Year: 2018

Prayers and liturgy

Lindel Tsen and Paul Sasaki, Bishops

The collect for today, the commemoration of Lindel Tsen (1885-1946), Bishop in China, consecrated 1929, and Paul Sasaki (1885-1954), Bishop in Japan, consecrated 1935 (source):

Bishop Paul Shinji SasakiBishop Philip Lindel TsenAlmighty God, we offer thanks for the faith and witness of Paul Sasaki, bishop in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai [Anglican Church in Japan], tortured and imprisoned by his government, and Philip [Lindel] Tsen, leader of the Chinese Anglican Church, arrested for his faith. We pray that all Church leaders oppressed by hostile governments may be delivered by thy mercy, and that by the power of the Holy Spirit we may be faithful to the Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ; who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 4:26-32

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 19 February

“They hated him yet more for his dreams and for his words”

Lent is a serious season of focussed discipline which has its parallels in the traditions of the other world’s religions, like Ramadan, for example, in Islam. The term, Lent, derives from an old English word for the lengthening of the days, something which we have been seeing throughout February, especially with the increasing progress and power of the sun. Late March will bring us to the spring equinox in terms of the seasons of nature and to Holy Week and Easter in terms of the Christian faith.

In the Christian understanding, we are invited to “the observance of a Holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word.” There are things which we learn about ourselves and one another as well as about God through the Scriptures. The Scriptures read in the Chapel, either from the Hebrew Scriptures which Christians know as the Old Testament or from the New Testament, challenge us about how we think about ourselves and one another and our relation to the world and God. They do so through a rich variety of literary forms of expression.

This Thursday and Friday we have embarked upon a brief consideration of a wonderful narrative sequence in the later chapters of The Book of Genesis. They are about Joseph and his brothers. They are the sons of Jacob, also known as Israel after his ‘wrestling’ with God (or an angel) and being renamed Israel. It means one who strives with God. Lent, too, is about our striving with God – not against God! I am aware of certain atheist groups (churches?!) that have Lenten programmes as well such as ‘giving up God for Lent’! But the story of Joseph and his brothers is a powerful story about the destructive nature of envy, about evil in the form of betrayal but even more about how conscience is convicted and about how good comes out of evil. The story as such has some interesting parallels to the story of Christ’s Passion. In both we confront the nature of human evil and the greater power of God’s truth and love.

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Sermons

Lenten Programme 1: The Comfortable Words and the Literature of Consolation

The Comfortable Words and the Literature of Consolation I

The “comfy words,” as they are affectionately or pejoratively called, are a peculiar feature of the Prayer Book liturgy however much one might find some precedence in the psalms surrounding the words of absolution in the Liturgy of St. Mark and the Liturgy of St. James in the rites of Eastern Orthodoxy or in sixteenth century Lutheranism such as Hermann of Cologne’s Consultations which is probably the more immediate source. That work places the Comfortable Words before the words of absolution rather than after the absolution. “Here what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all that truly turn to him,” is what we hear in the Prayer Book Communion Service just after the surpassing comfort of the words of absolution, the words of the forgiveness of our sins pronounced after confession.

What we hear are a selection of Scriptural words that are, well, comforting and powerful. But why? And what do they mean in this context? What is meant by “comfortable”? Even more, do they have any connection to the tradition of Consolation Literature, both non-Christian and Christian? This will be our Lenten consideration: to consider the Comfortable Words in relation to the literature of consolation, attending to one or two works in particular in that extensive tradition.

Our Lenten series cannot pretend to be an exhaustive consideration. The richness and the wealth of the material is just so great and vast, each work worthy of so much more consideration in its own right. It will not even be possible to name all of the works that might be included in the catalogue of the literature of consolation. But in general, the literature of consolation deals with the question about how we face suffering, sorrow, and loss philosophically and religiously. The terms are complementary.

But what about the term “comfortable”? The great mystery writer, Dame P.D. James, in a work which stands outside her oeuvre of mystery novels, The Children of Men, makes the acute observation about contemporary Christianity that “the recognized churches, particularly the Church of England, moved from the theology of sin and redemption to a less uncompromising doctrine: corporate social responsibility coupled with a sentimental humanism”. What this means, the novel suggests is the virtual abolition of “the Second Person of the Trinity together with His cross.” Good-bye Jesus. The cross, traditionally seen as the symbol of comfort and consolation, becomes “the stigma of the barbarism of officialdom and of man’s ineluctable cruelty”. Good-bye redemptive suffering. There is just the sense that for some, particularly unbelievers, the cross “has never been a comfortable symbol.” But in the context of her novel which explores more or less completely the dystopian qualities of contemporary culture, what is more cruel and more barbaric? The cross or “corporate social responsibility” which in the novel includes the Quietus, a euphemism for euthanasia of the elderly and the inconvenient? What is more cruel? The cross or “sentimental humanism” in a world devoid of purpose and meaning? These are not merely rhetorical questions.

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Sermons

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

“And him only shalt thou serve”

The temptations of Christ belong to the logic of redemption, to the Passion of Christ. Christ wills to be tempted for us even as he suffers for us on the Cross. The accounts of the temptation show us the intensity of the encounter. There is a real struggle, a struggle for what is good and right that is greater than anything we can imagine because we have become so used to giving in and going along with the things that draw us away from our true happiness and good which is found in the will of God.

The story of “The Temptations of Christ” is about our temptations as endured and overcome by Christ. As the Fathers so often observe, Christ is our Mediator who not only overcomes our temptations but also gives us an example for doing the same. The temptations belong to the reality of the human condition. They take us back to the Fall and they point us to the Crucifixion. Strange as it may seem to say there is something good and necessary about temptation. Why? Because what is good and true has to be known as good and true and willed as such.

The temptations comprehend all of the temptations known to us. All temptation, in other words, is brought in under the three temptations of Christ as presented by Matthew and Luke, even though the second and third temptations are reversed by them. Luke presents the second temptation of Christ which Matthew presents as the third. Yet whatever the order they are, by all accounts, a summary and comprehensive view of our temptations. They put us to the test about what truly defines us. They do so after the fact of our awareness of our separation from the goodness of God. In a way, the temptations raise the question about what is the good.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 19 – 25 February

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

Tuesday, February 20th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme I

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

Friday, February 23rd, St. Matthias
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, February 25th, Second Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00 Evening Prayer
7:00pm Holy Communion – KES

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, February 27th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme II

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Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday in Lent

The collect for today, the First Sunday in Lent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights: Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10
The Gospel: St Matthew 4:1-11

Fra Angelico, The Temptation of ChristArtwork: Fra Angelico, The Temptation of Christ, 1436-45. Fresco, Museo Nazionale di San Marco, Florence. (The fresco depicts only two of Christ’s three temptations because it was cut away when the cell was partially demolished in order to open a window over the Cloister.)

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Sermons

Sermon for Ash Wednesday

“Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord”

“Fire ever doth aspire, / And makes all like it selfe, turnes all to fire,/ But ends in ashes,” the poet, John Donne, notes in a poem celebrating married love. His point about love and about marriage is that it is not wanted that it should end in ashes. God seeks something more for us.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a beginning not an ending of the pilgrimage of love. We begin with ashes. It is not wanted that we should end in ashes. Ashes are the proverbial and biblical symbol of repentance which is always about how we turned back to God. They are part and parcel of the project of how, through penitence, “new and contrite hearts” are “created and made in us.” It means “the lamenting of our sins and the acknowledging of our wickedness”. How will that be realized except through humility?

We are turned to the dust of creation in the words that belong to the Imposition of Ashes, the words of the Penitential Service. “Remember O Man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return,” words which are said at The Imposition of Ashes. Note the connection between words and actions. We are reminded of the dust out of which we have been formed, the dust of creation which connects us to every other living thing. And the ashes? They remind us of our sins and follies which in acknowledging signal that we are seeking something more. There is something more than dust and ashes in the mystery of Lent.

We are the dust into which God has breathed his spirit. The dignified dust of our humanity is about who we truly are in the sight of God. The ashes remind us of our sinfulness, to be sure, no way around that necessary but saving truth, but even more they remind us of the possibilities and the necessities of repentance. “Turn thou us, O good Lord, and so shall we be turned.” That is the Scriptural basis for the prayer for grace “to decline from sin, and incline to virtue; That we may walk with a perfect heart before thee.”

Ash Wednesday launches us upon an upward journey that seeks the attainment of virtue that belongs to who we are in the sight of God and speaks to our care and service of one another. It can only happen by recalling us to our creaturely origins and to our Fall from grace into a world of dust and death, of suffering and sorrow. The only antidote and the one which is prescribed on this day is humility: ashes in the form of the Cross upon our foreheads. Love recreates us in love and for love.

It is not about boasting of our humility, the kind of Uriah Heep humility which is really self-promotion (there is no one so humble as I!). No. It is about the real humility which on the very ground of creation does not presuppose or presume any standing with God and knows instead its own failings and misery. Humility looks to God. That is the point really of the words of The Epistle from St. James. Humility not presumption is the key to the journey of Lent.

“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord”

Fr. David Curry,
Ash Wednesday, Feb. 14th, 2018

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Prayers and liturgy

Ash Wednesday

The collect for today, The First Day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St James 4:6-11a
The Gospel: St Matthew 6:16-21

Henryk Siemiradzki, Christ and a SinnerArtwork: Henryk Siemiradzki, Christ and a Sinner, 1875. Oil on canvas, The State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 12 February

Where are our hearts?

Love is certainly in the air, especially in the providential and yet paradoxical conjunction of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday this year. We are being challenged to think more carefully and more deeply about love. “In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,” Shakespeare says in one of his celebrated love sonnets, “for they in thee a thousand errors note/ But ‘tis my heart that loves what they despise,/ who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote.” And not just our eyes, but our ears, our tongues; indeed all five sense and all five wits, find failings and faults in our loves. Our senses are not the means or the ends of our loving. It is our hearts. Where are our hearts? This is the question which the Gospel of Ash Wednesday raises, reminding us that “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” It is really a question about our loves, both what we love or desire and how we love.

The poet and preacher, John Donne observes in a poem celebrating marriage that “fire ever doth aspire, And makes all like it self, turnes all to fire, / But ends in ashes.” His point about love and about marriage is that it is not wanted that it should end in ashes. God seeks something more for us.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a beginning not an ending of the pilgrimage of love. We begin with ashes. It is not wanted that we should end in ashes. Ashes are the proverbial and biblical symbol of repentance which is always about our turning back to God in love from whom we have turned away in sin.. They are part and parcel of the project of penitence. “New and contrite hearts” are “created and made in us,” but only through “the lamenting of our sins and the acknowledging of our wickedness.” That can only happen through humility?

We are turned to the dust of creation in the words that belong to the Imposition of Ashes, the words of the Penitential Service. “Remember O Man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return,” words which are said at The Imposition of Ashes. Note the connection between words and actions. We are reminded of the dust out of which we have been formed, the dust of creation which connects us to every other living thing. And the ashes? They remind us of our sins and follies which in acknowledging signals that we seek something more. There is something more than dust and ashes in the mystery of Lent.

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Sermons

Sermon for Quinquagesima Sunday

“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three:
but the greatest of these is charity.”

These wonderful words we hear on Quinquagesima Sunday, Love Sunday as it is sometimes called because of these words. They are words which catapult us into Lent and which capture the real vocation and character of our life together. Our churches are to be communities of love, the places where we participate in nothing less than the divine love shown to us so paradoxically and profoundly in the way of the Cross, in the pilgrimage of Lent. Charity means love. Lent is really nothing more than the concentration of the Christian life as the pilgrimage of love.

Paradoxically and yet providentially, Ash Wednesday this year falls on February 14th. Whatever one makes of Valentine’s day – and there are a number of different accounts – it has entered into the imaginary of the Western Church and extends into the secular world where it now dominates; in part, as an economic generator for chocolatiers, vintners, florists, and various aspects of the silk industry. It speaks to modern romanticism and eroticism.

These, too, are forms of love which ultimately belong to the deeper and profounder forms of love highlighted in Paul’s great hymn to love from 1st Corinthians 13 and signaled in the great Gospel story from St. Luke about our “going up to Jerusalem” with Jesus. That journey instructs us in the lessons of love about which we are blind, like the disciples who hear what Jesus says about the meaning of the journey explicitly in terms of his passion and death but “understood none of these things,” and like the blind man “sitting by the way-side begging” and incessantly calling out to Jesus. What does he want? “Lord, that I may receive my sight.” To know our blindness is the necessary condition for our coming to see. In a way, what drives the Lenten journey, here imaged as “going up to Jerusalem” is desire, itself a kind of love. The point is about our seeking what God seeks for us with all our heart, mind, soul and strength; in short, love.

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