Year: 2022

Prayers and liturgy

Quinquagesima

The collect for today, the Sunday called Quinquagesima, being the Fiftieth Day before Easter, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Francesco de Mura, Christ Healing the Blind ManO LORD, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth: Send thy Holy Spirit, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 18:31-43

Artwork: Francesco de Mura, Christ Healing the Blind Man, c. 1740. Oil on canvas, National Trust, Basildon Park, Berkshire.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 24 February

Wisdom in love

Last week in the return to Chapel we read Paul’s powerful hymn to love in First Corinthians 13 and its counterpart in Isaiah’s Song of the Beloved about his vineyard (Is. 5). This week we embark upon a brief consideration of the story of David, one of the greatest narrative moments in antiquity, a story which extends over the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel and into 1st Kings. Central to that narrative arc is the story of David, a story which has a remarkable power of truth and eloquence. “The story of David”, as the literary and Jewish biblical scholar and translator, Robert Alter, notes “is probably the greatest single narrative representation in antiquity of a human life evolving by slow stages through time, shaped and altered by the pressures of political life, public institutions, family, the impulses of body and spirit, the eventual sad decay of the flesh.”

What is it all about? About the truth of our humanity in all its disarray and about the return of our humanity to God. Alter’s observations are complemented by those of the 17th century poet/preacher John Donne. “David”, he says, “shows us the slippery ways into sin and the penitential ways out of sin”; in short, David is a kind of everyman. Yet he is a figure whose story is brilliantly told precisely because of the insights and careful observations of the anonymous narrator into the ambiguities and uncertainties of our humanity, especially about knowledge and power explored by way of Samuel, Saul, David, and others that belong to this outstanding literary narrative.

The dynamic between prophecy and kingship is one of the underlying themes and questions. Samuel is a prophet, one who by definition speaks on behalf of God and has an insight into God’s will for his people.  “A prophet was formerly called a seer”(1 Sam. 9.9); literally, one who sees into the truth of things. Yet Samuel is also moved by self-interest and worldly ambition. He has chosen Saul to be king yet Saul is an uncertain quantity in terms of ambition and knowledge. Saul has been chosen, it seems, more on the basis of outward appearance and assumptions about power; someone whom Samuel thinks he can control.

The story of David begins with his being anointed king by Samuel in place of Saul. The story in its simple eloquence complements Paul’s great hymn to love which ends with the cryptic statement that “now I see through a glass darkly but then face to face; then shall I know even as I am known.” Such is the desire for wisdom in love, to know even as we are known by God. Samuel comes to Bethlehem as directed by God to choose a king from among the eight sons of Jesse. The first to come before him is Eliab whom Samuel wants to anoint, seeing him much as he had seen Saul but, in a brilliant phrase, he is told by God not to look on his appearance, “for the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart”.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Matthias the Apostle

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Matthias the Apostle, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who into the place of the traitor Judas didst choose thy faithful servant Matthias to be of the number of the twelve Apostles: Grant that thy Church, being alway preserved from false Apostles, may be ordered and guided by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:15-26
The Gospel: St. John 15:1-11

Anthony van Dyck, Saint MatthiasThe name of this saint is probably an abbreviation of Mattathias, meaning “gift of Yahweh”.

Matthias was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot after Judas had betrayed Jesus and then committed suicide. In the time between Christ’s Ascension and Pentecost, the small band of disciples, numbering about 120, gathered together and Peter spoke of the necessity of selecting a twelfth apostle to replace Judas. Peter enunciated two criteria for the office of apostle: He must have been a follower of Jesus from the Baptism to the Ascension, and he must be a witness to the resurrected Lord. This meant that he had to be able to proclaim Jesus as Lord from first-hand personal experience. Two of the brothers were found to fulfill these qualifications: Matthias and Joseph called Barsabbas also called the Just. Matthias was chosen by lot. Neither of these two men is referred to by name in the four Gospels, although several early church witnesses, including Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea, report that Matthias was one of the seventy-two disciples.

Like the other apostles and disciples, St. Matthias received the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Since he is not mentioned later in the New Testament, nothing else is known for certain about his activities. He is said to have preached in Judaea for some time and then traveled elsewhere. Various contradictory stories about his apostolate have existed since early in church history. The tradition held by the Greek Church is that he went to Cappadocia and the area near the Caspian Sea where he was crucified at Colchis. Some also say he went to Ethiopia before Cappadocia. Another tradition holds that he was stoned to death and then beheaded at Jerusalem.

The Empress St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, is said to have brought St Matthias’s relics to Rome c. 324, some of which were moved to the Benedictine Abbey of St Matthias, Trier, Germany, in the 11th century.

Artwork: Anthony van Dyck, Saint Matthias, c. 1619. Oil on wood, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.

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Prayers and liturgy

Lindel Tsen and Paul Sasaki, Bishops

The collect for today, the commemoration of Lindel Tsen (1885-1946), Bishop in China, consecrated 1929, and Paul Sasaki (1885-1954), Bishop in Japan, consecrated 1935 (source):

Bishop Paul Shinji SasakiBishop Philip Lindel TsenAlmighty God, we offer thanks for the faith and witness of Paul Sasaki, bishop in the Nippon Sei Ko Kai [Anglican Church in Japan], tortured and imprisoned by his government, and Philip [Lindel] Tsen, leader of the Chinese Anglican Church, arrested for his faith. We pray that all Church leaders oppressed by hostile governments may be delivered by thy mercy, and that by the power of the Holy Spirit we may be faithful to the Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ; who livest and reignest with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 4:26-32

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Sexagesima

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on Sexagesima Sunday.

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Sermons

Sermon for Sexagesima Sunday

“The seed is the word of God”

The ‘Gesima Sundays’ mark the transition from learning to living, a turn to the practice of the virtues as transformed by divine love to become the means of our participation in Christ’s work of human redemption. That will be the project of Lent, the pilgrimage of love that brings us to the book of love opened out for us to read on the cross of Good Friday. Already we are being turned towards Easter.

Today the virtues of courage and prudence are set before us in the Epistle and Gospel respectively. This focus on the classical virtues as transformed by divine love to become forms of love themselves locates the ‘Gesima Sundays’ within a larger tradition of ethical thinking. They connect to the great ethical turn in philosophy by Socrates and Plato, for instance, along with others in what has been styled the “axial age” (Karl Jaspers) and thus to the idea of philosophy as something lived, the idea of the good life.

Such ancient interests speak to our modern concerns. What is the good life? It is a pressing question in our current circumstances economically, politically, socially, environmentally, and religiously. The Christian Faith speaks to our current distresses even if nothing more than to raise the necessary ethical questions, the questions that are rooted in an understanding of the dynamic between God and Man in Jesus Christ. “I am come”, Jesus says, “that they may have life and have it more abundantly.” He doesn’t mean more and more of everything materially but spiritually and intellectually.

It means a kind of thoughtfulness in the face of the fearful thoughtlessness of our world and day. The question about the good life is the question we all face. The contemporary preoccupation with ‘wellness’ suggests  one way in which this is pursued largely through the various techniques of physical exercise and diet. At best, this might relate to the virtue of temperance, of the self-control of our appetites, in a culture of excess and addiction. Endorphin high or cannabis high? There is a difference, I suppose, which lies in the question of intention at the very least.

But in another way this points to the unlivable character of contemporary life in a global world that confronts us with enormous iniquities and inequalities on a scale of magnitude that is scarcely imaginable. It signals the loss of a way of understanding that belongs to the mediating institutions, such as schools and churches, between the leviathan of modern governments and the behemoth of multinational corporations. As governed by technocratic reason, they are profoundly anti-life and effectively reduce us to passive little technobots, mere cogs in a machine ruled by technocrats. The levelling nature of this form of thinking has no respect for the organisations and institutions that once contributed to the social and spiritual well-being of our communal lives, let alone the ethical and spiritual principles which animate such institutions.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 21 – 27 February

Sunday, February 27th, Quinquagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Services to be held in the Parish Hall, January through March.

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Prayers and liturgy

Sexagesima

The collect for today, Sexagesima (or the Second Sunday Before Lent) from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O LORD God, who seest that we put not our trust in any thing that we do: Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 11:21b-31
The Gospel: St Luke 8:4-15

Jacopo Bassano, Parable of the SowerArtwork: Jacopo Bassano, Parable of the Sower, 1567-68. Oil on canvas, Palatine Gallery, Pitti Palace, Florence.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 17 February

My beloved had a vineyard

Il faut cultiver notre jardin. This famous conclusion to Voltaire’s great work of intellectual satire, ‘Candide’, speaks to us about our relation to the conditions which we face. “To cultivate our garden” really means to do the best you can in the situation in which you find yourself to make things better. Satire seeks amendment; in short to make things better in the realm of morals and manners. The idea of cultivation has to do with civilisation and, particularly with the idea of honouring and respecting nature. Cultivating is about working with nature but without destroying it. In other words, it speaks to the idea of respect and honour towards nature which stands in complete contrast to the culture of exploitation and the destruction of nature in our own times and of ourselves. God “looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes”.

Isaiah’s great love song complements Paul’s great hymn of love in 1st Corinthians. “Let me sing for my beloved a love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard” (Is. 5. 1). The vineyard is an image of creation, and, more particularly, an image of Israel. In other words, we cannot think about creation or nature without thinking about ourselves and about how we engage the world.

The idea of the vineyard offers a positive image about the nature of our labours. Our labour is not simply a curse, bearing “the burden and heat of the day” and working “in the sweat of our face” for bread. Rather it is about respect for three things: for creation itself, for one another as fellow-workers, and for God, the Lord of the vineyard of creation and of ourselves who are made in his image. The image of the vineyard recalls the pageant of creation in Genesis and the place of our humanity in the order of creation. One of the mistaken ideas, promoted by Lynn White’s 1967 paper, ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis’, is that Christianity teaches that “nature has no reason for existence save to serve man”. This is simply not true and obscures the far more interesting development, well documented by Peter Harrison in his ‘The Territories of Science and Religion’ (2015), which chronicles the profound shifts in terminology from natural philosophy’s interest in understanding nature to ‘science’, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in its interest in changing nature under the ideology of progress. As Karl Marx put it, the point is not to understand the world but to change it. We are, perhaps, now far more aware of the problems belonging to our technocratic domination and destruction of nature precisely on the basis of that assumption.

That God gives to our humanity “dominion” over the natural world does not mean and cannot mean in the context of Genesis the power to manipulate and destroy, to exploit and use the natural world. It can only mean to act in accord with the Dominus, the Lord, in his care and respect for the goodness of all created things; in short, an honouring of nature as having intrinsic truth and meaning. We cannot not leave a mark on nature; the question is always what kind of mark.

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Prayers and liturgy

Valentine, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for a Martyr, on the Feast of Saint Valentine (d. c. 269), Bishop, Martyr at Rome, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Leonhard Beck, St. ValentineO GOD, who didst bestow upon thy Saints such marvellous virtue, that they were able to stand fast, and have the victory against the world, the flesh, and the devil: Grant that we, who now commemorate thy Martyr Valentine, may ever rejoice in their fellowship, and also be enabled by thy grace to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold upon eternal life; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:12-19
The Gospel: St. Matthew 16:24-27

Artwork: Leonhard Beck, St. Valentine, c. 1510. Oil on canvas, Coburg Fortress, Coburg, Germany.

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