Year: 2021

Prayers and liturgy

Edmund, King and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Edmund (841-869), King of the East Angles, Martyr (source):

O eternal God,
whose servant Edmund kept faith to the end,
both with thee and with his people,
and glorified thee by his death:
grant us the same steadfast faith,
that, together with the noble army of martyrs,
we may come to the perfect joy of the resurrection life;
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 Epistle: 1 St. Peter 3:14-18
The Gospel: St. Matthew 10:16-22

Brian Whelan, Martyrdom of St. EdmundEdmund was raised a Christian and became king of the East Angles as a young boy, probably when 14 years old. In 869 the Danes invaded his territory and defeated his forces in battle.

According to Edmund’s first biographer, Abbo of Fleury, the Danes tortured the saint to death after he refused to renounce his faith and rule as a Danish vassal. He was beaten, tied to a tree and pierced with arrows, and then beheaded.

His body was originally buried near the place of his death and subsequently transferred to Baedericesworth, modern Bury St. Edmunds. His shrine became one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in England, but it was destroyed and his remains lost during the English Reformation.

The cult of St. Edmund became very popular among English nobility because he exemplified the ideals of heroism, political independence, and Christian holiness. The Benedictine Abbey founded at Bury St. Edmunds in 1020 became one of the greatest in England.

Click here to read Fr. David Curry’s sermon for the Feast of St. Edmund.

Artwork: Brian Whelan, Martyrdom of St. Edmund, 2003. Acrylic on board, Lady Chapel, St. Edmundsbury Cathedral, Bury St. Edmunds, England. (Source) This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 18 November

I am who I am

Does God exist? How do we know and how do we think about this question, if we even think about it at all? The story of the burning bush, read this week in Chapel, sets before us a profound image of Revelation. The bush is burning and yet is not consumed; out of it God speaks to Moses. It belongs to the ways in which things are made known to us, even things that go beyond human thinking and yet engage our minds.

An arresting scene, it gets Moses’ attention and, perhaps, ours, too, but it belongs to an understanding that is part of our world. Here the Judeo-Christian and Islamic understanding is at one with modern ‘science’ in denying the divinity of the natural world, despite the viewpoint of the English Romantics, though even Wordswoth admitted that “The world is too much with us; late and soon, /Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; – /Little we see in Nature that is ours; /We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!” Yet this was but a way of returning to nature as divine as something lost in the rationalism of the enlightenment and in the later material progress of the 19th century. It has its counterparts in various moments in the environmental movement, caught in the conflict between humanity and nature.

The story of the burning bush, burnt but not consumed or destroyed, is an image of Revelation, the idea of things made known to us which are not the constructs of our minds but which engage our minds. A bush that burns but is not consumed is not natural. Exactly. It is about what is beyond nature as that upon which the natural itself depends both for its being and its intelligibility. And yet communicated to us through the medium of the natural. In that way, it is sacramental.

Things are made known to us in various ways. The idea of Revelation does not override and contradict other ways of knowing; rather, it complements them and gathers them into the underlying premise of all our knowing. We can’t know without the assumption that things are knowable and that turns upon an intellectual principle. It is articulated here in the Moses story from Exodus.

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Prayers and liturgy

Hilda, Abbess

St. Augustine Kilburn, Saint HildaThe collect for today, the Feast of Saint Hilda (614-680), Abbess of Whitby (source):

O eternal God,
who madest the abbess Hilda to shine as a jewel in England
and through her holiness and leadership
didst bless thy Church with newness of life and unity:
so assist us by thy grace
that we, like her, may yearn for the gospel of Christ
and bring reconciliation to those who are divided;
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 Epistle: Ephesians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 19:27-29

Artwork: St. Hilda, stained glass, St. Augustine Kilburn, London. Photograph taken by admin, 26 September 2015.

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Prayers and liturgy

Hugh, Bishop

Chicago Institute of Art, St. HughThe collect for today, the Feast of Saint Hugh (1135-1200), Bishop of Lincoln (source):

O God,
who didst endow thy servant Hugh
with a wise and cheerful boldness
and didst teach him to commend to earthly rulers
the discipline of a holy life:
give us grace like him to be bold in the service of the gospel,
putting our confidence in Christ alone,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Titus 2:7-8,11-14
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:42-47

Artwork: Saint Hugh of Lincoln, 1490-1500, oil on panel, Chicago Institute of Art.

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Prayers and liturgy

Margaret, Queen

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Margaret (1046-1093), Queen of Scotland, Philanthropist, Reformer of the Church (source):

O God, the ruler of all,
who didst call thy servant Margaret to an earthly throne
and gavest to her both zeal for thy Church and love for thy people,
that she might advance thy heavenly kingdom:
mercifully grant that we who commemorate her example
may be fruitful in good works
and attain to the glorious crown of thy saints;
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: Proverbs 31:10-11, 20, 26, 28
The Gospel: St. Matthew 13:44-52

Largilliere, St. Margaret of ScotlandSt. Margaret was born in Hungary to a Saxon noble family in exile. In 1057, she and her family were able to return to England, but they were forced to move to Scotland following William the Conqueror’s invasion in 1066. A few years later, the princess Margaret married Malcolm Canmore, King of the Scots, in Dunfermline.

Queen Margaret was married to Malcolm for almost twenty-five years; her death followed his by only a few days. She bore six sons and two daughters. Three sons ruled as kings of Scotland—Edgar, Alexander I, and David I (later saint)—while a daughter, Matilda, became the queen of Henry I of England.

Margaret, an inspirational monarch of great Christian devotion, undertook many works of charity. She protected orphans, provided for the poor, visited prisoners in her husband’s dungeons, cleansed the sores of lepers, and washed the feet of beggars. She encouraged and enabled the founding of monasteries, churches, and hostels. Her excellent education served Scotland well, for under her influence the Scottish court became known as a place of culture and learning.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity

“Jesus turned him about”

It is a poignant scene, a scene within a scene. A certain ruler seeks the raising to life of his daughter “even now dead”. “Jesus arose and followed him” only to encounter “a woman, diseased with an issue of blood twelve years”, who “said within herself, if I may touch his garment, I shall be whole.” The story may touch our hearts, too, and make us whole. But what does wholeness or salvation really mean?

It seems that something more is wanted than just a touch, more than just the touch of “the hem of his garment”. Certainly Jesus wants something more for us than just a touch. He wants us to enter into his knowing love for us. Only then are we made whole. The woman both knows and doesn’t know this. To put it another way, she doesn’t know that she knows. She has a hold of something but in an incomplete way.

Yet Jesus wants her to know. He wants us to know. God will not keep his back to us, a Deus absconditus, a hidden God, as it were. That is why he has turned himself to us. Such is Revelation. Such is the nature of Incarnate Love: “Jesus turned him about and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole.” These are wonderful words. They are saving words. They are told to her, face-to-face. She wanted to be whole. But to be whole is to enter into his knowing love for us. And such is the tuning of God towards us in Revelation. Such is Advent.

It will not do to steal a cure from him unawares, to be healed by him without him knowing it. Such is an incomplete awareness about the one from whom we seek wholeness. Jesus turns and looks at her, face-to-face, and only so do we find our wholeness. In a way, it is all in the turning.  More than her secret, surreptitious touch, there is his turning to her, his looking upon her, and his speaking to her. Such is salvation – her wholeness and ours. It is found in his turning and looking upon her and her looking upon him. It is found by our being brought knowingly into his knowing love for us. It is what our liturgy as the symbolic reality of our lives is really all about: our being turned by the one who turns himself to us.

This scene within a scene captures the entire Gospel. To steal a cure from him is to be unaware of who he truly is. More strongly, it denies the truth of God Incarnate. It denies the divinity and the uniqueness of Christ. Yet what we most want, healing for a broken world and for our own broken selves, is found in the one whom we ignorantly deny.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 15 – 21 November

Saturday, November 20th
9:00-11:30am Brass Cleaning and General Clean-Up Day. All hands on deck!

Sunday, November 21st, Sunday Next Before Advent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Event:

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

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Prayers and liturgy

The Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Trinity

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

Firs Sergeyevich Zhuravlev, Christ Raises the Daughter of JairusO LORD, we beseech thee, absolve thy people from their offences; that through thy bountiful goodness we may all be delivered from the bands of those sins, which by our frailty we have committed. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.

The Epistle: Colossians 1:3-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 9:18-26

Artwork: Firs Sergeyevich Zhuravlev, Christ Raises the Daughter of Jairus, 1890s. Mosaic, Church of the Saviour on the Spilt Blood, St. Petersburg.

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Prayers and liturgy

Charles Simeon, Pastor

The collect for today, the commemoration of Charles Simeon (1759-1836), Priest, Evangelical Divine (source):

O eternal God,
who didst raise up Charles Simeon
to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ
and inspire thy people in service and mission:
grant that we, with all thy Church, may worship the Saviour,
turn away in true repentance from our sins
and walk in the way of holiness;
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 Epistle: Romans 10:8b-17
The Gospel: St. John 21:15-19

Charles SimeonCharles Simeon served as vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, from 1782 until his death. His zealous evangelical preaching was bitterly opposed by parish leaders, but proved immensely popular and influential among Cambridge undergraduates. He supported the British and Foreign Bible Society and helped to found the Church Missionary Society. His curate Henry Martyn became chaplain of the East India Company and one of India’s best-known missionaries.

Historian Lord Macaulay wrote of him, “If you knew what his authority and influence were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of England, you would allow that his real sway in the Church was far greater than that of any primate.”

A meditation on the life of Charles Simeon, by John Piper, is posted here.

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