Christ Church

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Second Sunday in Lent.

“For this is the will of God, even your sanctification”

The Book of Leviticus is the least read and least known book of the Scriptures. And to be sure, it is a daunting task to make one’s way through its myriad of regulations and directions many of which are quite puzzling, though, perhaps, rather intriguing. What does it mean, for instance, “that they shall no more slay their sacrifices for satyrs, after whom they play the harlot”? (Lev. 17.7). In the Canadian Prayer Book lectionary system, readings from Leviticus are very few; never in the Sunday Office readings, and only four times in the appointed readings for the Daily Offices; three times in the week of the Fourth Sunday in Lent (Friday evening, Saturday morning and evening), and once in Holy Week on the Wednesday evening of Holy Week in the story of the proverbial scapegoat understood as an symbol of Christ bearing our sins in his Passion.

Chapters 17-27 of Leviticus is known as the Holiness Code, best expressed in Leviticus 19. 2. “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” The Holiness Code is a collection of injunctions dealing with a wide range of behaviours and actions: social, moral and ritualistic. Set within the context of Israel as God’s chosen people, they express the sense of Israel’s separation and uniqueness over and against other peoples and nations. Yet, while some of the injunctions seem culturally dependent, others are universal and ethically compelling. The injunctions about not trimming beards and not being marked with tattoos may seem trivial and irrelevant but other injunctions seem ethically compelling and binding for all times and in all places, such things as behaving honestly, treating workers fairly, the rights or duties towards those with disabilities, doing justice, loving your neighbour as yourself, working as much for others as for yourself, and fair trade. In the light of those injunctions other things such as reproving and correcting your neighbour and allowing not only the poor and destitute but also the resident stranger to gather the gleanings after the harvest offer an ethical vision of what belongs to the good of all over and against the interests of the few.

As one theologian (Mary Douglas) puts it, the code is the idea of holiness as order not confusion, as rightness or rectitude of behaviour, as honesty and straight-dealing in contrast to the forms of contradiction in double-dealing, theft, lying, false witness, cheating in business, dissembling in speech, degrading and putting down others, hating your brother in your heart; in short the contrast between what we seem to be and what we are, the hypocrisies that belong to all our lives.

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Tuesday, March 2nd
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme II

Sunday, March 7th, Third Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, March 16th, Eve of St. Patrick
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme III

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

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

ALMIGHTY God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8
The Gospel: St. Matthew 15:21-28

Artwork: Juan de Flandes, Christ and the Canaanite Woman, c. 1500. Oil on panel, Royal Palace, Madrid.

The collect for today, the commemoration of George Herbert (1593-1633), Priest, Poet (source):

King of glory, king of peace,
who didst call thy servant George Herbert
from the pursuit of worldly honours
to be a priest in the temple of his God and king:
grant us also the grace to offer ourselves
with singleness of heart in humble obedience to thy service;
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.
Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 5:1-4
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:1-10

The hymn, “Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing”, was originally a poem by George Herbert, published in The Temple.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

The heavens are not too high,
His praise may thither fly:
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

The church with psalms must shout,
No door can keep them out:
But above all, the heart
Must bear the longest part.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

George Herbert was born to a wealthy family in Montgomery, Wales. Educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he appeared headed for a prominent public career, but the deaths of King James I and two patrons ended that possibility.

He chose to pursue holy orders in the Church of England and became rector at Bemerton, near Salisbury, in 1629, where he died four years later of tuberculosis. His preaching and service to church and parishioners contributed to his reputation as an exemplary pastor. He did not become known as a poet until shortly after he died, when his poetry collection The Temple was published.

He is buried in Saint Andrew Bemerton Churchyard.

Artwork: William Dyce, George Herbert at Bemerton, Salisbury, 1860. Oil on canvas, Guildhall Art Gallery, London.

Everyone is seeking for you

This text from St. Mark complements the story of Christ’s going up to Jerusalem and his encounter with the blind man which we read last week. Such things belong to the nature of the educational journey. It is, in the proper sense, counter-culture because it challenges the assumptions of our age. Education is actually subversive in the sense that it questions the dominant assumptions of those in authority. It confronts them with the idea of the author, the root of the word authority. It calls us to account, in short, to  God, the author and ultimate good.

This has very much to do with the love of learning. Here the disciples seek out Jesus who has retreated into a solitary place to pray. So often we think of religion and prayer as simply individual and private matters. We forget the ethical demands that compel us into relation with one another. The retreat into solitude is about communion with God through which we have communion with one another.

As the poet, T.S. Eliot puts it:

What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of God.
Even the anchorite who meditates alone,
For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of God,
Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.  (Choruses from the Rock)

The story shows Jesus as the healer of “all that were diseased” but also as the healer of “them that were possessed with devils.” This speaks to the idea of the healing of the whole of our being, body and soul, but also to the desire to be healed. The statement of the disciples speaks to a universal desire. “Everyone is seeking for thee.” Such is the desire to know which, like the blind man, implies that something is already known, namely, that we don’t know, we don’t see, yet in seeking we know that we lack something which we need. We confront our lack, an insufficiency in and of ourselves.

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The Penitential Psalms in the Pilgrimage of Lent
Christ Church, Lent 2021

Lenten Meditation # 1: “Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness.”

Introduction:

There are seven Psalms that have come to be grouped together as the Penitential Psalms, a designation attributed to Cassiodorus in the sixth century but perhaps as derived from Augustine in the fifth or even Ambrose in the late fourth century AD. They became an integral feature of the medieval Lenten liturgies. Gratian in the 12th century explicitly mentions the recitation of the seven Penitential Psalms on Ash Wednesday. Both the patristic and medieval traditions have carried over into the reformed liturgies such as in the books of the Anglican Common Prayer tradition illustrated, for example, in praying Psalm 51 on Ash Wednesday as part of the Penitential Service. The Penitential Psalms figure prominently in the liturgies of Lent.

Following the numbering of the Psalms in the Hebrew Masoretic text which carried over into the English translations of both the Coverdale and the King James Versions, the seven Penitential Psalms are Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130 and 143. As such they belong to the whole range of the Psalter with its one hundred and fifty Psalms. But as one scholar suggests, they seem to have a certain symmetry rather than an arbitrary quality to them that is captured in the Latin titles which are attached to them in the classical Book(s) of Common Prayer.

The Latin titles derive from the first lines of each Psalm. That the Latin titles have been retained in the liturgical psalter of the Prayer Book reveals an important sense of the continuity of prayer and of the Church universal. The idea of a certain symmetry or structure belongs not only to the strong medieval sense of order but to the unity of Scripture itself within which the Psalms play a crucial role.

The Latin titles are:

Psalm 6 – Domine, ne in furore (O Lord, rebuke me not in thine indignation)
Psalm 32 – Beati, quorum (Blessed is he (those) whose unrighteousness is forgiven)
Psalm 38 – Domine, ne in furore (O Lord, rebuke me not in thine indignation)
Psalm 51 – Miserere mei, Deus (Have mercy upon me, O God)
Psalm 102 – Domine, exaudi (Hear my prayer, O Lord)
Psalm 130 – De profundis (Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord)
Psalm 143 – Domine, exaudi (Hear my prayer, O Lord)

Psalms 6 and 38 bracket Psalm 32 while Psalms 102 and 143 bracket Psalm 130. Psalm 51 at the center of the sequence stands alone as expressing the heart-note of all penitence. It shall be our Lenten devotion to consider the seven Penitential Psalms and I commend them to your study and to the discipline of committing them to memory so that they become part of you. But first, a few words about the Psalter and its place in the Scriptures.

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

O ALMIGHTY God, who into the place of the traitor Judas didst choose thy faithful servant Matthias to be of the number of the twelve Apostles: Grant that thy Church, being alway preserved from false Apostles, may be ordered and guided by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:15-26
The Gospel: St. John 15:1-11

The name of this saint is probably an abbreviation of Mattathias, meaning “gift of Yahweh”.

Matthias was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot after Judas had betrayed Jesus and then committed suicide. In the time between Christ’s Ascension and Pentecost, the small band of disciples, numbering about 120, gathered together and Peter spoke of the necessity of selecting a twelfth apostle to replace Judas. Peter enunciated two criteria for the office of apostle: He must have been a follower of Jesus from the Baptism to the Ascension, and he must be a witness to the resurrected Lord. This meant that he had to be able to proclaim Jesus as Lord from first-hand personal experience. Two of the brothers were found to fulfill these qualifications: Matthias and Joseph called Barsabbas also called the Just. Matthias was chosen by lot. Neither of these two men is referred to by name in the four Gospels, although several early church witnesses, including Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea, report that Matthias was one of the seventy-two disciples.

Like the other apostles and disciples, St. Matthias received the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Since he is not mentioned later in the New Testament, nothing else is known for certain about his activities. He is said to have preached in Judaea for some time and then traveled elsewhere. Various contradictory stories about his apostolate have existed since early in church history. The tradition held by the Greek Church is that he went to Cappadocia and the area near the Caspian Sea where he was crucified at Colchis. Some also say he went to Ethiopia before Cappadocia. Another tradition holds that he was stoned to death and then beheaded at Jerusalem.

The Empress St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, is said to have brought St Matthias’s relics to Rome c. 324, some of which were moved to the Benedictine Abbey of St Matthias, Trier, Germany, in the 11th century.

Artwork: Duccio di Buoninsegna, Apostle Matthias (detail from Maestà), 1308-11. Tempera on wood, Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena.

The collect for today, the commemoration of Lindel Tsen (1885-1946), Bishop in China, consecrated 1929, and Paul Sasaki (1885-1954), Bishop in Japan, consecrated 1935 (source):

Almighty God, we offer thanks for the faith and witness of Paul Sasaki, bishop in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai [Anglican Church in Japan], tortured and imprisoned by his government, and Philip [Lindel] Tsen, leader of the Chinese Anglican Church, arrested for his faith. We pray that all Church leaders oppressed by hostile governments may be delivered by thy mercy, and that by the power of the Holy Spirit we may be faithful to the Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ; who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 4:26-32

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