Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Septuagesima
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on Septuagesima Sunday.
Day: February 13, 2022
Rector’s Annual Report, 2021
Click here to download the full Rector’s Annual Report for 2021 (in pdf format).
The Rector’s Annual Reports for 2003 through 2020 can be accessed via this page.
Rector’s Annual Report for 2021
February 13th, 2022
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom”. It could be the motto for our Parish in these troubling times. It signals wonderfully what we have endeavoured to do together as a Parish in the face of covid (no longer always capitalised) and its fears and in terms of the restrictions that have curtailed worship in various ways. We have pressed on carefully but in a principled way with the protocols we have established and which have been welcomed by you. This has allowed us to continue with worship for the most of the year until the suspension of services by the Bishop, over and above the mandates of Public Health, which resulted in the cancellation of Christmas and most of Epiphany season. It is the first time, I think, in the history of the Parish that there have been no Christmas services. We have lately learned, too, that you can’t count on the weather, especially in this winter unlike any other, it seems. A “bleak, midwinter” indeed!
Yet in the face of the things that lie beyond our control, we have pressed on with the Christ Church Connections email message every week and with recordings of the 8am communion service or, when services were completely curtailed, with an audio file of the Services of Matins and Ante-Communion. Homilies and meditations, on my poor part, have attempted to provide some food for the soul in these times of spiritual famine and eucharistic fast. The upside of these things, perhaps, is that it has allowed for deeper reflection on the wisdom of the Scriptures and to the ways in which Scripture in its own voice speaks to our souls even in the midst of the storms and tempests of our disordered world. In other words, as a Parish we have not been simply in survival mode but are growing spiritually in maturity and understanding about who we are in the Body of Christ. Such things have also been an important part of our spiritual outreach to “the friends of Christ Church” further afield whose prayers and support have been most encouraging. We have also persevered with the Christ Church Book Club throughout the course of the year.
For all of these spiritual labours may God be praised. It has meant looking beyond the inconveniences and frustrations that so often beset us. It has been about keeping our minds on the things of God. We have learned to appreciate better the things which truly matter, and so, like Mary, “have chosen the good portion”, I hope, “which shall not be taken away”. It is about “let[ting] the word of Christ dwell” in our hearts and minds “richly in all wisdom”, words which we heard on the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany last week which happened to coincide with the first time that we were able to return to worship since the last Sunday in Advent, 2021.
Sermon for Septuagesima
“Go ye also into the vineyard”
“My beloved had a vineyard”, Isaiah says, in a remarkable passage of triple reflexivity. “Let me sing for my beloved a love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard”. The prophet sings a song about God’s love, the beloved who in turn loves us. The vineyard of creation is the place of our being loved. How have we responded? “He looked for it to yield grapes but it yielded wild grapes”.
Isaiah captures the human dilemma. We are created in the image of God, as Genesis 1 reminds us in the first lesson at Matins every year on Septuagesima Sunday. We are also made out of the dust of the ground into which God breathes his spirit. In other words, the early chapters of Genesis remind us of two essential things: our connection to every other created thing, from dirt to angels, as it were, and our relation to God in whose image we are made. Genesis 1 places our humanity in the context of the whole order of creation. Creation is about nothing more than a relation to a Creator, which is to say that we are part of an intelligible order of reality. But what is the dilemma which Isaiah highlights? It is our turning away from the order and purpose of creation to pursue our own interests. As with Genesis, that reveals a contradiction within ourselves and with reality. The intelligibility of creation is all about the wisdom of God over against the folly of our humanity.
Yet our folly does not negate the truth of the vineyard, itself an image of creation and of the proper form of engagement with the natural world. But what is the purpose of creation? Lynn White’s 1967 paper, ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis’, claims that it is “the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man”. This has played a major role in blaming Christianity for the environmental and ecological catastrophes of our times. But is that the Christian teaching? He was right to note, as Alistair McGrath observes, the importance of religion in relation to ecology.
There is a long and rich tradition of reflection within the religious and philosophical traditions about our relation to nature. But to suppose that creation exists simply for us really reveals more about the impulses of our utilitarian and technocratic world which attempts to reduce the world to our interests and pursuits, in short, to technological domination. It results in the endless and often thoughtless manipulation of nature and ourselves which destroys both. This is the opposite of what Genesis means by God giving man “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth” which can only mean in the context of Genesis acting in the image of the Dominus, the Lord, in terms of care and respect for the whole created order. To view dominion as license for humans to manipulate and destroy is a serious misreading of the story and one which is profoundly false to Christian theology in its history and in its various forms of reflection on creation and nature.
Week at a Glance, 14 – 20 February
Tuesday, February 15th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Alistair McGrath’s The Reenchantment of Nature: The Denial of Religion and the Ecological Crisis (2002) & Peter Harrison’s The Territories of Science and Religion (2015).
Sunday, February 20th, Sexagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through March.
Septuagesima
The collect for today, Septuagesima (or the Third Sunday Before Lent) from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O LORD, we beseech thee favourably to hear the prayers of thy people; that we, who are justly punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness, for the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Saviour, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 9:24-27
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20:1-16
Artwork: Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, 1750s. Oil on canvas, Lazienki Palace (Palace on the Isle), Royal Baths Park, Warsaw.