Year: 2021

Prayers and liturgy

The First Sunday in Advent

The collect for today, the First Sunday in Advent, being the Fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 13:8-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 21:1-13

Valentin de Boulogne, Expulsion of the Money-changers, c. 1620-25Artwork: Valentin de Boulogne, Expulsion of the Money-changers, c. 1620-25. Oil on canvas, Hermitage, St. Petersburg.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 25 November

Law is freedom

The Ten Commandments read in Chapel this week present in a concise and clear way the universal moral code of our humanity and mark the climax of the Exodus, itself a journey of ethical education. They are the core teachings that underlie a multitude of laws and regulations that arise over time in various situations and circumstances. In this sense, the idea of the Law differs from regulations which bind and limit. The Law in contrast liberates. Regulations belong and apply to local conditions and are arbitrary and alterable, cultural and relative to context. The Law, on the other hand, transcends the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic, to speak to matters which are in principle universal.

Our reflection on the Ten Commandments follows logically upon the Revelation of God as “I AM WHO I AM” to Moses out of the burning bush and complements the idea of the interaction between the different forms of our knowing. Revelation engages our minds. Thus the Ten Commandments are grounded in the metaphysical revelation of God as the principle prior to all forms of knowing and being. They move us from that idea of God to the making known of the will of God for our humanity. They are revelation but they are equally a complete system of ethical thinking. They begin with the “I AM WHO I AM” who leads us out of what constrains and limits our humanity.

“I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”. This is the preface to the giving of the Ten Commandments which are not numbered per se in the text (there are two different traditions about the way they are numbered – more about that later). “I am the Lord thy God” is a circumlocution for saying in effect, “I am the I AM WHO I AM, thy God”. This follows upon the story of the burning bush where God says to Moses say to the people of Israel “I AM has sent me to you”. And why? Because God has seen the affliction of his people and undertakes their deliverance, in this case from Egyptian slavery.

Even more, the Ten Commandments are about a greater liberation that counters the limits of cultural relativism which denies any abiding truth to any law – all laws become merely regulations, arbitrary and alterable and as such subject to the misuse and abuse of power. The Law is not only liberation from what limits and enslaves but a liberation to a principle in which our humanity finds its truest expression, its dignity and freedom. With the Ten Commandments, the ideas of freedom and dignity have real content and are not merely slogans bandied about under the guise of coercion and social conformity.

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Prayers and liturgy

Catherine, Virgin and Martyr

The collect for a virgin or matron, on the Feast of St. Catherine of Alexandria (early 4th century?), Virgin and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD Most High, the creator of all mankind, we bless thy holy Name for the virtue and grace which thou hast given unto holy women in all ages, especially thy servant Catherine; and we pray that the example of her faith and purity, and courage unto death, may inspire many souls in this generation to look unto thee, and to follow thy blessed Son Jesus Christ our Saviour; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 9:36-42
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:38-42

Guido Reni, Martyrdom of Saint Catherine of AlexandriaAccording to her legend, St. Catherine lived in Alexandria when Emperor Maxentius was persecuting the church. A noble and learned young Christian, Catherine prevailed in a public debate with philosophers who tried to convince her of the errors of Christianity. Maxentius had her scourged, imprisoned and condemned her to death. She was tied to a wheel embedded with razors, but this attempt to torture her to death failed when the machine (later a Catherine wheel) broke and onlookers were injured by flying fragments. Finally, she was beheaded. Tradition holds that she was martyred in 305.

The cult of Saint Catherine arose in the Eastern Church in the 8th or 9th century and spread to the West at the time of the Crusades. She is not mentioned in any early martyrologies. No reliable facts concerning her life or death have been established. Most historians now believe that she probably never existed.

St. Catherine is often portrayed holding a book, symbolic of her great learning. She is the patron saint of libraries and librarians, teachers and students.

Artwork: Guido Reni, Martyrdom of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1607. Oil on canvas, Diocesan Museum, Albenga, Italy.

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Prayers and liturgy

Clement, Bishop of Rome

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Clement (c. 30-c. 100), Bishop of Rome, Martyr (source):

Eternal Father, creator of all,
whose martyr Clement bore witness with his blood
to the love that he proclaimed and the gospel that he preached:
give us thankful hearts as we celebrate thy faithfulness,
revealed to us in the lives of thy saints,
and strengthen us in our pilgrimage as we follow thy Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 2 Timothy 2:1-7
The Gospel: St. Luke 6:37-45

Giovanni Francesco Penni, Portrait of Pope Clement ISaint Clement was one of the first leaders of the church in the period immediately after the apostles. Some commentators believe that he is the Clement mentioned in Philippians 4:3. If so, he was a companion and fellow-worker of Paul. The Roman Catholic Church regards him as the fourth pope.

St Clement is best known for his Epistle to the Corinthians, dated to about 95. Clement addressed some of the same issues that Paul had addressed in his first letter to the Corinthians. The church at Corinth apparently still had problems with internal dissension and challenges to those in authority. Clement reminds them of the importance of Christian unity and love, and that church leaders serve for the good of the whole body.

Although the letter was written in the name of the Church at Rome to the Church at Corinth, St. Clement’s authorship is attested by early church writers. This epistle was held in very high regard in the early church; some even placed it on a par with the canonical writings of the New Testament.

Artwork: Giovanni Francesco Penni, Portrait of Pope Clement I (with the features of Pope Leo X), 1520-21. Fresco, Sala di Constantino, Vatican Museums.

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Sermons

Advent Meditation

“This will be a time for you to bear testimony”

Times of transition signal occasions for renewal. We come to the ending of the Church Year and to the beginning of yet another. The times of endings return us to our beginnings. Advent fast approaches and with Advent, we begin anew.

But what does it mean, these endings which bring us back to our beginnings? What does it mean to begin anew? Are we simply trapped in a never-ending cycle, like squirrels on a fly-wheel? Is the cycle of the Church Year but another dreary round of the same old things in the same old places with the same old faces? Or is it the dance of God’s grace and glory in human lives?

We come to the end of a year of grace and take stock of our lives in the light of God’s grace. It marks a kind of harvest-time, as it were, for our souls, a gathering up of the fruits of grace of the past year in our lives. But it means, too, that we are returned to our beginning, to Him who is the foundation and meaning of our lives. The grace is God’s Word revealed, the idea of God making known to us things that compel our attention.

In the greyness of the year, comes Christ the King (with apologies to T.S. Eliot). Christ strides across the barren fields of humanity to gather us into the barn of his righteousness and truth. We are returned to him who is “the Lord our Righteousness” (Jer. 23.6), our Judge and King, the Shepherd and the Healer of all mankind, the Alpha and the Omega of all creation. Our endings and our beginnings all meet in him. Basil the Great (330-379 AD) shows us something of what this means:

As all the fruits of the season come to us in their proper time, flowers in spring, corn in
summer and apples in autumn, so the fruit for winter is talk.      (Letters)

Talk, you may protest, thank you very much, but we have had enough talk, too much talk in fact, especially preachers’ talk. But talk about what, you might ask? What is the talk in the times of endings, the fruit for winter’s evenings, the talk which marks the occasions for renewed beginnings?

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Prayers and liturgy

Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Cecilia (3rd century), Virgin, Martyr (source):

Gracious God, whose servant Cecilia didst serve thee in song: Grant us to join her hymn of praise to thee in the face of all adversity, and to suffer gladly for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Lesson: Revelation 15:1-4
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:38-42

Simon Glücklich, Saint Cecilia Accompanied by AngelsArtwork: Simon Glücklich, Saint Cecilia Accompanied by Angels, 1886. Oil on canvas, Private Collection.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Sunday Next Before Advent

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Sunday Next Before Advent.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Sunday Next Before Advent

“The end of the matter; all has been heard”

“The end of the matter” is this, it seems, “all has been heard”. There is, after all, “nothing new under the sun”. Everything comes to nothing, to a sense of emptiness, of futility and meaninglessness, captured in the arresting phrase from Ecclesiastes. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”, says the Preacher. “What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?” It challenges all the forms of human presumption.

What kind of an ending is this? A strange and fearful ending, an ending that is despair? Why do anything if everything is nothing? Our lives are nothing. All our struggle, our labour, our desires and ambitions, our hopes and dreams, are they all an empty nothingness? Yes, at least in and of themselves. That is the stern message of this challenging and remarkable book, The Book of Ecclesiastes. Everything that we are, everything that we do, everything that we seek, all comes to nothing, to the nothing that is vanity. “All is vanity”, says the Preacher, empty of meaning. This recurring refrain phrase frames the entire book.

Yet this is actually the great wisdom of ancient Israel at the height of its philosophical understanding. But it challenges us as well. In fact, it speaks to our modernity like no other book of the Bible, for it raises the question without which the Bible and philosophical theology make little if any sense. What are we here for?

In the grey of late November, what does the Church give us to read when nature herself seems most desolate? The Book of the Preacher, Ecclesiastes, a church book, as it were, at least in its Greek and Latin title, which proclaims the barren emptiness of all human endeavour, the vanity of every enterprise of men and women upon the earth; in short, the barren emptiness of everything. “Vanity of vanities … All is vanity and a striving after wind”, or,  as the King James Version puts it, a “vexation of spirit”, that speaks to our modern day angst, our anxieties. All is nothing.

This is the preacher’s constant refrain as he explores all the avenues of human existence. What is the vanity of humanity’s social, political, material, and philosophical aspirations, which Ecclesiastes uncovers and proclaims? Namely this, that everything under the sun has limits and cannot explain its purpose or ours and therefore cannot satisfy the deep and true desire of our humanity. Instead, we confront the boring sameness to all things finite. Everything under the sun is nothing in and of itself and cannot explain what anything is for. Everything is nothing, it seems.

Yet, to know this is wisdom and the beginnings of the possibilities of grace. “God has put eternity into the mind of man”, as Ecclesiastes also reminds us, and though human wisdom is unable to find out the reason for anything in the things that are “under the sun”, at least it stands open to the one who is the answer. “Ecclesiastes is the question to which Christ is the answer” as the philosopher and theologian Peter Kreeft aptly puts it. Christ is the eternal one who has entered time. In him, time has its meaning. He turns to us and bids us “come and see”. Such is revelation which in turn engages our minds.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 22 – 28 November

Tuesday, November 23rd
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Jonathan Sacks’ Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times (2020).

Sunday, November 28th, First Sunday in Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, November 30th, St. Andrew’s Day
7:00pm Holy Communion & Advent Programme I

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sunday Next Before Advent

Oleg Supereco, Christ PantocratorThe collect for today, the Sunday Next before Advent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

STIR up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Jeremiah 23:5-8
The Gospel: St. John 1:35-45

Artwork: Oleg Supereco, Christ Pantocrator, Oil on canvas, 21st century (source).

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