Tuesday, March 8th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting
Sunday, March 13th, Second Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Event:
Tuesday, March 15th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme I
Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through April 5th. Return to the Church for Holy Week & Easter.
The collect for today, the First Sunday in Lent, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights: Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10
The Gospel: St Matthew 4:1-11
Artwork: Eric Armusik, The Temptation of Christ, 2011. Oil on birch, Private collection.
The story of David and Goliath is perhaps somewhat familiar even in our post-Christian world of diminished biblical literacy. It is commonly treated as an image and metaphor for the underdog especially in the sports world but sometimes spills over into politics and international affairs. Already we see the way it is used in terms of the Russian invasion of Ukraine; the big guy, Russia, over and against the little guy, Ukraine. But then those polarities get reversed by those who view things from the perspective of Russia, the little guy against the big Western world under American domination. Yet in all of these conflicting viewpoints, the image of David and Goliath always functions in terms of what is big and physically imposing against what is viewed as small and weak. And while there may be discrepancies of power, it is not always the case that things can be measured simply in such terms.
I am struck by how much the story is almost completely misread. It really follows directly upon what we saw last week about the anointing of David where the strong point is made that “the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance”, upon matters of strength and number, but “the Lord looks on the heart”. The story of David and Goliath makes exactly the same point.
In the context of a struggle between the Philistines and the Israelites, the giant Goliath challenges the armies of the Lord. He is a giant figure, to be sure, but what is greater than his bulk and strength, we might say, is his ego and arrogance, his presumption and boastfulness. It is not really about the underdog taking on the top dog. It is more about a clash of principles. What defines you? The braggadocio of a Goliath beating his chest or the Lord God of all reality who sees into your heart? The story is not simply about the little guy who takes down the big guy. It is about the spirit of the Lord in the heart of David. He has a hold of something far greater than himself.
The story is not without its amusement, especially with David putting on the armour of Saul and then not being able to move! Instead, he takes up his sling-shot along with five smooth stones. What moves him is at once a kind of courage born of his life as a shepherd protecting the sheep from bear and lion and of a confidence in the truth of God which Goliath has mocked and derided. David goes out against Goliath not “with a spear and a sword and a javelin” but, as he says, “in the name of the Lord of hosts.” He is armed from within. It is a contest of principles.
“I, who am but dust and ashes”, Abraham says in a remarkable passage that follows upon the promise of the promised son, a scene in which Abraham engages God in direct back and forth dialogue about righteousness and mercy. ‘How many righteous persons, God,’ Abraham is saying, ‘do there have to be within the city before you spare it?’ ‘Fifty? Forty? Thirty? Ten?’ The exchange is priceless and serves to highlight the idea of the infinite mercy of God which cannot be quantified, a point which reinforces that there is no wisdom in techne and technology since it defaults to a quantitative logic. Here is the first time that the phrase “dust and ashes” appears in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is in the context of a dialogue of question and answer between Abraham and God.
“Lord, I who am but dust and ashes”, dare to question you, God, Abraham is saying (Gen. 18.27). But that opens us out to the great insight of our engagement with God and one another, a question about our participation in God’s own life. “Now we see in a glass darkly but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as I am known,” as Paul puts it in Sunday’s Epistle reading from 1st Corinthians 13. Such is the project of Lent, to know even as we are known. The phrase will reappear with Job in the context of his wrestling with God. “God,” he says, “has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes” (Job 30.19) but the phrase reaches its greatest poignancy of meaning in Job’s repentance in response to the wonder of God answering Job out of the whirlwind to recall him to the majesty and the power of creation: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” (Job 38.4). “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now I see thee;” Job says, “therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
We are called to account about who we are. The epigraph to Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter of Things is from Plotinus. “But we … who are we?”, also quoted by the great physicist Schrödinger (1951). To know even as we are known.
Dust and ashes signify humility and repentance; the humility that contrasts with our pride and presumption; the repentance that seeks our being turned back to God. The dust of death and the ashes of repentance point us to the death and resurrection of Christ, to our life through his death for us in the flesh of our humanity. The haunting phrase of our liturgy, “Remember, O man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return” recalls the story of Creation and the Fall in Genesis and reiterated in the wisdom of Ecclesiastes: “all are from the dust, and all turn to the dust again” (Eccl. 3.20). Such is humility as the counter to pride and pretension.
Behold the Lamb is a series of meditations from a variety of Canadian Anglicans on the Morning Prayer New Testament lessons in the Prayer Book for Lent. (Fr. David Curry is one of the contributors.)
Click here to download the book of devotionals as a pdf document.
This devotional resource is offered to the glory of God and in thanksgiving for the faithful that call The Anglican Church of Canada home. Deo gratias!
The collect for today, The First Day of Lent, commonly called Ash Wednesday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: St James 4:6-11a
The Gospel: St Matthew 6:16-21
![Luigi Nono, Preghiera [Prayer]](https://i0.wp.com/christchurchwindsor.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Nono_Preghiera.jpg?ssl=1 "Luigi Nono, Preghiera [Prayer]")
Artwork: Luigi Nono, Preghiera [Prayer], 1882. Oil on canvas, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint David (c. 520-589), Bishop of Menevia, Patron Saint of Wales (source):
Almighty God,
who didst call thy servant David
to be a faithful and wise steward of thy mysteries
for the people of Wales:
in thy mercy, grant that,
following his purity of life and zeal
for the gospel of Christ,
we may with him receive the crown of everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom with thee and the Holy Spirit
be all honour and glory,
world without end.
The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 2:2b-12
The Gospel: St. Mark 4:26-29
Artwork: Saint David, stained glass, late 19th century, Jesus College Chapel, Oxford.
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on Quinquagesima Sunday.
Quinquagesima Sunday makes explicit the logic which underlies the ‘gesima’ Sundays and which runs through the whole pageant of Lent which begins with Ash Wednesday this week. “We go up to Jerusalem”, Jesus says to the disciples, and explains exactly what that means. Yet, the disciples, as Luke points out, “understood none of these things”. This captures what Paul means by saying that “now we see in a glass darkly”. The hope of Lent as the journey of the soul to God is that “then” we may see “face to face”, that beyond “know[ing] in part”, we shall “know even as also [we] are known”. It gives a deeper meaning to the strong petition of the blind man on the wayside who simply wants to “receive [his] sight”.
The deeper significance of this is that we might see ourselves as God sees us, to see ourselves in Christ; in short, to know even as we are known in God. This highlights Lent as the season of the mystical journey of our souls to God. It emphasizes two themes which stand in complete opposition in our dystopian world: knowledge and will or power.
The great lesson of 1st Corinthians is about wisdom in love, the counter to the delusions of our technocratic culture which is utterly and entirely bereft of wisdom, of virtue, and is anti-life and anti-intellect. Know-how skills do not provide us with the knowledge of what belongs to character, to the virtues of the soul, which concern ends and purposes; in short, meaning which goes beyond techne or technique. Knowing what something is or knowing that it exists for a purpose extends far beyond the know-how skills of our digital devices which reduce us to machine-like things who think like our devices. We make the machines that make and unmake us. To know even as we are known is to reclaim our humanity from the disastrous projects of its being re-engineered, as Brett Frischmann & Evan Selinger pointed out in Re-engineering Humanity (2018).
Such is the paradox and the perversion of the famous Turing-test devised to see if a computer is capable of thinking like a human; now it is about whether humans can be made to think like computers. “I am not a robot,” we are sometimes asked to check but that only confirms how conditioned we are to being essentially technobots, mere cogs in the machinery of algorithms which work for purposes that are entirely remote and hidden from us but serve the interests of the technocratic elites. Such examples serve only to highlight the divide between power and knowledge.
Wednesday, March 2nd, Ash Wednesday
7:00am Penitential Services & Ashes
12:00noon Holy Communion & Ashes
2:35-2:50pm Imposition of Ashes at KES Chapel
Sunday, March 6th, First Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through April 5th. Return to the Church for Holy Week & Easter.
