Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Rogation Sunday
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on Rogation Sunday.
Month: May 2022
Sermon for Rogation Sunday
“In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer,
I have overcome the world”
Rogation Sunday concentrates wonderfully for us the radical meaning of Christ’s Resurrection. It signals our freedom not from the world but in the world through our being grounded in the mutual love of the Father and the Son. “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father,” Jesus says, capturing in a phrase the essential life of God himself, the life which overcomes all sin and evil, all that opposes the truth of God. Far from being a gnostic flight from the world as if it were evil, it signals the redemption of the world. The Resurrection gives us a way to face the difficult things of our troubled world, a world of tribulations and oppressions, of sufferings and sorrows, a world of fears and hatreds, of divisions and animosities.
These are words, as the disciples seem to begin to grasp, albeit yet in a glass darkly, spoken “plainly” and “no parable”. Jesus in response makes it equally clear that there are and there always will be tribulations in the world. “You shall be scattered every man to his own,” and in reference to his passion, you “shall leave me alone.” Such is the meaning of our betrayals of God; the meaning of our sin is seen in his desolation on the Cross in the terrifying aloneness of his suffering. “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me.” Nothing captures more fully the meaning of sin, the sense of abandonment because of our having forsaken God. “And yet,” as Jesus says, “I am not alone,” the little conjunction, “yet” highlights his being with the Father and the Father with him. Such is the dynamic of God’s goodness and truth which is by definition greater than the follies of sin and evil. The Resurrection never lets us forget the Passion.
The words of the Cross begin and end with the address of the Son to the Father: “Father, forgive them”; “Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit.” Everything is gathered back to the Father in love. This is the radical meaning of his going forth and return to the Father. This is the victory of love over hatred and fear, over sin and evil. The Resurrection brings out the radical meaning of creation and our lives in the world, a world which is more than tribulation and oppression because it is God’s world. Thus, James bids us “be doers of the word, and not hearers only” because that is the radical truth of our knowing even as we are known in Christ. The Resurrection opens out to us “the perfect law of liberty,” which is our freedom in Christ, a freedom from sin and death. That freedom is grace, the grace that allows us to face the world and ourselves without fear. It gives us the courage to act and engage the world of nature and human affairs.
Week at a Glance, 23 – 29 May
Tuesday, May 24th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Anthony Grafton’s Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West (2009) & Serendipities: Language and Lunacy (1998) by Umberto Eco.
Thursday, May 26th, Ascension Day
7:00pm Holy Communion
Sunday, May 29th, Sunday after Ascension Day
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
The Fifth Sunday After Easter
The collect for today, The Fifth Sunday After Easter, commonly called Rogation Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O LORD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: St. James 1:22-27
The Gospel: St. John 16:23-33
Artwork: Ilya Repin, Even if all fall away, I will not, 1896. Oil on canvas, Ivanovo Arts Museum, Russia.
Reflections for King’s-Edgehill School Cadet Church Parade, 2022
KES Cadet Church Parade – Friday, May 13th, 2022
It happened one Friday afternoon
‘It happened one Friday afternoon.’
‘You mean Friday the thirteenth?’
‘No, no. Not that.’
‘Oh, you mean our marching through the town and into the Church this afternoon?’ ‘Well, in a way, I suppose, but only because of what happened one Friday afternoon long ago.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Just look at the center window above the altar.’
‘What do you see?’
‘The picture of Christ crucified?’
‘Exactly. That is what happened one Friday afternoon and why we are doing what we are doing this Friday afternoon.’
It happened one Friday afternoon. The image of Christ crucified is the dominant icon or image here at Christ Church. The dominant icon or image at the School Chapel is Christ the Good Shepherd. They go together and complement each other. They belong to the intimate connection between the Passion and the Resurrection.
Christ Church has played a large role in the life and history of the School. It has been three years since we have been able to have the Church Parade and to be here in this sacred space. This service and space remind us of the history and life of the School and its connections to the community of Windsor, to the military, and to the Church. It means having to think about dark and difficult things such as war and conquest, about suffering and sorrow that are part of our disordered world both past and present. We can only do so because of what happened one Friday afternoon.
For years upon years, since the late 19th century and throughout most of the twentieth century, students from King’s Collegiate School and from Edgehill Church School for Girls marched down to Christ Church on Sundays for service. In rows of two by two, they entered and sat on opposite sides of the Church. No doubt, like Bassanio and Portia in Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice, they looked across the aisle to one another signaling with their eyes “fair speechless messages” of love (or mischief!). There were no devices and so no texting. A different age.
To this day a box hangs at the back of the Church near the entrance specifically designated to hold prayer books and hymn books for the use of the Schools. It recalls the connection between the School and the Church in the community of Windsor.
It happened one Friday afternoon. To understand the image of Christ crucified means appreciating the different ways in which the crucifixion has been depicted in art and devotion over the centuries.
The earliest image is that of Christus Rex, Christ the King. Christ is depicted as a king, robed in royal robes and crowned with a crown of gold. It is a powerful symbol of the triumph of life over death.
But later the emphasis turned from the victory to the agony, the agony of suffering. Christ was depicted in terms of his suffering humanity. The focus is on the body, on the sufferings. Christ identifies with the forms of human suffering, sometimes in very grotesque ways, especially after the black death in the 14th century which had such a devastating effect on European culture and life.
Dunstan, Archbishop
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: Roundel with Saint Dunstan of Canterbury, 1501-20. Colorless glass, vitreous paint and silver stain, The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Fourth Sunday after Easter
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Fourth Sunday after Easter.
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter
“He will guide you into all truth”
The opening sentence in the Epistle reading from St. James, however eloquently expressed, is really a religious and philosophical commonplace, even a cliché. But like all clichés there is something profoundly true in it. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” It highlights the idea that every good gift, indeed, every perfect gift comes to us from above, from God, who is constant and eternal in contrast to what is always changing, in contrast to the shadows of what is real.
This recalls Plato’s great dynamic image of the Cave where we are turned around by a process of education from our fixation on the shadows or images of things flickering on a wall to the physical things themselves, and then to the mathematical things that are conceptual and mental, and then to the pure forms of things without which we cannot say what anything really is, and, ultimately, to the realization of the Good which goes beyond both the different forms of knowing and being. The good is above or beyond. And as such it cannot be possessed by us as a thing; instead, it possesses us.
This association with Plato is not something accidental. It belongs to the dynamic of the emergence and crystallization of the Christian Faith out of the conflicts and convergences of Jewish religion, Greek philosophy, and Roman rule. The second sentence of the Epistle brings the opening commonplace to its focus for us. God “has brought us to birth by the word of truth.” That is the gift, the perfect gift, which comes down from above. It is about the idea of truth, the truth which governs our actions as grounded in God and not in the vagaries of our emotions and feelings. “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” Truth does not lie in our self-righteous affirmations of ourselves which are invariably judgments of others. What comes to us from God is the word implanted in us which can only be received in a spirit of gentleness, in mansuetudine Christi, the gentleness of Christ, we might say.
The Gospel readings for the last three Sundays of Eastertide are taken from the sixteenth chapter of John’s Gospel. Jesus is at pains to teach us through his Passion and Resurrection about God as essential life, the life of the Spirit which embraces and redeems the world and our humanity. The emphasis today is on the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of truth,” who “will guide you into all truth,” the Holy Spirit who is the love knot or bond of the Father and the Son. It is Jesus who teaches us not only about the Resurrection but about God as Trinity. He teaches us about God the Father, about the Son, and about the Holy Spirit, the mysterium divinum of God himself.
Week at a Glance, 16 – 22 May
Thursday, May 19th
7:00pm Capella Regalis concert
Tickets: $25 – door; $20 – advance; $10 – students. Click here for full details.
Sunday, May 22nd, Fifth Sunday after Easter / Rogation Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
The Fourth Sunday After Easter
The collect for today, The Fourth Sunday After Easter, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: St. James 1:17-21
The Gospel: St. John 16:5-15
Artwork: Philippe de Champaigne, The Last Supper, c. 1652. Oil on canvas, Louvre.