Year: 2020

Prayers and liturgy

St. Simon and St. Jude the Apostles

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Simon the Zealot and Saint Jude, Apostles, with Saint Jude the Brother of the Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast built thy Church upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the head corner-stone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their doctrine, that we may be made an holy temple acceptable unto thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect for the Brethren of the Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O HEAVENLY Father, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: We bless thy holy Name for the witness of James and Jude, the kinsmen of the Lord, and pray that we may be made true members of thy heavenly family; through him who willed to be the firstborn among many brethren, even the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: St. Jude 1-4
The Gospel: St. John 14:21-27

Giovanni Francesco Guerrieri, The Martyrdom of Saint Jude and Saint SimonIn the various New Testament lists of the Twelve Apostles (Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:14-16; Acts 1:13), the tenth and eleventh places are occupied by Simon and Judas son of James, also called Thaddaeus.

To distinguish Simon from Simon Peter, Matthew and Mark refer to him as Simon the Cananaean, while Luke refers to him as Simon the Zealot. Both surnames have the same signification and are a translation of the Hebrew qana (the Zealous). The name does not signify that he belonged to the party of Zealots, but that he had zeal for the Jewish law, which he practised before his call. The translation of Matthew and Mark as Simon “the Canaanite” (as, e.g., KJV has it) is simply mistaken.

The New Testament contains a variety of names for the apostle Jude: Matthew and Mark refer to Thaddaeus (a variant reading of Matthew has “Lebbaeus called Thaddaeus”), while Luke calls him Judas son of James. Christian tradition regards Saint Jude and Saint Thaddaeus as different names for the same person. The various names are understood as efforts to avoid associating Saint Jude with the name of the traitor Judas Iscariot. The only time words of Jude are recorded, in St. John 14:22-23, the Evangelist is quick to add “(not Iscariot)” after his name.

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Prayers and liturgy

Cedd, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for a Bishop or Archbishop, on the Feast of St. Cedd (c. 620-664), Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of the East Saxons, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

St. Cedd, BishopO GOD, our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Cedd to be a Bishop in thy Church and to feed thy flock: We beseech thee to send down upon all thy Bishops, the Pastors of thy Church, the abundant gift of thy Holy Spirit, that they, being endued with power from on high, and ever walking in the footsteps of thy holy Apostles, may minister before thee in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 17:22-31
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:1-16

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Prayers and liturgy

Alfred, King

Holy Trinity Sloane Square, King St. AlfredThe collect for today, the Feast of St. Alfred the Great (849-899), King of the West Saxons, Scholar (source):

O God our maker and redeemer,
we beseech thee of thy great mercy
and by the power of thy holy cross
to guide us by thy will and to shield us from our foes,
that, following the example of thy servant Alfred,
we may inwardly love thee above all things;
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: Wisdom 6:1-3,9-12,24-25
The Gospel: St. Luke 6:43-49

Artwork: Alfred King of England, stained glass, Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, London. Photograph taken by admin 20 October 2014.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Link to audio file of the service of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity 20

“Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.”

The days are evil, Paul tells us in Ephesians. It is a sombre sounding note in what otherwise seems to be a rather encouraging exhortation about being “filled with the Spirit”, about “speaking…in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs”, about “singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord”; referencing directly the cultic practices of our liturgy in the Holy Eucharist, “giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”. The ethical imperative of this is clearly signalled. It is about “submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God”.

This requires constant vigilance and instruction. “Be ye not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is”. We are at once fearful and anxious about our world and day and yet complacent and indifferent to the things which matter most. As such we acquiesce and contribute to the evil of our days. This is perhaps the tragedy of the Church in the failure to attend to the principles that belong to its truth and witness.

Something of what that means is seen in the rather disturbing scene presented to us in the Gospel story of the marriage-feast of the only-begotten. This Gospel reminds us in no uncertain terms about the seriousness of the invitation to the banquet of divine love and the consequences of our casual indifference; about our being “cast into outer darkness” with “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. Cast out even when you think you are in. Why? Because of our unreadiness which is nothing less than our indifference and complacency about spiritual things especially with respect to our corporate life in Christ, to what belongs to our fraternal and social friendships in their deepest meaning, as Pope Francis suggests in his latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti. Simply put and I think obviously so, we don’t take church seriously because we don’t take God seriously. Ours is the culture of the shrug ‘whatever’. Where God does not matter nothing matters including ourselves. We neglect the idea of human agency and responsibility which is grounded in our life with God.

Something is required of us. What is required is our active attention to God in Word and Sacrament. Being serious about God is about being serious about ourselves as moral and intellectual agents; in short, an ethical understanding which shapes our thinking and doing. We are being called to account. This is something profoundly positive which is why this Gospel story figures so prominently in the second exhortation to Communion (BCP, pp. 90-92). We are “to consider the dignity of that holy mystery, and the need of devout preparation for the receiving thereof, so that ye may come holy and clean to such a heavenly Feast, in the marriage-garment required by God in holy Scripture, and be received as worthy partakers of that holy Table.”

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Prayers and liturgy

The Twentieth Sunday After Trinity

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

O ALMIGHTY and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that thou wouldest have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 5:15-21
The Gospel: St. Matthew 22:1-14

Brunswick Monogrammist, Parable of the Great Banquet (Brunswick)Artwork: Brunswick Monogrammist, Parable of the Great Banquet, c. 1525-35. Oil on wood, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig (Brunswick), Germany.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 22 October

The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground

Somehow the morning miracle of Chapel continues albeit under the constraints of these ‘covidious’ times. Many thanks to the Chapel Prefects under the leadership of Sarah Hilborn for helping to get readers and servers organized and ready to go all in the flurry of ten minutes before we actually begin. The challenges are particularly great for the Junior School in having at present only one service a week and for the Grade Tens caught in the transition from Junior School to Senior School and needing to be with more than just their own peer cohort.  The whole experience reveals the importance of what was one of the special features of the School, namely, the degree of interaction and connection between students not only of different cultures and languages but of different ages.

The challenges are about the teaching of a programme that focuses, through the lenses of Scripture and in the context of worship, on matters intellectual, spiritual and, especially, ethical. Chapel provides a counter to the mere moralizing of contemporary culture by grounding us in the traditions of spiritual reflection about the human condition. Such is the significance of thinking about the concept of creation and about sin and evil. I have taken the time to ponder the kinds of questions that the proverbial story of the Fall raises since it speaks so profoundly to the questions about what it means to be a self; in short, to be self-aware. That has meant reading Genesis 3 in all four of the Chapel services for the 11s, 12s, 10s and Juniors though with different points of emphasis.

For instance, why do we wear clothes? “Their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked.” We become self-aware, self-conscious. We are made conscious of ourselves as selves through the awakening to sexual difference. These are remarkable images that speak to our current anxieties about the self and bring out the realization that we can only know ourselves as selves through our relation to one another within the created order and with God. We learn this negatively but God’s questions bring us to account. That is the great positive. It is found in the very idea that we are brought to account. It means that we are responsible for our thoughts and actions. This speaks to the idea of human agency and responsibility. It counters completely the idea of being a victim and blaming others.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Luke / Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity

Link to audio file of the service of Matins & Ante-Communion for St. Luke/Trinity 19

Then opened he their understanding

St. Luke is the Church’s spiritual director especially during the Trinity season, it seems to me, at least in terms of the quantity of readings from his Gospel appointed for the Holy Eucharist. But more than just the quantity of readings, there is the quality of these readings, captured best, perhaps, in Dante’s lovely phrase about St. Luke as scriba mansuetudinis Christi, the scribe of the gentleness of Christ. This captures wonderfully something about the quality of the man and his writings. Today is the Feast of St. Luke.

In the Gospel reading, we are told that: “He opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures.” As with the Epistle and Gospel for Trinity 19, the emphasis is one what Jesus wants us to know; “that ye may know,” in the context of the healing of the paralytic in the face of animosity and skepticism. But then, what is that understanding? The Gospel is emphatic: “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name among all nations.” Powerful words which provide us with a sense of the tenor of his Gospel. Death and resurrection, repentance and forgiveness. Could anything be more concise, more clear, and more complete?

We know very little about St. Luke. His “praise is in the Gospel,” the Collect tells us, meaning that St. Luke is mentioned in the Scriptures of the New Testament, quite apart from the traditional attribution of the Third Gospel and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles to his mind and pen. The Epistle reading specifically places him in the company of Paul. “Only Luke is with me,” he says in the context of a discourse about evangelism. Elsewhere Paul identifies him as “the beloved Physician” (Col. 4.14).

The Collect, drawing upon these Scriptural hints, identifies St. Luke as both “an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul”. A healer, to be sure, but by way of something which must strike us as rather strange. The healing is by way of “the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him”. Healing is by way of teaching.

Health care and education are two critical areas of concern in our contemporary culture. The traditions of medicine and education have been strongly and profoundly shaped by Christianity. Hospitals and schools in our western world have their roots and being in explicitly religious institutions arising out of the medieval European world, however much they have become secularised.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 19 – 25 October

Tuesday, October 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Violet Moller’s The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found and Justin Marozzi’s Islamic Empires: Fifteen Cities That Define A Civilization.

Sunday, October 25th, Trinity 20
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Litany & Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Luke the Evangelist

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

ALMIGHTY God, who calledst Luke the Physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, to be an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul: May it please thee that, by the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed; through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Timothy 4:5-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 24:44-52

Mikhail Nesterov, Apostle LukeLuke was a physician, a disciple of St. Paul and his companion on some of his missionary journeys, and the author of both the third gospel and Acts.

It is believed that St. Luke was born a Greek and a Gentile. According to the early Church historian Eusebius, Luke was born at Antioch in Syria. In Colossians 4:10-14, St. Paul speaks of those friends who are with him. He first mentions all those “of the circumcision”–in other words, Jews–and he does not include Luke in this group. Luke’s gospel shows special sensitivity to evangelising Gentiles. It is only in his gospel that we hear the Parable of the Good Samaritan, that we hear Jesus praising the faith of Gentiles such as the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, and that we hear the story of the one grateful leper who is a Samaritan.

St. Luke first appears in Acts, chapter 16, at Troas, where he meets St. Paul around the year 51, and crossed over with him to Europe as an Evangelist, landing at Neapolis and going on to Philippi, “concluding that God had called us to preach the Gospel to them” (note especially the transition into first person plural at verse 10). Thus, he was apparently already an Evangelist. He was present at the conversion of Lydia and her companions and lodged in her house. He, together with St. Paul and his companions, was recognised by the divining spirit: “She followed Paul and us, crying out, ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation’”.

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