Year: 2022

KES Chapel Weekly Reflections, King's-Edgehill School Sermons

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.

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Prayers and liturgy

Dunstan, Archbishop

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

Cloisters Collection, Roundel with Saint Dunstan of CanterburyAlmighty 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.

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Prayers and liturgy

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.

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Sermons

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.

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Events, Month at a Glance

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

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Prayers and liturgy

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

Philippe de Champaigne, The Last SupperArtwork: Philippe de Champaigne, The Last Supper, c. 1652. Oil on canvas, Louvre.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 12 May

Breakfast with Jesus?!

The accounts of the Resurrection all turn on the idea of how we come to know and show us that process of a dawning awareness in which we come to see things in a completely new way that illuminates the past and sets us in motion.

Here Christ appears to the disciples on the beach while they are fishing. It begins with the disciples not recognising Jesus, among them Peter, who it seems has returned to his former labor as a fisherman. But they had “caught nothing” until Jesus bids them cast their net on the other side of the boat wherein they enclose a great number of fishes, indeed, one hundred and fifty three without the net breaking! Only then does Jesus say, “come and have breakfast!”

Why 153 and why the unbroken net? Simply another fish story? Exaggerating the size and number of the fish caught? Mathematicians might note that 153 is the triangular number of seventeen but its symbolic meaning is open to interpretation. The Early Church Fathers in various imaginative ways see the number and the broken net as symbolizing the totality of salvation, namely, all who are enclosed in the unbroken net of the Gospel. This leads to a barbecue breakfast on the beach with Jesus. Not so much the last supper as the first breakfast! A strong affirmation of the bodily reality of our spiritual lives, we might say. And another image of our being gathered to God out of our confusions and disappointments. But fish? Well, in the later Christian imaginary, Christians identified themselves by the sign of the fish. Fish in Greek forms an acrostic: ICTHUS (ιχθυς), meaning “Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour,” a prayer and an expression of faith.

All of this suggests how the accounts of the Resurrection bring out a feature common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well as other religions and philosophies, a feature which we forget at our peril. It is about a sacramental understanding.

A sacramental understanding has very much to do with the relation between Word and Sacrament and with the way in which the things of the world belong and contribute to our life of faith and to the forms of our participation in the life of God in Christ. In the Christian sense, the sacraments are “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”. They are a critical feature of all religions. Something invisible and spiritual is made known through what is material and visible. This is the counter to our gnostic and technological flights from the world and the body as if it were evil.

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Prayers and liturgy

Florence Nightingale, Nurse

The collect for today, the commemoration of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), Nurse, Social Reformer (source):

Sir John Robert Steell, Florence NightingaleLife-giving God, who alone hast power over life and death, over health and sickness: Give power, wisdom, and gentleness to those who follow the example of thy servant Florence Nightingale, that they, bearing with them thy Presence, may not only heal but bless, and shine as lanterns of hope in the darkest hours of pain and fear; through Jesus Christ, the healer of body and soul, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Isaiah 58:6-11
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25:31-46

Artwork: Sir John Robert Steell, Florence Nightingale, 1862. Bronze, Florence Nightingale Museum, Lambeth Palace Road, London. Photograph taken by admin, 25 August 2004.

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Prayers and liturgy

Cyril and Methodius, Missionaries

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Cyril (826-69) and Saint Methodius (c. 815-85), Apostles to the Slavs (source):

O Lord of all,
who gavest to thy servants Cyril and Methodius
the gift of tongues to proclaim the gospel to the Slavic people:
we pray that thy whole Church may be one as thou art one,
that all who confess thy name may honour one another,
and that from east and west all may acknowledge one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
and thee, the God and Father of all;
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 3:1-7
The Gospel: St. Mark 16:15-20

Polasek, Sts. Cyril and MethodiusSt. Cyril and St. Methodius were brothers born in Thessalonica who went to Constantinople after being ordained priests. (Cyril was baptised Constantine and did not become known as Cyril until late in his life.) Around AD 863, Emperor Michael II and Patriarch Photius sent the brothers as missionaries to Moravia, where they translated into Slavonic the Gospels, the Psalms, and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. With his brother’s help, Cyril created an alphabet that later developed into Cyrillic, thus laying the foundation for Slavic literature.

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Prayers and liturgy

Gregory of Nazianzus, Bishop and Doctor

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (329-89), Monk, Bishop, Theologian, Doctor of the Eastern Church (source):

Giuseppe Franchi, St. Gregory of NazianzusAlmighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who livest and reignest for ever and ever.

The Lesson: Wisdom 7:7-14
The Gospel: St. John 8:25-32

Artwork: Giuseppe Franchi, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 1575. Oil on canvas, Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.

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