Year: 2020

Prayers and liturgy

Beheading of St. John the Baptist

The collect for today, the Feast of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O God, who didst send thy messenger, John the Baptist, to be the forerunner of the Lord, and to glorify thee by his death: Grant that we, who have received the truth of thy most holy Gospel, may bear our witness thereunto, and after his example constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Jeremiah 1:17-19
The Gospel: St. Mark 6:17-29

Ponziano Loverini, Beheading of St. John the BaptistArtwork: Ponziano Loverini, Beheading of St. John the Baptist, 1897. Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta, Gandino, Bergamo, Italy.

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Prayers and liturgy

Augustine, Bishop and Doctor

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo, Doctor of the Church (source):

O merciful Lord,
who didst turn Augustine from his sins to be a faithful bishop and teacher:
grant that we may follow him in penitence and godly discipline,
till our restless hearts find their rest in 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: 2 Timothy 4:1-8
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:13

Guercino, St. Augustine Meditating on the TrinityArtwork: Guercino, St. Augustine Meditating on the Trinity, 1636. Oil on canvas, Prado, Madrid.

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Prayers and liturgy

Robert McDonald, Missionary

The collect for a Missionary, in commemoration of The Venerable Robert McDonald (1829-1913), Archdeacon, Missionary to the Western Arctic, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, our heavenly Father, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thy blessed Apostles and send them forth to preach thy Gospel of salvation unto all the nations: We bless thy holy Name for thy servant Robert McDonald, whose labours we commemorate this day, and we pray thee, according to thy holy Word, to send forth many labourers into thy harvest; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 12:24-13:5
The Gospel: St Matthew 4:13-24a

Robert McDonald was born in Point Douglas, Red River Colony (in present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba). He was the second of ten children born to a Scottish immigrant and his Ojibway wife. Ordained a Church of England priest in 1852, he ministered among the Ojibway people for almost ten years, mastering the Ojibway language and translating parts of the Bible.

McDonald, Tukudh HymnalHe was chosen to establish a Church Missionary Society mission at Fort Yukon, a settlement then believed to be in British territory but now located within Alaska. Reaching Yukon in October 1862, Robert McDonald was the first Protestant missionary designated for mission work in that territory. He ministered to the Gwitch’in and other aboriginal peoples in northwestern parts of North America for over forty years, during which time he baptised 2000 adults and children.

In 1870, he worked among peoples along the Porcupine River (Old Crow) and later settled in Fort MacPherson on the Peel River, in present-day Northwest Territories. He married Julia Kutuq, a local Gwitch’in woman, in 1876; together they had nine children. He was appointed Archdeacon of the Mackenzie Diocese in 1875.

Archdeacon McDonald developed the first writing system for the Gwitch’in language. (The Gwitch’in Athapaskan language is also known as Tukudh.) With the help of Gwitch’in people, including his wife Julia, he translated the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, and compiled a Tukudh hymnal. Finally, in 1911, he published a dictionary and grammar of Tukudh.

Soon after retiring in 1904, he returned to Winnipeg where he died in 1913. He is buried in the cemetery of St John’s Cathedral.

McDonald’s translation of the Book of Common Prayer is posted online here and his grammar and dictionary here.

More biographical information on The Ven. Robert McDonald may be found online at these sites:

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Bartholomew the Apostle

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who didst give to thine Apostle Bartholomew grace truly to believe and to preach thy Word; Grant, we beseech thee, unto thy Church, to love that Word which he believed, and both to preach and receive the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:10-14
The Gospel: St. Luke 22:24-30

The apostle Bartholomew, named in all three synoptic gospels, is generally identified with Nathanael, who is named only in the Gospel of St. John. (For more details, see here.) If this identification is accepted, we have a great deal of information on Bartholomew’s calling (St. John 1:45-51). Jesus described him as “an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit”.

Nothing is known for certain of his post-New Testament ministry. There are conflicting accounts of his missionary activity in Asia Minor, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, and Egypt. Of these, Armenia has the strongest support, where he is said to have been skinned alive before being beheaded. The traditionally accepted place of his martyrdom is Albanopolis (present-day Derbent) near the western shore of the Caspian Sea.

Sigmund Holbein, Martyrdom of Apostle BartholomewArtwork: Sigmund Holbein, Martyrdom of Apostle Bartholomew, c. 1504. Oil on spruce wood, Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

Link to the Audio File of Matins & Ante-Communion for the 11th Sunday after Trinity

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself

We live in a world awash in hypocrisy and self-aggrandizement, a world ethically challenged and endlessly divided. This Gospel concentrates the ethical problem and its solution rather wonderfully.  “Two men went up into the temple to pray,” Jesus tells us in a parable. Luke’s introduction provides the key interpretation. Jesus says “this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous.” The whole point of the parable is to highlight our self-delusions about our sense of our own self-righteousness and thus to point us to the wisdom which is humility.

The key lies, I think, in the attitude of the Pharisee which, quite apart from the Pharisees, a strict and devout religious sect within Judaism which Jesus elsewhere commends, illumines the whole problem, a problem which is very much part of our age and world. He “prayed thus with himself”. To be blunt, that is not prayer. Prayer is not simply with ourselves. That is the problem, the problem of the narcissism of our age, the problem of our endless preoccupations with ourselves and our denials of one another and of God. No parable illustrates this problem more fully than this and no parable points us as a result to the much more radical and freeing nature of prayer.

The paradox is that when we are like the Publican, who “standing afar off, and wouldest not lift up his eyes so much unto heaven, and smote his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner,” then we are more truly ourselves and nearer God. Prayer, simply put, is not with ourselves but with God in whom we are with one another and with ourselves. Only as broken can we be made whole. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise,” as the gradual psalm reminds us (Ps. 51.17). It serves as the mantra for Lent from the great penitential Psalm 51; there it belongs to our turning back to God in repentance, here it is about our being with God in prayer, in humility, the ground of wisdom.

The illustration is heightened by the arrogant self-absorption of the Pharisee’s prayer. He calls attention to himself at the expense of another whom he puts down. In his self-absorption and braggadocio, he despises the Publican. Nothing reveals more profoundly the problem of being closed off to God and to his mercy and grace. Nothing reveals more profoundly the utter vanity and emptiness of ourselves when we are turned in upon ourselves. It is the definition of sin; incurvatus in se, turned in upon ourselves to the exclusion of God and one another, and even more to the putting down of others. Total self-delusion is the point which Jesus is making.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

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

O GOD, who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Mercifully grant unto us such a measure of thy grace, that we, running the way of thy commandments, may obtain thy gracious promises, and be made partakers of thy heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
The Gospel: St Luke 18:9-14

James Brenan, The Pharisee & The PublicanArtwork: James Brenan, The Pharisee & The Publican, 1858.

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King's-Edgehill School Sermons, Sermons

Sermon for Encaenia 2020

“A garden enclosed is my sister … a paradise of pomegranates”

I did not think that I would see you again. I have wanted to “hear your voices,” even if muffled, and to see your comely faces, even if masked! So what is this? A carnival? A masquerade? Mirabile dictu, we are at this special Encaenia service; the real rather than the virtual. We are missing some of your friends and fellow graduates who are not able to be here owing to the restrictions and limitations of these ‘Covidious’ times. But they are with us in intent and in spirit. We embrace them in our gathering as companions in the garden of learning.

It may seem odd, and to use the overworked word, ‘unprecedented,’ but as such historic, to have Encaenia in August rather than June. But to be gathered here at what I call the ‘big Chapel,’ Christ Church, is not without precedent. Encaenia and graduation services were held here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nor are you strangers to this place where you have gathered for Advent & Christmas Services of Lessons and Carols in years past and for the Cadet Church Parade; the latter, a casualty this year of Covid. But never mind, here you are! It may seem trite but ss Bobby McFerrin puts it, “Don’t worry, be happy! In every life we have some trouble but when you worry you make it double”.

One other thing is different. Officially you are already graduates of King’s-Edgehill rather than standing on the edge of that momentous transition from students to alumni. But Encaenia is more than a milestone, a rite of passage. It signals and recalls us to the foundational principles that belong to the life of the School.

The term derives originally from ancient religious festivals but has migrated to the annual celebrations of the intellectual and spiritual traditions that belong to the foundations of schools and universities, particularly those derived from the great medieval universities of Oxford and Cambridge, such as King’s-Edgehill. At a time when our institutions are in disarray and confusion, we do well to recall the principles that belong to their truth and character for they are about things which are greater than ourselves and which hold us to account in the face of our many, many failings. Schools are only as strong as their commitment to their foundational ideals which have, in their truth, a corrective and reformative aspect. For you as graduates, it is about your experience of being at the School, as being part of the School, and as being shaped by the School. As such it is about your experience as grounded in School’s life and history.

Our gathering is not simply defined by Covid-19. You are more than Covid-19 victims. I would caution against such a way of thinking; to define yourself as a victim is to be a victim twice over. Our current epidemiological uncertainties are just as much about our epistemological confusions, that is to say, about how we think about ourselves and the world around us. Encaenia, in recalling us to the principles which define and shape the life of the School, reminds us of things which are greater than the circumstances and events of our world and day. That has been a constant point of emphasis in Chapel. We have, time and time again, considered questions about the self and the other, about how we look upon one another, and, consequently, about how we deal with one another within a wider consideration of reality, intellectually and spiritually understood. The word is respect which is, literally, about looking at things. It relates to our present experience of so-called social distancing and the wearing of masks. Such things are about a kind of respect for one another; looking at one another as more than walking pathogens. Looking at one another with respect, not out of the fear of the other.

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Prayers and liturgy

Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot, Doctor, and Poet

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Bernard (1090-1153), Abbot of Clairvaux, Doctor of the Church, Poet (source):

O merciful redeemer,
who, by the life and preaching of thy servant Bernard,
didst rekindle the radiant light of thy Church:
grant that we in our generation
may be inflamed with the same spirit of discipline and love
and ever walk before thee as children of light;
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: 2 Timothy 4:1-8
The Gospel: St. John 15:7-11

Francisco Goya, St. Bernard Healing a CrippleArtwork: Francisco Goya, St. Bernard Healing a Cripple, 1787. Oil on canvas, Royal Monastery of San Joaquín and Santa Anna, Valladolid, Spain.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity

Audio File for the service of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity 10, 2020

“He beheld the city and wept over it”

“By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Sion,” the Psalmist says in a great and moving passage. A psalm of the exile, it captures vividly the sense of longing for what was and the difficulty of how to carry on in the face of loss. “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” We cannot help but feel the pathos in the lines, the sense of remembering what was once deeply treasured and now seems utterly lost and gone. In another work of epic poetry, written by Virgil many centuries after the Psalms, Aeneas, ship-wrecked upon the Libyan shores of North Africa, comes to the great city of Carthage. He sees engraven upon the walls of Queen Dido’s palace the story of the destruction of Troy, from which he has fled to found the new Troy which will be Rome. “Is there,” he says to his comrade, Achates, “anywhere on earth that does not know the story of our troubles?” These are, he famously says, “the tears in the nature of things,” the human sorrows that touch our minds (Virgil, Aeneid, I. ll. 460-463). Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.

These moving passages from the Hebrew Scriptures and pagan antiquity contrast and illuminate the lacrimae Christi, the tears of Christ. “He beheld the city and wept over it.” What follows is viewed as a prophecy about the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD by the Romans under Titus and recorded by the historian Josephus. No doubt, that event was the occasion for the tears of many in Israel.

What are his tears? In John’s Gospel, “Jesus wept” at the grave of Lazarus, his friend. He enters into our sorrows and sense of loss. His tears are tears of compassion. In the story of the raising of the only son of the widow of Nain, “when he saw her he had compassion on her,” we are told. His tears which precede the raising of Lazarus are tears of compassion, too, it seems. But is it so here in Luke’s account of his weeping over the city of Jerusalem? Why does he weep? Because “thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” It is a poignant statement, an indictment of Sion, of Jerusalem. Why? Because of our ignorance of what belongs to our truth. The Gospel here needs to be seen not only in terms of the Gradual Psalm but in the light of the Epistle.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Tenth Sunday After Trinity

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

LET thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of thy humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
The Gospel: St. Luke 19:41-47a

Stefano Cernotto, The Expulsion of the Moneychangers from the TempleArtwork: Stefano Cernotto, The Expulsion of the Moneychangers from the Temple, c. 1535. Oil on canvas, Fondazione Cini, Venice.

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