemy, unable to see oneself in the other.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 13 – 19 November

Monday, November 13th
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, November 14th
6:00pm Prayers & Praises – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Wednesday, November 15th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Friday, November 17th
6:00-9:00pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Saturday, November 18th
4:30-6:00pm Annual Ham Supper – Parish Hall

Sunday, November 19th, Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Events:

Sunday, December 3rd
4:00pm Advent Lessons & Carols, with KES

Tuesday, December 19th
7:00pm Capella Regalis Concert

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Prayers and liturgy

The Twenty-Second Sunday After Trinity

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

LORD, we beseech thee to keep thy house hold the Church in continual godliness; that through thy protection it may be free from all adversities, and devoutly given to serve thee in good works, to the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 1:3-11
The Gospel: St Matthew 18:21-35

Scots' Church, Parable of the Unforgiving ServantArtwork: Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, stained glass, Scots’ Church, Melbourne.

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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.

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