Month: July 2023

Sermons

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity

“At thy word”

“‘Take my camel, dear’, said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.” It is a famous opening line from Rose Macaulay’s novel The Towers of Trebizond, an Anglo-Catholic classic. There are also great ending lines, too. “Grace is everywhere” or “all is grace” (tout est grâce) ends George Bernanos’ The Diary of a Country Priest. There are beginnings and endings that evoke a whole pattern understanding and which illustrate the character of our lives in media res, in the midst of things. And sometimes, mirabile dictu, there are opening and ending lines which go together and complement each other like what we have with this morning’s Epistle and Gospel.

The Epistle reading from 1st Peter begins with the strong phrase, “be ye all of one mind” and ends with “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.” The Gospel reading from Luke begins with the strong and compelling image of “the people press[ing] upon Jesus to hear the word of God” and ends with Simon Peter, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, and others “for[saking] all and follow[ing] him.” In each case everything in between is held together by these phrases. In the Epistle, what is in between is an exhortation to a godly life against the explicit forms of wickedness which so easily arise not only in our hearts, but also in the forms of suffering and persecution, terror and trouble, fear and anxiety that are part and parcel of human experience in a our common life together. In the Gospel, what is in between is the equally compelling image of the empty frustrations that belong to human experience: “ we have toiled all the night,” Simon Peter says, “and have taken nothing.” We have but laboured in vain, it seems.

“Be ye all of one mind,” Peter tells us. But what is that one mind? Is it mere unanimity regardless of what one is agreed about? Surely not. Peter is talking about the mind of Christ for he goes on to describe the qualities of the love of Christ towards us which must become the form of his life within us. Such is sanctification. But as the Gospel reminds us that is not simply about our doing, a human enterprise. It is and can only be the work of God’s grace in us. “Apart from me you can do nothing,” Jesus tells us.

Being of one mind is not simply about consensus. It is about truth as life in us corporately and individually. Within state and church, within society and parish, we can be of one mind about things which are wrong and unethical, for example, or we can arrive at a good and fine decision but in questionable and coercive ways. Do we not all with one mind cry out “crucify him, crucify him” in the drama and spectacle of Holy Week?

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Events, Month at a Glance

July at a Glance

Sunday, July 16th, Sixth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, July 23rd, Seventh Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, July 30th, Eighth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Fr. Curry is priest-in-charge for Avon Valley Parish and Hantsport during July; Fr. Tom Henderson will be priest-in-charge for Christ Church during August when I will be on vacation.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fifth Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, The Fifth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, O Lord, we beseech thee, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by thy governance, that thy Church may joyfully serve thee in all godly quietness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 3:8-15a
The Gospel: St. Luke 5:1-11

Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Calling of the ApostlesArtwork: Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Calling of the Apostles, 1481-82. Fresco, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.

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Prayers and liturgy

Thomas More, Martyr

The collect for today, the commemoration of Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Lord Chancellor of England, Scholar, Reformation Martyr (source):

Almighty God,
who strengthened Thomas More
to be in office a king’s good servant
but in conscience your servant first,
grant us in all our doubts and uncertainties
to feel the grasp of your holy hand
and to live by faith in your promise
that you shall not let us be lost;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 3:13-16
The Gospel: St. Mark 12:13-17

A meditation of Thomas More, written in the Tower of London a year before he was beheaded:

Give me your grace, good Lord, to set the world at nought,
to set my mind fast upon you and not to hang upon the blast of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary.
Not to long for worldly company,
little and little utterly to cast off the world, and rid my mind of the business thereof.
Not to long to hear of any worldly things,
but that the hearing of worldly fantasies may be to me displeasant.
Gladly to be thinking God,
busily to labour to love him.
To know own vility and wretchedness,
to humble and meeken myself under the mighty hand of God,
to bewail my sins passed;
for the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here,
to be joyful of tribulations,
to walk the narrow way that leads to life.
To bear the cross with Christ,
to have the last thing—death—in remembrance,
to have ever before my eye death, that is ever at hand;
to make death no stranger to me;
to foresee and consider the everlasting fire of hell;
to pray for pardon before the Judge comes.
To have continually in mind the passion that Christ suffered for me;
For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks,
to buy the time again that I before have lost.
To abstain from vain confabulations,
To eschew light foolish mirth and gladness;
To cut off unnecessary recreations.
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all–
To set the loss at nought for the winning of Christ.
To think my worst enemies my best friends,
for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good
with their love and favour as they did with their hatred and malice.

Antoine Caron, The Arrest and Execution of Sir Thomas More in 1535Source of collect: For All the Saints: Prayers and Readings for Saints’ Days, compiled by Stephen Reynolds. Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2007, p. 215.

Artwork: Antoine Caron, The Arrest and Execution of Sir Thomas More in 1535, c. 1541. Oil on panel, Les Musées de Blois, France.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Fourth Sunday after Trinity

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity

“Be ye merciful, as your Father also is merciful”

We shall return to this chapter from St. Luke’s Gospel later on with the passage which immediately precedes this morning’s gospel about “lov[ing] your enemies” (Trinity 6). Here we have the further articulation of the reciprocity of grace that is to be at work in us which belongs to the pageant of sanctification. It is about our life in Christ, about our abiding, quite literally, in the doctrine of Christ. What that means belongs to our attention to the reading of the Scriptures as they shape our lives in grace.

That means reminding ourselves of the interplay between the various texts of the Scriptures. To be sure, we have these marvellous and, of course, challenging readings each Sunday at Mass but they do not stand simply by themselves. They need to be seen as complemented by other Scripture readings that are also set before us both in the Sunday Office lectionary and the Daily Office lectionary. In a way this points us to the two great questions that we will hear at the midpoint of the Trinity season and which belong to the Christian ethic of compassion in the story of the Good Samaritan, namely, “what is written in the law? How readest thou?”

I was reminded of this by the readings in the Daily Office from Proverbs and from the Letters of John this week that speak to the nature of our abiding in the love of God, something which has already been highlighted in the readings for the first two Sundays after Trinity. Proverbs is, I think, a bit more than simply a loose collection of wise sayings or maxims; it provides a way of thinking things through and of the reciprocity and exchange of ideas that are meant to be lived out in our lives. In that sense, it belongs to our reading in the Trinity season because of its emphasis on sanctification, on our abiding in the Trinity through the words of Scripture which are understood in their unity as the words of Christ. As Cranmer puts it, “he that keepeth the words of Christ is promised the love and favour of God and that he shall be the dwelling-place or temple of the Blessed Trinity”.

In 2 John (9,10), we read that “he who abides in the doctrine [of Christ] has both the Father and the Son.” Doctrine is the teaching, διδακη. In Proverbs 9, “Wisdom”, we are told, “has built her house” and there is the intriguing and at first puzzling contrast between the invitation of the wise woman and the foolish woman. They begin with the exact same words: “whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” But there is all the difference in what that turning in leads to and means.

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Events, Month at a Glance

July at a Glance

Sunday, July 9th, Fifth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, July 16th, Sixth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, July 23rd, Seventh Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, July 30th, Eighth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Fr. Curry is priest-in-charge for Avon Valley Parish and Hantsport during July; Fr. Tom Henderson will be priest-in-charge for Christ Church during August when I will be on vacation.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fourth Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, the Fourth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 8:18-23
The Gospel: St Luke 6:36-42

David Teniers the Younger, The Blind Leading the Blind (after Domenico Feti)Artwork: David Teniers the Younger, The Blind Leading the Blind (after Domenico Feti), 1655. Oil on canvas, Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague, Netherlands.

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Prayers and liturgy

Confederation of Canada, 1867: Dominion Day

The collect for today, Dominion Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD, who providest for thy people by thy power, and rulest over them in love: Vouchsafe so to bless thy servant our King, and his Government in this Dominion of Canada, that thy people may dwell in peace and safety, and thy Church serve thee in all godly quietness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 2:11-17
The Gospel: St. Matthew 22:16-22

Canada FlagCanadian Red Ensign

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