Month: January 2021

Prayers and liturgy

The Second Sunday After The Epiphany

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

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who dost govern all things in heaven and earth: Mercifully hear the supplications of thy people, and grant us thy peace all the days of our life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 12:6-16
The Gospel: St. John 2:1-11

Juan de Flandes, The Marriage Feast at CanaArtwork: Juan de Flandes, The Marriage Feast at Cana, c. 1500-04. Oil on wood, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 14 January

Rachel weeping for her children

The aggressive atheist and neo-Darwinist, Richard Dawkins, claims that the God of the Old Testament is “the most unpleasant character in all fiction” and goes on to list a whole raft of vituperative adjectives that are most unpleasant. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks replied, much to Dawkins discomfort, “Ah, I see you are a Christian atheist.” The Old Testament, in reference to the Hebrew or Jewish Scriptures, is a Christian term.

Dawkins’ view is not new and belongs to a common misconception of the relation between the Old and New Testament which overstates the contrast. This is seen, for instance, in the idea of Law versus Grace, forgetting that the Law as given by God is therefore also grace; or the similar idea of justice versus mercy or love, forgetting that mercy is just as intrinsic to the Hebrew Scriptures as it is to the New Testament. Overstating the contrasts between the two testaments belongs to a conflict narrative which pits Jew against Christian. In turn, the aggressive and naive atheism of Dawkins assumes the same conflict narrative between modern science and religion. Such is a profound distortion and misconception.

Dawkins has his precursors, ranging from Marcion in the 2nd century to Thomas Jefferson in the late 18th century. Marcion could not reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament and so conveniently edited out large swaths of the Old Testament and as well great chunks of the New Testament. For him the contrast was between love and judgement. In the case of the third President of America, Thomas Jefferson, the concern was about reason versus revelation, particularly the miracle stories of the Christian Gospels. Jefferson took his scissors to the New Testament to excise all such things leaving merely the husk of a kind of moralizing Jesus accommodated to the precepts (and presumptions) of human reason.

Such things reveal an attitude and a set of assumptions about God and human good. But surely, Dawkins could just have easily found the ‘Christian’ God of the New Testament equally “unpleasant” simply in terms of this disturbing and disquieting story that belongs to the mystery of Christmas. It is the shocking story of the slaughter of the little ones of Bethlehem. It challenges our sentimental views of Christmas.

It is shocking and while there are many shocking stories in the Scriptures, the real question is what are these stories doing? Why are they part of these Scriptures? In other words, what do they teach? It is easy to piece together a packet of awful stories in both Scriptures that contribute to the idea of a vengeful, hateful God who arbitrarily chooses some and rejects others. This ignores the interpretative traditions which have wrestled with these passages for centuries and the simple point that these stories are always an indictment of some aspect or other of the human condition in its fallenness and evil.

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Prayers and liturgy

Hilary, Doctor and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Hilary (c. 315-368), Bishop of Poitiers, Doctor of the Church (source):

Parmigianino, Saint HilaryEverlasting God,
whose servant Hilary
steadfastly confessed thy Son Jesus Christ
to be both human and divine:
grant us his gentle courtesy
to bring to all the message of redemption
in the incarnate Christ,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 2:18-25
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:8-12

Hilary was born in Poitiers, Gaul, of wealthy pagan parents. After receiving a thorough education in Latin classics, he became an orator. He also married and had a daughter. At the age of about 35, he rejected his former paganism and became a Christian through a long process of study and thought. Robert Louis Wilken describes his path to conversion in The Spirit of Early Christian Thought (p. 86):

[Hilary] found himself turning to more spiritual pursuits. In his words he wished to pursue a life that was “worthy of the understanding that had been given us by God.” Like Justin [Martyr] he began to read the Bible, and one passage that touched his soul was Exodus 3:14, where God the creator, “testifying about himself,” said, “I am who I am.” For Hilary this brief utterance penetrated more deeply into the mystery of the divine nature than anything he had heard or read from the philosophers. Shortly thereafter he was baptized and received into the church.

Around 353 he was chosen bishop of Poitiers and became an outspoken champion of orthodoxy against the Arians. St. Augustine praised him as “the illustrious teacher of the churches”. St. Jerome wrote that Hilary was “a most eloquent man, and the trumpet of the Latins against the Arians”. Hilary became known as “Athanasius of the West”.

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Prayers and liturgy

John Horden, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the commemoration of The Right Rev. John Horden (1828-1893), first Bishop of Moosonee, Missionary to the First Nations of Canada:

The Right Rev. John HordenO God,
the Desire of all the nations,
you chose your servant John Horden
to open the treasury of your Word
among the native peoples of Canada.
Grant us, after his example,
to be constant in our purpose and care
for the enlargement of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Source of collect: Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2004, p. 456.

Born in Exeter, England, to humble Christian parents, John Horden resolved to be a missionary while a young boy at school and, when he was 23, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) offered him a post as a teacher and missionary at Moose Factory on James’ Bay. He and his young wife set sail on 8 June 1851, arriving at Moose Factory on 26 July.

Horden gave himself whole-heartedly to his task. Within eight months he was able to teach and preach to the indigenous people in the Cree language. In the summer of 1852, Bishop David Anderson of Rupert’s Land travelled 1500 miles to visit his new minister, initially planning to bring him to Red River for theological training. The young man’s conscientiousness and maturity were so impressive, however, that Bishop Anderson changed his plans, ordaining John Horden priest on 24 August.

Rev. Horden ministered to the James Bay Cree and Hudson Bay Company employees for many years, visiting indigenous peoples all around the James Bay region. He translated the Gospels, a hymnal, and a prayer book into Cree, and sent them to England for printing. Because no one was competent to proof-read the master copies, the CMS sent him a printing press and told him to print the books himself. Horden needed many long, frustrating days to teach himself how to assemble and operate the press. His printing press was soon producing other Christian literature in Cree. He also wrote a grammar of the Cree language.

In 1872, Bishop Robert Machray of Rupert’s Land decided that his diocese had grown too large and should be sub-divided. Thus, at Westminster Abbey on 15 December 1872, the Archbishop of Canterbury consecrated John Horden the first Bishop of the Diocese of Moosonee.

Bishop Horden continued to travel across his vast diocese. By the end of his life, most of the Cree of James Bay had been converted, as well as many Ojibwa, Chipewyan, and Inuit. Also, he laboured on translating the Bible into Cree until he died unexpectedly on 12 January 1893. He is buried at Moose Factory.

Biographies of John Horden are posted here and here.

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Prayers and liturgy

Benedict Biscop, Abbot and Scholar

The collect for a Doctor of the Church, Poet, or Scholar, on the Feast of Saint Benedict Biscop (c. 628-89), Founder of the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow, Scholar, Patron of the Arts, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962);

O GOD, who by thy Holy Spirit hast given unto one man a word of wisdom, and to another a word of knowledge, and to another the gift of tongues: We praise thy Name for the gifts of grace manifested in thy servant Benedict Biscop, and we pray that thy Church may never be destitute of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Daniel 2:17-24
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:9-17

Norwich Cathedral, St. Benedict BiscopSaint Benedict Biscop is remembered as a church leader instrumental in preserving and disseminating Western civilisation during the so-called “Dark Ages”.

Born into a noble Northumbrian family, Benedict spent many years in Frankish monasteries, becoming a monk at the Abbey of Lérins, off the southern coast of France. He also travelled to Rome six times. At the conclusion of his third visit in 668, he accompanied St. Theodore of Tarsus, the Greek monk newly commissioned as Archbishop of Canterbury, to England. For two years, Benedict served as abbot of the monastery of St. Peter & St. Paul (later St. Augustine’s), Canterbury, but soon wanted to establish his own foundation.

Receiving papal approval to establish monasteries in Northumbria, Benedict founded the twin monasteries of St. Peter’s at Wearmouth in 674 and St. Paul’s at Jarrow in 681. He travelled to Rome and returned with an “innumerable collection of books of all kinds”. He also brought with him John the Chanter, Archcantor of St. Peter’s, Rome, who taught the monks the Roman liturgy and Gregorian chant.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, First Sunday after Epiphany

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the First Sunday after the Epiphany.

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Sermons

Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany

“Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”

Did you not know? Jesus says to Mary and to us. There are things which God wants us to know. In a way that is the burden of the Epiphany season. It is about the manifestation of the essential things of God, about what is being made known to us through the humanity of Christ. Through God being with us, God himself is made known to us. The mystery lies not in what is hidden but in what is made known, an inexhaustible mystery that commands our attention and reflection.

Nothing says education quite like epiphany. It is one of many words about knowing that have been bequeathed to us from the richness of Greek philosophy in the intensity of its investigations into what it means to know. I teach a course in the International Baccalaureate Programme called The Theory of Knowledge, ToK. It focuses on the question: ‘how do we know?’ The question presupposes that there are things to be known.

Epiphany means manifestation or making known. It is altogether about the making known of the essential divinity of Christ. It marks the transition from the Christmas emphasis on the humble birth of Christ in Bethlehem to his being the Word and Son of God, to the idea of God himself, to what is being made known through his humanity. The emphasis is emphatically on teaching. The church which is not a teaching church is not the church. Epiphany recalls us to the primacy of teaching as belonging to worship.

We meet today on the First Sunday after the Epiphany within the Octave of the Epiphany. Thus the Epiphany story in all of its evocative and exotic wonder is still very much before us. With the coming of “the Magoi from Anatolia”, the wise ones from the East, from the vast expanse of Asia Minor and, perhaps, even Persian, (the term encompasses what we now know as Turkey but extends in antiquity beyond the modern boundaries of the nineteenth and twentieth century nation states). There is something wonderfully intriguing about these celebrated ‘come-from-aways’ who make the great journey, first, to Jerusalem and, then, to Bethlehem, highlighting for us the twin centers of Christian contemplation. Their journey has a twofold aspect: first, an investigative journey to find out “where is he that should be born King of the Jews” and,  secondly, a reflective journey, after having been directed to Bethlehem by the prophecy of Micah recalled by the chief priests and the scribes and by Herod who has another and more sinister motive. Beholding the child and his mother, “they fell down and worshipped him”, and, opening their treasures, “they presented unto him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” They are “sacred gifts of mystic meaning”, gifts which teach us about the radical meaning of the one whom they have sought.

With the coming of the Magi the tableaux of Christmas at Bethlehem is complete but it inaugurates another journey, the journey of reflection signalled in their gifts and their departure from Bethlehem. “They departed into their own country another way.” Very little is said about the identity of the Magi. They are unnamed and unnumbered but they have had an enormous impact upon holy imagination especially in literature and in art. Legends and stories grow up around Matthew’s sparse account.  They soon come to be seen in one way or another as representatives of our humanity: one young, one middle-aged, and one elderly; and one European, one Asian, and one African, for example. In every way, the Magi themselves signal the strong doctrinal point of the Christmas mystery that Christ’s birth is for all people; it is omni populo, universal. With the coming of the Magi, Christmas goes global, we might say.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 11 – 17 January

Tuesday, January 12th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Sunday, January 17th, Second Sunday after Epiphany
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, January 19th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Andrew Steane’s Science and Humanity: A Humane Philosophy of Science and Religion (2018) and The Penultimate Curiosity: How Science Swims in the Slipstream of Ultimate Questions (2016) by Roger Wagner and Andrew Briggs.

Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through March.

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Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday After The Epiphany

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

O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people which call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 12:1-5
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:41-52

Max Liebermann, The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the TempleArtwork: Max Liebermann, The Twelve-Year-Old Jesus in the Temple, 1879. Oil on canvas, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Baptism of Our Lord

The collect for today, the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O HEAVENLY Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ did take our nature upon him, and was baptized for our sakes in the river Jordan: Mercifully grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may also be partakers of thy Holy Spirit; through him whom thou didst send to be our Saviour and Redeemer, even the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson Isaiah 42:1-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 1:1-11

Joachim Patinir, The Baptism of ChristArtwork: Joachim Patinir, The Baptism of Christ, ca. 1510-20. Oil on panel, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

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