Year: 2020

Sermons

Lenten Programme on The Lord’s Prayer I

“Now as our Saviour Christ hath commanded and taught us,
we are bold to say, Our Father”

Even in a post-Christian age, the Lord’s Prayer continues to be used and remembered. It is probably the only prayer that many know off by heart. Yet we know it mostly, perhaps entirely, from its liturgical use. Somehow it is well-known and, remarkably, in its older English translation, the King’s James version. Somehow it is memorable.

We know it. We use it. But do we think much about it? Do we appreciate its radical meaning and its essential place in the life of prayer? Or do we simply rattle it off automatically and without much thought? Let’s be honest. And yet, there is something compelling about the Lord’s Prayer, as it has come to be called, that somehow stays with us and is part of us. It is the prayer which shapes all and every prayer in our liturgies and in praying. But what is prayer?

Prayer, Richard Hooker, famously tells, signals all the service we ever do unto God. Prayer is about our fundamental orientation to God and to our being with God. It is not just about seeking his will; it signals the profound idea of being with God in his will for us through prayer. “The whole of our life says Our Father,” the great 2nd/3rd century theologian Origen of Alexandria notes. All prayer, as Archbishop Rowan Williams suggests, is about “letting Jesus pray in us.” Prayer in other words belongs to our incorporation into the life of God in Christ.

It will be our Lenten task this year to explore, however briefly, the Lord’s Prayer to appreciate its teaching and meaning and to look at some of the ways in which its teaching has been considered by the ancient Fathers of the Patristic period, by certain medieval writers, as well as reformed and modern writers. The Lord’s Prayer is the living breath of the Church; the breath of the Holy Spirit in us through the words of the Son to the Father. And it is, as Origen so rightly notes, our whole life.

We call it the Lord’s Prayer. Why? And what does that mean? Simply that this is the prayer which Jesus has taught us. Jesus is Lord. “No  one can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost” (1 Cor. 12.3). We learn the Lord’s Prayer from Jesus himself as presented to us in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. “When you pray,” Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel, “be not like the Hypocrites… Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask. Pray then like this: Our Father ….” (Matt. 6.5-13).

(more…)

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Perpetua and her Companions, Martyrs

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Perpetua, Saint Felicitas, and their companions (d. 203), Martyrs at Carthage (source):

O holy God,
who gavest great courage to Perpetua,
Felicity and their companions:
grant that we may be worthy to climb the ladder of sacrifice
and be received into the garden of peace;
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: Hebrews 10:32-39
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:9-14

Perpetua, Felicitas, and five other catechumens were arrested in North Africa after emperor Septimus Severus forbade new conversions to Christianity. They were thrown to wild animals in the circus of Carthage.

The early church writer Tertullian records, in what appear to be Perpetua’s own words, a vision in which she saw a ladder to heaven and heard the voice of Jesus saying, “Perpetua, I am waiting for you”. She climbed the ladder and reached a large garden where sheep were grazing. From this, she understood that she and her companions would be martyred.

Tertullian’s The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas is posted here.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Christian Martyrs’ Last PrayerArtwork: Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer, 1863-83. Oil on canvas, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Print this entry

KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 4 March

Truth, Lord, yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs
which fall from their masters’ table

For the most part, dogs get rather bad press in the Scriptures. Dogs returning to their vomit, dogs licking up the blood of Jezebel; these are hardly attractive images. To call someone a dog is an insult. On the other hand, in the Book of Tobit, for example, we have the lovely image of Tobias’ dog which captures something of the sense of the dog as man’s best friend and loyal companion, not unlike Odysseus’s dog, Argos, who sees his master in disguise after twenty years and doesn’t betray him but “passes into the darkness,” as Homer says, his destiny fulfilled. Elsewhere in the New Testament, there are the dogs that lick the sores of Lazarus lying at the gate of the rich man, destitute and in want, the dogs that show compassion and care in the face of our indifference and neglect of one another.

And then there is this story which opens us out to a whole other tradition and way of thinking about dogs in relation to our humanity. It is a powerful and, in a way, a disturbing story. A Canaanite woman comes to Jesus seeking the healing of her daughter, “grievously vexed with a devil,” disturbed in her mind, we might say. She is a non-Israelite. And yet she embodies most completely what it truly means to be an Israelite, namely, one who strives with God. Her exchange with Jesus is amazing for one simple reason. She, like the blind man by the wayside, won’t give up. She has a hold of something, an insight into the nature of God, of which she she won’t let go. She perseveres in the face of intimidating set-backs: silence, rebuke, and insult. Yet she, to put it bluntly, sticks with it.

To be an Israelite is to strive with God. Jacob becomes Israel precisely through that idea and experience. Here this Canaanite woman strives with God in Christ, seeing in him the healing power of God which alone can heal her daughter. We can say she is being put to the test and yet it is really the disciples whom Jesus is putting to the test. God cannot be simply the God of one group at the expense of others. At the same time Jesus draws out of the woman the deep truth and insight of her faith. The climax of the exchange is about little dogs. “It is not right to take the children’s bread and to cast it to dogs,” Jesus says, in what can only be received as a kind of insult. “Truth, Lord,” she replies, “yet even the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Exquisite and profound. It captures her insight into the radical nature of Christ and what God wants from us, namely, our active engagement with his will and purpose for our humanity.

(more…)

Print this entry

Statements and other writings

A Very Brief and Short Introduction to a History of King’s-Edgehill School

On Saturday, February 22nd, the school chaplain, the Rev’d David Curry, gave a talk on the history of King’s-Edgehill School for the West Hants Historical Society in Windsor. It was not and could not be, as he said “THE” history but at best ‘a very brief and short introduction to a history of King’s-Edgehill.’ The talk emphasized the significance of the School and its history for the Town of Windsor. The presentation began with an image of the burning of Edgehill on September 1st, 2016, the loss of one of the most iconic, one of the most important, and certainly one of the most visible architectural structures in the landscape of Windsor. The campus of King’s, by comparison, is largely hidden from view. The history of King’s-Edgehill does not simply begin with the amalgamation in 1976 but goes back to the eighteenth century and is really the story of three institutions: the School, variously referred to as the Academy, King’s Collegiate School, and King’s College School founded in 1788, the University of King’s College founded in 1789, and the Edgehill Church School for Girls in 1891.

Born between two revolutions, the American and the French Revolution, these institutions belong to a loyalist sensibility about the need for “a seminary of learning” with regard to public service, especially in the learned professions of law, medicine, and theology. This is signalled in the mottoes of the School and College and of Edgehill: Deo, Regi, Legi, Gregi and Fideliter. “For God, for the Law, for the King, and for the People” and “Faithfulness”. Such mottoes belong to an educational programme that emphasizes leadership and public service, exemplified for example in terms of the commitments and sacrifices of both the students of King’s (School and College) and Edgehill in the First World War. Attention was called to Clare Gass, an Edgehill Girl who among others served as a nurse in the First World War and whose diary contains the first mention of John McCrae’s famous poem “In Flanders Fields” six weeks before its publication. Discipline and duty was what Headmistress Gena Smith expected of the girls of Edgehill.

The talk touched upon the Anglo-Irish tensions that threatened the early life of the School and the College, not because of the clergy but owing to Judge Alexander Croke’s vision of creating a little England here in the colonies, a vision also shared by Thomas Chandler Haliburton. This vision ignored the diversity of backgrounds culturally and religiously and was opposed by the founding father of the School and College, Bishop Charles Inglis, the first bishop consecrated for an overseas diocese. Croke insisted that the President of the College have degrees from Oxford or Cambridge and that the statutes follow the models of Oxford and Cambridge in terms of subscription to the Thirty-nine articles, thus alienating significant elements of the settler populations of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

The first President of the College was William Cochrane who was Irish and Irish educated at Trinity College, Dublin. The first Headmaster of the School was Inglis’ nephew, Archibald Paine Inglis, also Irish (as was Inglis) and educated at University College, Dublin, Ireland. Cochrane was a major figure in the early life of the School and College, being head of both on occasion but then ‘demoted’ to being vice-president with the arrival of Oxford educated Charles Porter. It is enough to say that they didn’t get along and that along with the problem of the statues, this affected the early years of both institutions. Throughout the 19th century, there were a total of four years in which the School was not open. The glory days of Windsor and of the College and School were the 1880s and 1890s when the College in particular was regarded as an intellectually serious seminary of learning.

It was the fire, one hundred years ago on February 5th, 1920, which was catastrophic for the Town as well as the College and the Schools. It resulted in King’s College being relocated to Halifax, probably the most devastating of several factors which contributed to the decline of Windsor. Had the University stayed, Windsor would have continued to develop as a university town much like Woflville or Antigonish. The presentation ended with an artistic image of Edgehill which adorned the School’s yearbook for the year 2016. A lively Q and A followed the presentation.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

John and Charles Wesley

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Wesley (1703-91) and Charles Wesley (1708-88), Evangelists, Hymn Writers, Leaders of the Methodist Revival (source):

Merciful God,
who didst inspire John and Charles Wesley with zeal for thy gospel:
grant to all people boldness to proclaim thy word
and a heart ever to rejoice in singing thy praises;
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 Lesson: Isaiah 49:5-6
The Gospel: St. Luke 9:2-6

Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old ManHudson, Reverend Charles Wesley

Artwork:
(left) Frank O. Salisbury, John Wesley as an Old Man, 1932. Oil on canvas, John Wesley’s House & The Museum of Methodism, London.
(right) Thomas Hudson, Reverend Charles Wesley, 1749. Oil on canvas, Epworth Old Rectory, Epworth, Lincolnshire.

Print this entry

Prayers and liturgy

Chad, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Chad (d. 672), Bishop of Lichfield, Missionary (source):

Christopher Whall, Victoria and Albert Museum, St. ChadAlmighty God,
who, from the first fruits of the English nation
that turned to Christ,
didst call thy servant Chad
to be an evangelist and bishop of his own people:
grant us grace so to follow his peaceable nature,
humble spirit and prayerful life,
that we may truly commend to others
the faith which we ourselves profess;
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: Philippians 4:10-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:1,7-14

Artwork: Christopher Whall, St. Chad, c. 1905-10. Clear and coloured glass with paint and silver stain, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. (Reduced replica of panel in Lady Chapel, Gloucester Cathedral.) Photograph taken by admin, 27 September 2015.

Print this entry

Sermons

Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent

Receive not the grace of God in vain

There can be no greater vanity in all senses of the word than the yielding to temptation. It is both empty nothingness and narcissistic self-absorption. It is not by accident that the First Sunday in Lent begins with the story of the temptations of Christ. We ignore it at our peril because it speaks so directly to our hearts and minds and presents a pressing (and depressing) dilemma and challenge. Temptations ‘r us, to be sure, but the point so often missed is that temptation is really about our relation to the good. The story reveals our temptations. Christ is tempted for us and for our learning about the nature of temptation and its overcoming. Thus, temptation has altogether to do with a necessary testing of our wills in order to bring out the truth of our willing and our knowing, namely, that upon which they depend.

The Gospel shows us the making known of the essential forms of temptation and their overcoming. With respect to such forms, we confront a fairly sophisticated understanding of temptation that is far deeper and wiser than what our therapeutic culture offers, only because the latter is so divorced from the moral and ethical traditions to which this story belongs. We have here an order of temptation and a making known of the constitutive elements of our humanity. To put it bluntly, what is revealed negatively through the temptations is the positive form of our relation to the goodness of God. We are tempted in certain ways and they all reveal that to which we so easily succumb. Such is our weakness in contrast to the strength of Christ who is “tempted yet undefiled,” quite unlike us. He is tempted for our sake, for our learning and living, we might say. The Gospel shows us the overcoming of temptation not by us alone but, as the Epistle suggests, by our working with the order of grace.

Nothing could be more counter-culture. Why? Because our culture defines you by your temptations and says that is what you are. It means being defined by a negative. Such is the culture of addiction, of dependence and co-dependence, of this diagnosis and that. There are, of course, certain conditions and diagnoses that are part of human experience. But is that what fundamentally defines what it means to be human? Are you the diagnosis, the condition, the disease? Once you assume the medicalization of society and human behaviour, then there is really no temptation; there is only the collapse and capitulation to a deterministic way of thinking that denies accountability and agency. There is no temptation, only determinism. You are determined and defined but at the expense of personality and agency, at the expense of your humanity.

(more…)

Print this entry

Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 2 – 8 March

Monday, March 2nd
4:45-5:15pm Confirmation Class – KES
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, March 3rd
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, March 5th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme on the Lord’s Prayer I – Parish Hall

Friday, March 6th
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders/Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, March 8th, Second Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Events:

Please note that the dates for the Lenten Programme have been changed to Thursdays owing to the use of the Hall on Tuesday nights. The Programme will focus on Patristic, Medieval and Reformed interpretations of the Lord’s Prayer. The dates are March 5th, March 19th, March 26th, and April 2nd, 2020.

Print this entry

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

Philips Augustijn Immenraet, The Temptation of ChristArtwork: Philips Augustijn Immenraet, The Temptation of Christ, 1663. Oil on copper, Museum of John Paul II Collection (Porczynski Gallery), Warsaw.

Print this entry

KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 26 February

Lord, that I may receive my sight

The most important thing that has happened to you this week, perhaps, is that you have heard the reading from Luke 18.31-41. Coupled with the Paul’s wonderful hymn of love in 1st Corinthians 13, it speaks directly to the journey of our humanity. The concept of life as a journey is a commonplace but that doesn’t take away from its significance. The idea of a journey implies a destination, a place to which we are going but aren’t there yet. It suggests that there are limitations and obstacles which have to be overcome or engaged.

These two readings, the one which we heard in Chapel this week, the other a few weeks ago belong to the Christian preparation for Lent, a spiritual season of renewal and discipline. The essential elements of the Christian journey of the soul to God have their counterparts in the spiritual traditions of the other great religions and philosophies of the world. The journey is about illumination, purgation, and union or perfection. The reading from Luke as complemented with Paul’s great hymn of love speaks directly to the very nature of education. It, too, is about illumination or enlightenment, about purgation or the clearing of our minds and souls from all the clutter and chaos that results in confusion and disarray, and about union, a sense of oneness and wholeness of our being. But what makes this readings so particularly powerful is that they show us the essential conjunction of knowing and loving.

To put the point, very simply, there can be no learning, no journey without the desire to know. As Aristotle rather famously (or infamously) notes, “all men desire by nature to know.” In one way or another, the activity of thinking and knowing is fundamental to what it means to be human. Coupled to that activity is the activity of desire, of wanting to know, of love. The Gospel highlights this interconnection. Jesus says, “behold, we go up to Jerusalem.” There is a journey. He explains exactly what the journey means. It means the things of his passion and death out of which comes his resurrection. He tells them – us – what it means. But, as Luke puts it, “they understood none of these things.”

(more…)

Print this entry