Christ Church

Click here to listen to audio file of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity Sunday

“No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,
he has made him known.”

“Now the Catholic Faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity, and the Trinity in unity.” A surprising and startling statement, it may seem, and yet it belongs not only to the Athanasian Creed but to the central logic and meaning of the Christian Faith. God is Trinity though the word Trinity appears nowhere in the Scriptures. It appears first in the writings of Theophilus of Antioch writing in Greek in the second half of the second century, albeit in a peculiar form, and then in the Latin writings of Tertullian in the late decades of the same century. Yet it belongs to the revelation of the essential life of God and to the equally essential task of our thinking God. The first section of the Athanasian Creed ends with the words: “He therefore that would be saved, /let him thus think of the Trinity,” think of the Trinity in this way, the way of affirmation and negation in the dance of apophatic and kataphatic theology that is the Athanasian Creed. Pretty strong stuff. Can we really think this?

It is the essential proclamation of the Christian Faith but far from being something exclusive and forbidding, exotic and remote, speculative and abstract, it is the doctrine, the teaching, that requires and provides the basis for the Christian engagement with other religions and faiths and with ourselves. In short, the divine self-relation which the Trinity is and reveals offers the connection to the universal idea of thinking God without which we cannot think ourselves. It is not about some form of Christian triumphalism or supersessionism – the idea that one religion or philosophy supersedes another or that the latest fancy or fantasy is by definition the best.  It connects us instead to the quest for wisdom that belongs to the radical truth of our humanity.

“No one has ever seen God,” John tells us. He states a simple truth. God is nothing, no thing among other things, not an object, not a thing, but rather the very ground of the being and knowing of all things. What John highlights here belongs to his thinking deeply and profoundly upon the words of Christ. “Apart from me you can do nothing,” for instance; “Before Abraham was, I am,” and so forth. These are radical words which speak about God in himself without which we are nothing, not even selves. As John rightly intuits, the truth of God is revealed in the only-begotten Son, who ever is and never was not. His words compel us and challenge us. That is the meaning of the Gospel lesson about Nicodemus coming to Jesus in the hiddenness of the night. The meaning is about how we have to think about things in a radically new and different way; literally, to be born again, into a new way of understanding.

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The collect for today, the Octave Day of Pentecost, commonly called Trinity Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity: We beseech thee, that this holy faith may evermore be our defence against all adversities; who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 4:1-11
The Gospel: St. John 3:1-15

Artwork: Ludovico Carracci, The Trinity with the Dead Christ, c. 1590. Oil on canvas, Pinacoteca Vaticana.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost

How many times have you heard that said in Chapel! A text, usually taken from the Scripture reading by one of you in Chapel, and then these words are added to it at the beginning and end of the homily. What does it mean? Simply this. The Chapel services at King’s-Edgehill School are explicitly Christian but in the awareness of the necessity of connecting the Christian understanding to the ways of thinking and speaking that belong to other world religions and philosophies. Why? Because they all contribute in one way or another to an ethical understanding of our lives together at once as selves, as a community, and as part of a global world in and through the diversities of language and culture.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are the terms and images that belong to the Scriptural revelation of God in the New Testament and in the Christian understanding but as building upon images in the Jewish Scriptures and as drawing upon imagery and language from Greek culture. The point is not the cultural specificity of such things; the point is the universality of meaning that belongs to a consideration of the dignity of our common humanity.

But such familiar if mysterious words also point to an important feature of Chapel at the School. It is simply this: no name religion is no religion. It is only through the integrity of theological thought that one can engage in a respectful and responsible way with the different forms of thinking about reality that is an essential feature of education and of Chapel. The doctrine of the Trinity is the highest form of the Christian thinking about God; yet it compels a commitment and relation to other traditions, a thoughtful, responsible and dignified engagement which honours the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ idea of “the dignity of difference” between and among the religions and philosophies of the world.

What does it mean in the context of the Chapel service? Simply this. With these words, I place myself under an authoritative tradition and theological way of thinking. The homilies are not simply my poor words and endeavours to communicate or to entertain (hardly!). They are nothing apart from the words of Scripture which they attempt to serve. They are little more than an explication of the understanding of the images of Scripture, an attempt to connect through what has been communicated in the truest form of preaching, namely, the proclamation of the Word by you or your fellow students, words which provoke thought and challenge our thinking.

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Click here to listen to audio file of Matins & Ante-Communion for the Day of Pentecost

“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind”

Sometimes the things that come upon us suddenly unsettle us most of all. We live in rather unsettling times because of the Covid-19 pandemic and all of the disruptions that it has occasioned. This prompts the question as to whether we are simply and completely determined by things outside our control. To be blunt, you cannot blame Covid-19 on Christ Church or Windsor or Nova Scotia or Canada or China or Wuhan. It is not so simple. It is a modern pandemic which has to do with global mobility and the inequalities socially and economically among so many in our so-called global world. We are all, in that sense, completely implicated in our current unsettledness. Everything comes down to the spirit in us by which we confront our struggles and concerns; in short, about how we think about ourselves in relation to one another.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Pentecost might provide us with a way to think about things more universally and yet profoundly local. There are things which unsettle us, perhaps, never more so than in these unsettling times. But is it so with the Descent of the Holy Ghost? He came down suddenly upon the disciples, we are told, but was his coming suddenly a coming unexpectedly? That he came suddenly we read, his coming unexpectedly we do not read. In fact, Jesus tells us to expect the coming of the Holy Ghost “commanding them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father,” even the descent of the Holy Ghost. We are meant, it seems, to be settled upon what comes to us even in unsettling times.

Yet we may wait expectantly and still be caught unawares, for the realisation of what we await may far exceed our expectations and so catch us by surprise. We await for what we do not fully understand. The grace of God is always something more; the mystery of God something more yet again. The promise of the Ascension was the coming down of the Holy Ghost for which Jesus prepares us and bids us wait, yet “suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind.”

Certainly, the effects of this coming down would appear to be most unsettling, the manner of their appearing no less so – “a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues like as of fire,” lighting upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem filling them with the Holy Spirit and moving them “to speak with other tongues.” To all appearances an event most unsettling, at once exotic and ecstatic.

We all know about the winds that unsettle us – the rushing mighty winds of rumour and slander, of whisperings and murmurings, of allegations and accusations which seek to belittle and destroy. The winds of hatred and revenge, of judgement and accusation, are the winds of death. These are the winds that unsettle us as sure as the sea-storms which come up suddenly and trouble our ships upon the waters. But in our current situation, we live in the midst of other uncertainties, the uncertainties of those claiming to speak in the chimera of ‘science,’ those who rightly demand our acquiescence to this restriction and this but at the same time suggesting their own uncertainty, their own sense of the provisional and the uncertain which belongs, to be sure, to the truth of modern science.  To be up-front about this is really about transparency and honesty, a check on our presumption and pride. To be patient about all of the forms of uncertainty that swirl around us is our current struggle and demand, a check upon our frustrations and judgements.

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The collects for today, The Day of Pentecost, being the fiftieth day after Easter, commonly called Whit-Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, who as at this time didst teach the hearts of thy faithful people, by the sending to them the light of thy Holy Spirit: Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgement in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

O GOD, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon thy disciples in Jerusalem: Grant that we who celebrate before thee the Feast of Pentecost may continue thine for ever, and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit, until we come to thine eternal kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 2:1-11
The Gospel: St. John 14:15-27

Artwork: Jacques Blanchard, The Descent of the Holy Spirit, May 1634. Oil on canvas, Baptismal Fonts Chapel, Notre-Dame de Paris.

We do hear them speak in our own tongues

“The love of truth (charitas veritatis) seeks a holy quiet but the necessity of love (necessitas charitatis) accepts a righteous busyness.” A wonderful phrase attributed to Augustine, it captures wonderfully the interplay of activity and contemplation essential to spiritual life and to the life of intellectual communities such as a school. Usually the King’s-Edgehill campus is a buzz with much busyness and with all manner of comings and goings but now there is a strange and empty quiet about the place. Instead of the sounds of many voices and in different tongues or languages, there is only the quiet beauty of a Maritime Spring in full bloom.

Yet the life of the School goes on albeit through distance learning. Students (and teachers!) are to be commended for their efforts in connecting through zoom. It is, to be sure, somewhat surreal to see a screen full of students in little boxes, full knowing that some are here in the Maritimes while others are, quite literally, on other continents and in far away places. The desire to learn somehow continues to motivate, it seems, along with the sense of connection that belongs to the School as a community of learners. It is not the same thing as being in person but it is a way of reminding ourselves of that quintessential desire to be together in the pursuit of the understanding, in the quest for wisdom. Being together in the spirit is what truly unites.

The strange silence of the campus, owing to the Covid-19 lockdown, stands in stark contrast to the wonder and mystery of Pentecost or Whitsunday. In the Christian understanding, Pentecost celebrates the descent or coming down of the Holy Spirit as the animating principle of the Church. A reprise of the ancient Jewish story of the Tower of Babel, the story of Pentecost marks the redemption of the God-created languages and cultures of the world as against the attempt to enforce one language and one culture through dominance and coercion upon the world – an ancient and a modern story! Pentecost counters, we might say, all the different forms of cultural chauvinism in our divided and polarized world.

I often think of the School in terms of the Pentecostal miracle. For it is about unity in and through diversity, particularly in terms of language and culture. In any given year at King’s-Edgehill, we have more than twenty different languages and cultures represented in the student body. And yet, like the miracle of Pentecost, there is a wonderful unity, a kind of harmony and a spirit of cooperation, that belongs to the character of the School, at once its aspiration and its reality.

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The collect for today, the Feast of St. Dunstan (909-988), Archbishop of Canterbury, Restorer of Monastic Life (source):

Almighty God,
who didst raise up Dunstan
to be a true shepherd of the flock,
a restorer of monastic life
and a faithful counsellor to kings:
grant, we beseech thee, to all pastors
the like gifts of thy Holy Spirit
that they may be true servants of Christ and of all his people;
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: Ecclesiasticus 44:1-7
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:42-47

Artwork: Saint Dunstan Writing, full-page miniature from A Commentary On The Rule Of St. Benedict (1170), British Library, London.

Click here to listen to audio file of Matins & Ante-Communion for Sunday after Ascension Day

“The end of all things is at hand”

Ascension is apocalyptic. That is a loaded term and, perhaps, a frightening term since it is fraught with the images of impending doom and destruction. Yet apocalypse really means an uncovering, a making known, or a revealing of what is hidden. In this sense, it is actually something powerful and positive rather than fearful and paralyzing.

Everything turns on the sense or meaning of an end. End in what sense? Ascensiontide celebrates the end of Christ’s saving work in his homecoming to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to redemption. His homecoming is about our end with God, an end in which we participate now through the life of the Church. “It is finished,” Christ says on the Cross in what is regarded as the penultimate word from the Cross. It is an ending which is really about completion and accomplishment in the restoration of all things to God – something which is envisioned in the lovely passage from Isaiah at Matins in the harmony and peace between everything in creation and God. That is also what is shown in the imagery of the Ascension captured in Peter’s rich statement that “the end of all things is at hand.” That leads not to fear and anxiety but to charity and hospitality, to service and ministry “as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” It is now and always now.

To put in in another way, Christian life is always about living in the end times since everything is gathered to God. We are given a way to face suffering and death, hard times and sorrow with a good heart and with courage and even with joy so “that God in all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” There it is, grace and glory! As the Matins lesson from Luke indicates, Christ’s Ascension leads to the disciples returning to Jerusalem not in sorrow but in joy, waiting upon the promise of the Father in the sending of the Comforter. This is the truest form of empowerment.

The term, apocalypse, serves to awaken us to that reality even in the face of the ups and downs, the catastrophes and challenges of our world and day. What is apocalyptic is not just about the rise and fall of kingdoms and of social and economic structures but about the making known of the love of God in human lives.

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The collect for today, Sunday After Ascension Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD the King of Glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven: We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:7-11
The Gospel: St. John 15:26-16:4a

Artwork: Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Last Supper, 1547. Oil on wood, Stadkirche St. Marien, Wittenburg.

I ascend to my Father and your Father

Homecoming is a powerful theme which has a certain resonance for us in the face of the current forms of ‘The Age of Anxiety’, to use W. H. Auden’s phrase (and title) in which we find ourselves. We are coming in one way or another to the end of the School year, a year marked by all manner of ups and downs that have required considerable flexibility and agility and much patience and forbearance for everyone connected to King’s-Edgehill School. There is much for which to be quietly and prayerfully thankful, much that has to do with commitment and working together. The headmaster, administration, staff and faculty and especially the students are rightly to be commended. Let us press on in the same spirit right to the end, whatever that end looks like!

The idea of homecoming is an ancient theme that reverberates down throughout the ages. It informs, for instance, the logic of Homer’s Odyssey, the story of his return from Troy to Ithaca by way of the idea of learning through suffering that such a journey entails. One of the graphic and telling illustrations of that theme is the story of Menelaus wrestling with Proteus (ToK students will no doubt recall this, whether fondly or not, I forebear to say!). At issue is the idea of homecoming in terms of truth and self-knowledge, of knowing where you belong in the order of things, the so-called cosmos. One of the telling features of that endeavour is the idea of a struggle to get to the underlying reality of things rather than being simply stranded on the surface appearance of things. Proteus is described as “the ever-truthful old man of the sea” but to get to him and the truth which he holds is a struggle. It doesn’t come easily. You have to work for it. You literally have to hold on in and through the changing circumstances and appearances of things until the truth presents itself to the questing mind. In this case, after changing in and through a whirlwind of natural forms, Proteus is only and truly himself when he finally speaks. It is an intriguing concept which goes to the idea of logos, word as reason, which concerns both the world and ourselves in it.

What he has to say concerns what is missing in Menelaus’ homeward journey, namely a respect for the various principles that govern the world. So too with us. Without an understanding and an honouring of the various components that make up the phenomenal world, we ourselves remain incomplete and homeless, bereft of the place of our belonging, at lost in our world of uncertainties. Yet home is where we belong in some sense, the place of our abiding in truth and in the truth of ourselves. It is a powerful image not so much about our uncertainties but about our awareness of our uncertainties which paradoxically give us a sense of certainty. Our unknowing is not without our knowing (and vice versa).

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