Month: June 2018

King's-Edgehill School Sermons

Sermon for Encaenia 2018

How readest thou?

How do you read? What, reading? You mean, like books? I thought that was all over and done with, you might be thinking, as in Alice Cooper’s 1972 hit song “School’s Out”:

School’s out for summer
School’s out for ever
School’s been blown to pieces…

This was long before such things as the shootings in Columbine, Colorado, and its sad and continuing legacy right up to Parkland, Florida, and more. The song includes the old familiar jingle of uncertain provenance:

No more pencils
No more books
No more teacher’s dirty looks!

And concludes:

Out for summer
Out till fall
We might not go back at all!

Well, you will not be coming back here in the Fall, for you are done.

“Accomplished and concluded so far as in us lies,” as an ancient Eastern Orthodox prayer at the end of Mass puts it. Finished. IB done! High School’s over! Or, at least, almost. In just a few hours, you will step up and step out no longer simply as students but as having made the grade. You shall be, quite literally, graduates and alumni of King’s-Edgehill School. Today you are the pride of the School and of your families and friends. You made it! “You shall go out in joy,” as Isaiah puts it, in the passage which Arturo read, and even “the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” All wonderful metaphors that belong, well, to our reading.

So does this day really mean that you are all over and done with reading? I hope not. Because what we have so often talked about is reading as living, about thinking as a way of being. As a 13th century tutor at Oxford advises: “study as if you were to live for ever; live as if you were to die tomorrow.” My hope is that you will always be students, that is to say, those who are always eager to learn.

(more…)

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Basil the Great, Bishop and Doctor

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

Domenichino, Saint BasilAlmighty 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: Domenichino, Saint Basil, 1609-12. Fresco, Cappella dei Santi Fondatori (Chapel of the Holy Founders), Abbazia di Santa Maria, Grottaferrata, Italy.

Print this entry

Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Barnabas

I have called you friends

St. Barnabas is sometimes known as “the son of consolation.” Do we not sometimes find strength and comfort, in short, our consolation from one another? To be sure. And what is our consolation? Simply our abiding in the love of God the Blessed Trinity. The Gospel for this feast complements the lessons from John’s first Epistle which we have heard on these past two Sundays in the early days of the Trinity season about the divine love which commands us to love. And this Gospel follows directly upon one of the greatest Scriptural images of our abiding in the love of God; namely, the idea of the vine and the branches. “I am the vine, ye are the branches,” Jesus says, “abide in me.”

Yet the most powerful statement about our abiding in the love of God appears in this astounding statement where Jesus says “ye are my friends.” Somehow in Christ we are made the friends of God and so, too, friends of one another.

It is a powerful idea and one which has an ancient and profound pedigree. It reaches back to the story of Enkidu in The Epic of Gilgamesh. Enkidu is created by the gods to be a second self to Gilgamesh so that in respecting and honouring the other he will be no longer a domineering and brutal king, a bad king but a good king who seeks the good of his people. Friendship appears as the solution to the problem of bad kingship, to the misuse and abuse of power.

And sometimes the Greeks, too, can imagine a kind of commonality between the gods and men. “Two of a kind are we, deceivers both,” Athena says to Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey, implying a kind of commonality at least of character. And in the Old Testament there is the wonderful friendship between Jonathan and David, a kind of kinship of the soul.

One could go on but the point is that in Christ, God declares himself our friend. This shows something of the deeper meaning of the Trinity mantra that “God is love and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him.” In a beautiful treatise that takes up the ancient theme of friendship, such as in Cicero’s treatise de amicitia, Aelred of Rievaulx’s 12th century work, Spiritual Friendship, goes so far as to suggest that “God is friendship”.

What does friendship mean? It means our attention to the good of one another in the goodness of God. The divine friendship shapes our fellowship, our care and concern for one another. That is our consolation and strength. It is about the goodness of God in us making us good and, indeed, good for one another. Such is the power of the Trinity. It is altogether about our abiding in the love of God intentionally and thoughtfully, attending to the Good that is God in all things.

I have called you friends

Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Barnabas, June 11th, 2018

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

St. Barnabas the Apostle

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

Michel Corneille the Elder, St. Paul and St. Barnabas at LystraArtwork: Michel Corneille the Elder, St. Paul and St. Barnabas at Lystra, 1644. Oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Arras, France.

Print this entry

Sermons

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Trinity

Hereby we know love

God invites us. “Come, for all things are now ready.” That is at once a privilege and a wonder. To what are we invited? To love imaged as a banquet but as signifying the real meaning of our lives. In the Christian understanding it is about our life in Christ. “Hereby we know love, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” The love in which we abide is sacrificial love. That love is active and alive in seeking the Good, the goodness of God and that self-same goodness for one another.

Do we accept the invitation? Do we embrace the demands, indeed, the commands of the divine love in which is all our good? Well, that is the problem and the challenge. It is the problem of sin. “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his heart against him: how dwelleth the love of God in him?” This is the problem of our indifference towards one another which separates us from the love of God, illustrated so powerfully for us in last Sunday’s parable, the parable of Lazarus and Dives. It is really all about what is alive in us.

Those lessons are again concentrated for us and developed more fully in this Sunday’s readings. The Epistle instructs but also convicts; the Gospel illustrates profoundly our refusals of the invitation to love and live yet emphasizes the divine commitment to our good. As such they are powerful persuasives to the truth of our lives in Christ.

The paradox is that we are commanded to love. This seems counter-intuitive. How can love be forced or coerced in us and still be love? It can’t. What we encounter is the absolute nature of God’s love as the truth for us. That love is constant and unconditional. It is not changed by our refusals; we are. We encounter simply what God seeks for us even in the face of our disorderly and distracted hearts. Yet “if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart.” It is one of the great teaching insights into the nature of God opened out to us in John’s First Epistle, itself a veritable treatise on love as Trinity and our abiding in that love. “And this is his commandment, That we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.” Notice the double emphasis on commandment. What does it mean? Simply that we should want what God wants for us.

(more…)

Print this entry

Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 11 – 17 June

Monday June 11th, St. Barnabas
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Tuesday, June 12th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Wednesday, June 13th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Friday, June 15th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Saturday, June 16th
9:00am Encaenia Service – KES Chapel
10:15am Graduation & Prize Day Ceremonies – KES

Sunday, June 17th, Third Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday After Trinity

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

O LORD, who never failest to help and govern them whom thou dost bring up in thy stedfast fear and love: Keep us, we beseech thee, under the protection of thy good providence, and make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 3:13-24
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:15-24

Cosmas Damian Asam, See, the meal is ready, come!Artwork: Cosmas Damian Asam, See, the meal is ready, come!, 1720. Fresco, Abbey Church, Aldersbach, Lower Bavaria.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Columba, Abbot of Iona

St. Augustine Kilburn, London, Saint ColumbaThe collect for today, the Feast of Saint Columba (c. 521-597), Abbot of Iona, Missionary (source):

Almighty God,
who didst fill the heart of Columba
with the joy of the Holy Spirit,
and with deep love for those in his care:
grant to thy pilgrim people grace to follow him,
strong in faith, sustained by hope,
and made one in the love that binds us to thee;
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 3:11-23
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:17-20

Artwork: St. Columba, stained glass, St. Augustine Kilburn, London. Photograph taken by admin, 26 September 2015.

Print this entry

KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 4 June

Take with you words

Last Chapel services. Yay, God! To be sure, but such endings recall us to a kind of reflection about how Chapel matters and in what ways. At the very least, we confront the questions that never go away, the questions that stay with us. As the philosopher Heraclitus notes, “the way up and the way down are the same.”It is really all about our being with the principle of accountability and truth both in our movement towards such a principle and our going from it. Such is the power of ideas. They matter. Such encounters with the ideas that matter belongs to an education that is worthy of the name, education. We confront things that are bigger than ourselves that challenge our thoughts and actions.

That ideas actually matter belongs to the subversive nature of an education which challenges all of the attempts to control and confine, to conform and comply on the part of the various authorities of our world and day. Instead, we are opened out to the riches of a poetic and philosophical literature that belong to the religions of the world philosophically considered and that speak to the freedom and dignity of our humanity.

Times of ending are poignant and powerful. The poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox reminds us that “it isn’t the bold things … that count the most in the summing up of life at the end of the day./ But it is the doing of old things, / Small acts that are just and right; /And doing them over and over again, no matter what others say; / …. Of walking with feet faith-shod; /And loving, loving through all, no matter how things go / wrong.” And so it has been with Chapel.

Hosea is the great love-prophet of the Jewish Scriptures. His story is itself an image of his understanding of God in relation to Israel. It is about the powerful idea of forgiveness, that there is something more than our follies and foolishnesses, more than our failings and shortcomings. There is the transforming love of God who loves us in spite of our unloveliness. In being open to such ideas, we become learners, discerning and understanding something of what is shown to us.

(more…)

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Boniface, Missionary, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Boniface (Wynfrith) of Crediton (c. 675 – 754), Bishop, Apostle to the Germans, Patron Saint of Germany, Martyr (source):

Cornelis Bloemaert, Saint BonifaceO God our redeemer,
who didst call thy servant Boniface
to preach the gospel among the German people
and to build up thy Church in holiness:
grant that we may hold fast in our hearts
that faith which he taught with his words
and sealed with his blood,
and profess it in lives dedicated to thy Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 20:17-28
The Gospel: St. Luke 24:44-53

Artwork: Cornelis Bloemaert, Saint Boniface, c. 1630. Engraving, Utrecht Archives.

Print this entry