Christ Church

Arise, and go down to the potter’s house

This week we have had two intriguing readings from two of the major prophets, Ezekiel and Jeremiah, the one with the image of eating the scroll of the Lord, the other about being the clay in the hands of the divine potter. These are wonderful images that speak about the nature of the educational project at King’s-Edgehill School. It is about character, about formation, about words taking shape in us and shaping us in turn.

Jeremiah’s famous image of the Potter and the Clay is a profound statement of truth. God is the Potter and we are the clay. He shapes us and not otherwise. It is an understanding that belongs to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The struggle of our age, perhaps, is to overcome the dogmatic skepticism which would refuse to give to the Potter what belongs to the “rational” clay of our humanity, namely the acknowledgment that we are the creatures whom God has made for himself.

Yet, left by itself, that we are the vessels whom the divine Potter has shaped and made would be an unbearable truth. It would be unbearable because Scripture and experience reveal us to ourselves as broken pots – broken through no fault of the Potter, we must add, but because of ourselves.

At this point the image of the Potter and the Clay deepens into mystery. We are broken pots because we have failed to will the intent of the Maker. Something is required of us. We are not simply passive receptacles of God’s will and purpose – unassuming, inert, and unmoving clay. No. We have to will the shape that the divine Potter wants for each of us. It means taking words and ideas into ourselves and making them part of ourselves. It is about how the divine Word takes shape in us to his glory and for our endless good.

And yet, that you and I are but so many broken pots, would remain an uncomfortable but inescapable truth were it not for the grace and mercy of God. This requires of us a deeper humility, a profounder openness to the Poet/Maker and Shaper of Souls.

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The collect for today, the commemoration of George Herbert (1593-1633), Priest, Poet (source):

King of glory, king of peace,
who didst call thy servant George Herbert
from the pursuit of worldly honours
to be a priest in the temple of his God and king:
grant us also the grace to offer ourselves
with singleness of heart in humble obedience to thy service;
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.
Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 5:1-4
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:1-10

The hymn, “Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing”, was originally a poem by George Herbert, published in The Temple.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

The heavens are not too high,
His praise may thither fly:
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

The church with psalms must shout,
No door can keep them out:
But above all, the heart
Must bear the longest part.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

George Herbert was born to a wealthy family in Montgomery, Wales. Educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he appeared headed for a prominent public career, but the deaths of King James I and two patrons ended that possibility.

He chose to pursue holy orders in the Church of England and became rector at Bemerton, near Salisbury, in 1629, where he died four years later of tuberculosis. His preaching and service to church and parishioners contributed to his reputation as an exemplary pastor. He did not become known as a poet until shortly after he died, when his poetry collection The Temple was published.

He is buried in Saint Andrew Bemerton Churchyard.

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

O ALMIGHTY God, who into the place of the traitor Judas didst choose thy faithful servant Matthias to be of the number of the twelve Apostles: Grant that thy Church, being alway preserved from false Apostles, may be ordered and guided by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:15-26
The Gospel: St. John 15:1-11

The name of this saint is probably an abbreviation of Mattathias, meaning “gift of Yahweh”.

Matthias was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot after Judas had betrayed Jesus and then committed suicide. In the time between Christ’s Ascension and Pentecost, the small band of disciples, numbering about 120, gathered together and Peter spoke of the necessity of selecting a twelfth apostle to replace Judas. Peter enunciated two criteria for the office of apostle: He must have been a follower of Jesus from the Baptism to the Ascension, and he must be a witness to the resurrected Lord. This meant that he had to be able to proclaim Jesus as Lord from first-hand personal experience. Two of the brothers were found to fulfill these qualifications: Matthias and Joseph called Barsabbas also called the Just. Matthias was chosen by lot. Neither of these two men is referred to by name in the four Gospels, although several early church witnesses, including Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea, report that Matthias was one of the seventy-two disciples.

Like the other apostles and disciples, St. Matthias received the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Since he is not mentioned later in the New Testament, nothing else is known for certain about his activities. He is said to have preached in Judaea for some time and then traveled elsewhere. Various contradictory stories about his apostolate have existed since early in church history. The tradition held by the Greek Church is that he went to Cappadocia and the area near the Caspian Sea where he was crucified at Colchis. Some also say he went to Ethiopia before Cappadocia. Another tradition holds that he was stoned to death and then beheaded at Jerusalem.

The Empress St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, is said to have brought St Matthias’s relics to Rome c. 324, some of which were moved to the Benedictine Abbey of St Matthias, Trier, Germany, in the 11th century.

Artwork: Bernaert van Orley, Choosing St. Matthias to be an apostle (detail from Altarpiece of Saints Thomas and Matthias), 1520. Oil on wood, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

“If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities”

How weird (or at least how strange)! Don’t we all want to call attention to our accomplishments and talents, to our abilities and qualities of character and action? Or even better to have others celebrate such things so that we can bask in the glow of their affirmation and attention? Look at  me! Look at me! How great am I! So what can it mean to glory in the things which concern our weaknesses? Yet, Paul, once again, is on to something of fundamental significance with respect to the journey of our souls to God. It is not about us but about God in us and that makes all the difference. The ‘Gesima’ Sundays recall us to some basic features of our life with God understood cosmically and not just narcissistically. It is about being grounded in God. It is not simply about you, impossible as that may seem. You may recall the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where the father says to Calvin ‘it’s not all about you’ to which he says, ‘How is that even remotely possible?’

He is not alone. We do tend, I am sorry to say, to want to reduce everything to ourselves and reduce others to ourselves. Such is a kind of incurvatus in se, a turning in upon ourselves. To think that we are the centre of the universe is utterly delusional. Yet our culture caters to that concept constantly and completely. We manage even  to turn good works or its pretence into self-serving promotional selfies.

So Paul’s words are saving grace, a necessary corrective but also an instructional gold-mine. He is hinting at a profound religious understanding that belongs to our Christian faith. To glory in the things which concern our infirmities is nothing less than to glory in the grace of God who alone can make something good out of our follies and failures, even out of our sins and wickedness. That is pretty powerful and speaks to a whole other understanding of human activity and human character. It is profoundly freeing and life transforming. Our highest activity is found in our working with the grace of God alive in us and knowing that his grace is the moving principle which redeems and perfects our humanity. Wow!

As we have seen, the virtues of the soul become forms of love, forms of our participation in God’s love. The ‘Gesima’ Sundays remind us of the love of God manifest in Jesus and indicate how that love is to live in us.

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Monday, February 25th
4:45-5:15pm Confirmation Class – KES, Rm # 206

Tuesday, February 26th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Thursday, February 28th
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Friday, March 1st
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, March 3rd, Quinquagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Events:

Wednesday, March 6th, Ash Wednesday
7:00am Penitential Service; 12 noon, Holy Communion & Imposition of Ashes; 2:35-2:45pm, Imposition of Ashes at King’s-Edgehill Chapel.

Wednesday, March 13th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme I

The collect for today, Sexagesima (or the Second Sunday Before Lent) from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD God, who seest that we put not our trust in any thing that we do: Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 11:21b-31
The Gospel: St Luke 8:4-15

Artwork: Follower of Maerten de Vos, The Parable of the Sower, 16th century. Oil on panel, Private collection.

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):

Almighty 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

Behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind

Ecclesiastes is the most philosophical of the books of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures in terms of form and content. It offers a profound reflection upon the whole range of human activities in terms of what we might call the Summum Bonum, the highest or greatest good for our humanity. Is it pleasure? Is it wealth? Is it power? Is it knowledge? Is it religion (understood naturally)? All of these are examined and found wanting. “There is nothing new under the sun.”

This seems pessimistic and bleak but really the Preacher – to use an approximate English term equivalent to the Hebrew word Qoheleth, rendered in Greek and Latin as Ecclesiastes – is pointing out something important about our humanity. We seek something beyond what the world can provide. “God,” he says “has put eternity into our minds.” That we can reflect on the whole range of human activity and see its emptiness allows for the possibility, like Plato, to look to what is above this world rather than simply be constrained by all that is “under the sun,” or, like Descartes, to look into ourselves and discover ourselves as thinking selves (the cogito) and to discover God. There is at the very least the possibility of an openness to what is transcendent at the same time as an honest and critical view of the finite world in which we find ourselves. A remarkable book with a remarkable outlook.

The recurring refrain is “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Vanity here doesn’t simply mean our endless narcissisms about ourselves, the constant attention to our selfies, endlessly gazing into our vanity mirrors. It is about the sense of emptiness and futility, the sense of incompleteness to all that we invest ourselves in only to discover that it does not satisfy the human spirit. The Hebrew image is fairly concrete and is captured nicely in the Revised Standard version translation, a “striving after wind.” Who has seen the wind, let alone caught the wind? To try to catch the wind is an exercise in futility. The King James version offers an early modern take on that sense of futility, providing an essential insight into one of the features of the so-called modern turn, a turn to subjectivity. “All is vanity, and vexation of spirit.”  “Striving after wind” can only result in a “vexation of spirit,” a sense of frustration born out of futility.

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Every one that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things

There is something exotic about these three Sundays, known sometimes as the ‘Gesima’ Sundays. They have been largely lost from view in the more prosaic and rather unimaginative re-ordering of the church calendar in the contemporary liturgies with such things as Sundays in Ordinary Time, for instance, or the mere prolongation of Sundays after Epiphany. But more important than the names is what they signify.

They are in one sense pre-Lenten Sundays that prepare us for the journey of Lent but that journey is really the journey of the soul to God concentrated into the span of forty days. The ‘Gesima’ Sundays reflect some of the different patterns about the development of the quadragesima, the forty days of Lent in terms of what days were excluded from the numbering. Septuagesima is the week of the seventieth day before Easter at one time marking the quadragesima by excluding certain days like Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, for instance, from the Scriptural idea of forty days of fasting and prayer that lies at the heart of Lent in the penitential progress towards Easter. In short, these Sundays have a special spiritual significance in relation to Lent and to the Lent of our lives in faith; hence the purple hangings this year.

They are all about the virtues of the soul as transformed by grace. They speak to a quality of inwardness and excellence of character that is all about activity. We are not simply passive in relation to the grace of God imputed and infused into us through Word and Sacrament. These Sundays remind us of the activities of the soul informed by the grace of Christ. In terms of today’s Gospel, for instance, we are not to “stand here idle” all the day long but to “go into the vineyard” of creation and work, “and whatsoever is right that shall ye receive.” This speaks both to the dignity of human labour in itself and to justice as the operative principle that governs our labour, a justice that cannot be measured in our terms as the Gospel rather sternly shows. Divine justice provides what is right absolutely speaking and in principle. God’s justice is never reducible to the scales of human justice, again by definition. Yet justice is the last and the greatest of the classical or cardinal virtues in the human soul and for the human community.

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Tuesday, February 19th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club – Coronation Room: No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe and The History of Canada in Ten Maps by Adam Shoalts

Thursday, February 21st
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Friday, February 22nd
11:00am Holy Communion -Dykeland Lodge
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, February 24th, Sexagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
7:00pm Holy Communion – KES Chapel