Month: June 2018

Sermons

Sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity

“Herein is love”

“Our life and our death are with our neighbour,” says St. Anthony the Great, according to Athanasius’ biography of the Desert Father. Anthony was an important figure in the development of Christian monasticism. Heaven and Hell, we might also say, are with with one another. Today we are given a vision of both in the Epistle and Gospel. Heaven is the love of God in us in our love for one another and Hell is our indifference to one another and thus to God.

How we think about death and dying says everything about how we think and deal with one another. The great pageant of literature and philosophy which presents us with the images of the after-life are entirely about life itself and about how we think and live with one another. That is really the main point about such great works of literature like The Epic of Gilgamesh in Enkidu’s vision of the afterworld as the house of dust, Homer’s Odyssey in Odysseus’ journey to Hades to speak with Teiresias, Plato’s Myth of Er in the Republic, Vergil’s sixth book of the Aeneid, St. John the Divine’s Revelation, Dante’s great summa, The Divine Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Goethe’s Faustus, the novels of Charles Williams, and many, many more. They are really profound teachings about our humanity in its relation to God and to one another. Such teachings are wonderfully concentrated for us in John’s little treatise on love in his First Epistle and in Luke’s profoundly poignant Gospel story about Dives, the rich man, and Lazarus, the poor man.

That there is a kind of role reversal in the Gospel highlights the significance of our thoughts and actions towards one another. As we saw last Sunday with Nicodemus, we have to learn to think upward, to think into the things of God. The rich man utterly ignores Lazarus lying “at his gate full of sores,” hungry and destitute, bereft of human company. It is the dogs who “came and licked his sores,” the dogs who show the compassion and charity that humans ought to show to one another. In his indifference to Lazarus, the Gospel suggests, there is equally an utter indifference to God, to the truth of our lives as lived with God and with one another. That indifference is nothing short of Hell. The Gospel highlights the “great gulf fixed” between heaven and hell. In our refusals to love one another, we separate ourselves from the love of God, the love that John saysis God. Hell is our refusal to let that love live in us.

These lessons follow directly and rightly upon the celebration of the mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of God as love: not just our love for God, not just God’s love for us, but God as love. In the Epistle we have the familiar mantra of the Trinity Season. “God is love and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him,” as found in our liturgy as one of the sentences for the Offices. The King James Version uses “dwelleth” for “abideth.” Without that love, we are nothing. We are Hell.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 4 – 10 June

Monday June 4th
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, June 5th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall

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

Thursday, June 7th
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms

Friday, June 8th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

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

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Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday After Trinity

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

O GOD, the strength of all them that put their trust in thee, mercifully accept our prayers; and because through the weakness of our mortal nature we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 4:7-21
The Gospel: St. Luke 16:19-31

Fyodor Bronnikov, Lazarus at the Rich Man’s GateArtwork: Fyodor Bronnikov, Lazarus at the Rich Man’s Gate, 1884, Oil on canvas.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 28 May

That you may know

“How can these things be?” Nicodemus’ question to Jesus is our question too, a question that goes to our lives as students and teachers in this School. In the face of the wonders of learning we might ask with a kind of wonder, “how can these things be?” It might be quantum mechanics, calculus, a sonnet of John Donne, an event in history, a moment of athletic excellence, a quality of character on parade in cadets or on the stage, a lesson read in Chapel, a rare but quiet moment in the stillness of a sunset. All things that might, just might, awaken wonder in us. But do they always?

The story of Nicodemus read in Chapel this week along with a story about the power of forgiveness all speak to this time of endings as we approach the end of the School year. Nicodemus journeys to Jesus by night and is perplexed by Jesus’s words, especially the idea that “you must be born again.” Is that to be understood literally, he wonders? That is the context of his question, “how can these things be?” It brings out an integral feature of education. We learn, I hope, to think not simply literally but metaphorically, to think more intellectually, we might say.

We use the metaphor of life and education as a journey. But what kind of journey? That is the question before us at this time of endings. What has been the nature of your journey throughout this past year? Nicodemus, it seems, comes to learn something from Jesus, “a man come from God,” he says. He wants to learn, we might say. He is committed to the journey of learning. Can that be said of you as you come to the end of the year?

The passage from John’s Gospel ends with a reference from the Book of Numbers. Jesus says, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.” The lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness refers to the stories of the People of Israel journeying in the wilderness. It was meant to be a time of learning, learning what it means to be the People of God, learning what it means to be defined by the Law given by God through Moses. In that journey, the People of Israel are provided with all that they need. Delivered by God from slavery in Egypt they are sustained by God, “a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of light by night” and fed in their wilderness wanderings “manna from on high.” They are provided for by God. And their response?

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Prayers and liturgy

Justin Martyr

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

St. Justin the PhilosopherO 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

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