Year: 2019

KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 3 April

I have opened my mouth to the Lord

Discipline. It is a loaded word, one which is freighted with a lot of baggage, and largely viewed negatively. I am sure it makes Mr. Faucher cringe to be thought about as the disciplinarian! But that is to overlook the positive and stronger feature of discipline as something essential to education and maturity. Discipline is really about learning.

In the spiritual traditions of the world’s religions and philosophies, there are those special times which are about a recovery and a renewal of the mind and soul in the ethical principles that belong to ourselves as embodied beings capable of grasping meaning and truth. Such things are about spiritual discipline.

Lent is a time for“self-reflection and repentance”, for “prayer, fasting and self-denial”, for “reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word” (BCP, p. 615). To that end, we have embarked upon a series of reading from The Book of Judges, in part, because it provides a self-critique of human reason and presumption, a necessary check upon ourselves, somewhat akin to Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex. It offers a critical view of our humanity in its adolescence, we might say. One of its recurring themes is “the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” The other recurring theme which also ends the work is the phrase “in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did as was their wont.” There is the question about how the truth and order of the will of God in the Law are to be mediated to the people of Israel. In a way, The Book of Judges is a reminder, yet again, of the destructive folly of our humanity when left to our own devices. It reveals the necessity of the Law as the overarching set of ethical principles that shape individual and communal behaviour. Judges shows us what happens when we fail to attend to those principles. As such it recalls us to their necessity. It is a profound check on all and every form of humanism which thinks itself to be self-complete.

It is, to be sure, a pretty violent book with a number of pretty disturbing stories including the ugliest and most disturbing story in the whole of the Scriptures, the story of the Levite’s concubine (which we are not reading this year!). The Judges are motley collection of charismatic individuals raised up by God to try to return Israel to God. It is not about their personal qualities; they are all flawed and importantly so. Yet this awareness of the limitations of our humanity in itself is the important lesson. That awareness can only open us to the need for God’s will and grace in our lives.

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Prayers and liturgy

Richard of Chichester, Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Richard (1197-1253), Bishop of Chichester (source):

St. Richard of ChichesterMost merciful redeemer,
who gavest to thy bishop Richard
a love of learning, a zeal for souls
and a devotion to the poor:
grant that, encouraged by his example,
we may know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
and follow thee more nearly,
day by day;
who livest and reignest with the Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
ever one God, world without end.

The Epistle: Philippians 4:10-13
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25: 31-40

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Prayers and liturgy

Reginald Heber, Bishop and Poet

The collect for today, the commemoration of Reginald Heber (1783-1826), Bishop of Calcutta, Missionary, Hymn writer (source):

Reginald Heber, Bishop of CalcuttaAlmighty God,
you granted to Reginald Heber
a manifold life of service,
to shepherd a rural parish in England
and to preach in the cities of India.
Give to your people such faithfulness,
that in every place and circumstance
they may sing of your power
and minister your gifts
for the glory of your Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 Timothy 3:1-7
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:1-9

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Sermons

Lenten Programme 2019: Thinking Sacramentally IV

“And Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down”

Jesus identifies himself as the bread of life in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel. It is one of the seven so-called “I am” sayings of Jesus in John’s Gospel which point to his essential divinity at the same time as providing a host of metaphors that concern our humanity in terms of our dwelling and abiding in him. Such is the whole matter of thinking sacramentally. “I am the door”, “I am the way, the truth and the life”, “I am the resurrection and the life”, “I am the good shepherd”, “I am the light of the world”, “I am the vine” and “I am the bread of life”. They are all really sacramental in scope and application. They speak to the forms of our incorporation in Christ. But the most ostensibly and obviously sacramental is when Jesus says he is “the bread of life”.

The Gospel for the Fourth Sunday in Lent is John’s account of Jesus’ feeding the multitude in the wilderness. It comes from the sixth chapter where Jesus says he is the “bread of life” and belongs to its sacramental intensity. It belongs, in other words, to what Christ is teaching us about himself and his relation to us. First, he is saying something profound about himself in relation to God who reveals himself as “I am who I am” in and through the burning bush, itself a sacramental image about the invisible made known through the visible, and without the destruction of the natural. The bush burns but is not destroyed. Secondly, he is saying something profound about us in our relation to him. In other words, his relation to the Father in the Communion of the Trinity is the ground of his relation to us through these metaphors of incorporation; in short, metaphors about our life in Christ.

Articles XXV through XXXI of the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion deal with the matter of the sacraments in a reformed understanding and in the context of the intense debates about the sacraments at the time of the reformation. Article XXVIII deals explicitly with the Lord’s Supper. It is crucial to keep in mind Article XXV which treats of the sacraments in general and makes the important point that they are “effectual signs of grace”; in other words, they effect what they signify. What is critical for the Anglican reformers is preserving the essential nature of the sacraments as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”. What that means is the necessity of preserving the sign in relation to the thing signified and that requires maintaining the integrity of the natural in relation to the supernatural. This is the key point which shapes the Anglican Reformed understanding of the sacraments. Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.

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Prayers and liturgy

Henry Budd, Priest

The collect for today, the commemoration of Henry Budd (1814-75), first North American Indian to be ordained to the ministry in the Church of England, Missionary to the Cree nation (source):

The Rev. Henry BuddCreator of light, we offer thanks for thy priest Henry Budd, who carried the great treasure of Scripture to his people the Cree nation, earning their trust and love. Grant that his example may call us to reverence, orderliness and love, that we may give thee glory in word and action; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 5:13-18
The Gospel: St. John 14:15-21

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Prayers and liturgy

Lent Prose 2019

Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.

To thee, Redeemer, on thy throne of glory:
lift we our weeping eyes in holy pleadings:
listen, O Jesu, to our supplications.

Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.

O thou chief cornerstone, right hand of the Father: way of salvation, gate of life celestial:
cleanse thou our sinful souls from all defilement.

Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.

God, we implore thee, in thy glory seated:
bow down and hearken to thy weeping children: pity and pardon all our grievous trespasses.

Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.

Sins oft committed, now we lay before thee:
with true contrition, now no more we veil them:
grant us, Redeemer, loving absolution.

Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.

Innocent captive, taken unresisting:
falsely accused, and for us sinners sentenced,
save us, we pray thee, Jesu, our Redeemer.

Hear us, O Lord, have mercy upon us: for we have sinned against thee.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Psalm 51.17

Lord, for thy tender mercies’ sake, lay not our sins to our charge; But forgive that is past, and give us grace to amend our sinful lives; To decline from sin, and incline to virtue; That we may walk with a perfect heart before thee, now and evermore. (BCP, Penitential Service, p. 614)

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. (BCP, p. 138)

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

“What are they among so many?”

This morning’s Gospel complements our Lenten Programme, ‘Thinking Sacramentally’. Taken from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, sometimes known as ‘the Bread of Life discourse’, it is profoundly sacramental. The whole chapter is about the idea of the sacramental, the idea of the invisible being made known through the visible. And perhaps nowhere in the Scriptures is the harmony of sign and the thing signified made more apparent than in that chapter as a whole.

This Gospel has exercised a strong hold on the liturgical and sacramental imaginary of the Church. It is read today in the midst of the journey of Lent as a signal and significant feature of the pageant of justifying grace. From Advent to Trinity Sunday in the eucharistic lectionary we are essentially journeying with Christ in his work of the redemption of our humanity. Something of the nature of that journey is wonderfully concentrated here for us. We live, it seems, and live abundantly from the crumbs that are gathered up from the picnic feast with Jesus in the wilderness. There is an echo here to the Gospel reading for The Second Sunday in Lent about ourselves as like “the little dogs who eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table”.

This Gospel has also been read for many centuries on the last Sunday of the Trinity Season, on what we have later come to call The Sunday Next Before Advent. There it is read as a signal and significant feature of the pageant of sanctifying grace, as a kind of gathering up of the fragments of grace in the course of our spiritual journey from Trinity Sunday through to Advent Sunday which is all about sanctification. What Christ has done for us is to be lived in us. Such is sanctifying grace.

The two are interrelated. Sanctifying grace always recalls us to the justifying grace of Christ just as justifying grace always requires our taking a hold of it in our lives in sanctification. The interrelation of these two forms is our incorporation in Christ, the meaning of our life in Christ. It is profoundly and necessarily sacramental. It has everything to do with the relationship between God and man in Jesus Christ and the ways in which we participate in his divinity and his humanity through the grand pageants of creation and redemption and the great pageants of justification and sanctification. They are concentrated for us in this Gospel reading.

“O God, who didst wonderfully create and yet more wondrously restore the dignity of our human nature, Mercifully grant that by the mystery of this water and this wine we may be made partakers of his divinity who didst humble himself to share our humanity”. It is a prayer that you may have heard me say quietly and privately at the time of the preparation of the elements at the altar. It captures the nature of sacramental thinking, the idea of our being with God through God’s being with us, through the interplay of creation and redemption, and the union of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ. Today’s readings teach us is that our life in Christ happens through the harmony of Word and Sacrament, through the things of the world being made the instruments of grace and salvation.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 1 – 7 April

Tuesday, April 2nd
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme: Thinking Sacramentally IV

Thursday, April 4th
2:00pm Ministerial Service – The Elms
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Friday, April 5th
6:00-9:00pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, April 7th, Passion Sunday / Fifth Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion (followed by Men’s Club Breakfast)
10:30am Holy Communion
4:00pm Evening Prayer – Christ Church

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday in Lent

Juan de Flandes, Multiplication of the Loaves and FishesThe collect for today, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of thy grace may mercifully be relieved; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 4:26-5:1
The Gospel: St. John 6:5-14

Artwork: Juan de Flandes, The Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes, c. 1496-1504. Oil on canvas, Royal Palace of Madrid.

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Prayers and liturgy

John Keble, Scholar and Poet

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Keble (1792-1866), Priest, Tractarian, Poet (source):

Father of the eternal Word,
in whose encompassing love
all things in peace and order move:
grant that, as thy servant John Keble
adored thee in all creation,
so we may have a humble heart of love
for the mysteries of thy Church
and know thy love to be new every morning,
in 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 12:9-21
The Gospel: St Matthew 5:1-12

John KebleJohn Keble’s Assize Sermon entitled “National Apostasy“, delivered at Oxford on 14 July 1833, is regarded as the beginning of the renewal movement known as the Oxford Movement or Tractarian Movement. In that sermon, preached at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Rev. Keble condemned the growth of liberalism in the Church of England and took the nation to task for turning away from God and ignoring the prophetic calling of the church. The sermon caused a sensation across Britain.

Between 1833 and 1841, Rev. Keble, John Henry Newman, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and others issued a series of 90 pamphlets called Tracts For The Times (hence Tractarian Movement), in which they presented their views on ecclesiology and theology. Tractarianism emphasised the importance of the ministry and the sacraments as God-given ordinances and ultimately developed into Anglo-Catholicism, which has been highly influential in the Anglican Communion as well as other Christian traditions.

Keble College, Oxford, was founded in his memory in 1870. The College was designed by William Butterfield, a leading exponent of Victorian Gothic who had been raised in a Nonconformist family but later became a convinced High-Church Anglican. He and other architects influenced by the Oxford Movement looked to medieval cathedrals for inspiration and designed churches full of colour as a celebration of God’s creation. The walls of Keble College Chapel are lined with brilliant mosaics showing scenes from the Old Testament and the life of Christ, and patristic and medieval saints. Some see Keble College and Chapel as the high point of Butterfield’s architectural achievements.

John Keble’s page at Hymnary.org lists dozens of hymns. Some of Rev. Keble’s writings, including “National Apostasy” and seven Tracts For The Times, are posted here. All of the tracts are posted here.

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