Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity.
Month: November 2023
Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity
“Our citizenship is in heaven”
We are “strangers and pilgrims” who seek “a better country, that is, an heavenly,” as the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us in the Octave of All Saints’. That “better country” is what Paul means by “our citizenship in heaven”, for “we have here no continuing city.” Some worldly utopia is not our end, however we imagine it in the sense of being a human construct. What we desire is indeed a critical feature of our humanity but our desire for what is absolute and good is precisely beyond our constructing. Such is the delusion of thinking that we can make heaven on earth.
The readings today challenge our culture and church which assumes that the church and religion should mirror and reflect our ideological agendas. It doesn’t either anciently or now. Paul’s statement about our citizenship being in heaven points to the idea of how the things of this world have their truth and meaning only in God. The secular finds its truth only in the sacred; this is the strong teaching of these readings which transcend the opposition of sacred and secular to show the nature of their interrelation. It is neither a dogmatic assertion of the heavenly at the expense of the worldly nor is it mere relativism.
What is stated in the epistle is illustrated in the Gospel. “Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s”. The distinction is crucial to the understanding of our lives as “strangers and pilgrims” in this world. Caesar here is symbolic of the powers of this world; in short, the secular. Yet it has its truth and purpose as belonging to the greater truth and power of God. As Jesus says to Pilate, “thou couldst have no power … except what has been given you from heaven.”
We have forgotten this and have turned the secular agendas of our world and day into forms of religion and cult. The institutional churches fall prey to the assumption that religion is only a reflection of cultural and social ideologies and agendas. This is the advocacy culture which demands not acceptance and toleration but the celebration of identities and interests that negate the givenness of creation and the transcendence of God. Paul’s claim that our citizenship is in heaven does not negate the forms of our secular or worldly lives but redeems them by suggesting that they only have their truth in God. “We have here no continuing city.”
Week at a Glance, 13 – 19 November
Tuesday, November 14th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting
Saturday, November 18th
4:00-6:00pm Annual Ham Supper – Parish Hall
Sunday, November 19th, Trinity 24
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Events:
Tuesday, November 21st
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club – Parish Hall: The Visible Unseen: Essays, Andrea Chapela & Kelsi Vanada (2022); and Floodmeadow, Toby Martinez de las Rivas (2023).
Also please take note of the annual Missions to Seafarer’s Campaign for 2023. Deadline for donations at Christ Church Windsor is the last Sunday in November (Nov. 26, 2023).
Tuesday, November 28th
7:00pm Packing shoeboxes for Mission to Seafarer’s Campaign – Parish Hall
The Twenty-Third Sunday After Trinity
The collect for today, the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O GOD, our refuge and strength, who art the author of all godliness: Be ready, we beseech thee, to hear the devout prayers of thy Church; and grant that those things which we ask faithfully we may obtain effectually; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Philippians 3:17-21
The Gospel: St Matthew 22:15-22
Artwork: Theodoor Boeyermans, The Tribute Money, 1674. Oil on canvas, Private collection.
Remembrance Day Prayer
A prayer of The Very Rev. Eric Milner-White (1884-1963), Dean of York:
O Lord our God, whose name only is excellent and thy praise above heaven and earth: We give thee high praise and hearty thanks for all those who counted not their lives dear unto themselves but laid them down for their friends; beseeching thee to give them a part and a lot in those good things which thou has prepared for all those whose names are written in the Book of Life; and grant to us, that having them always in remembrance, we may imitate their faithfulness and with them inherit the new name which thou has promised to them that overcome; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Source: Give Us Grace: An Anthology of Anglican Prayers, compiled by Christopher L. Webber. Anglican Book Centre, Toronto, 2004.
Martin of Tours
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Martin (c 316-397), Monk, Bishop of Tours (source):
Almighty God,
who didst call Martin from the armies of this world
to be a faithful soldier of Christ:
give us grace to follow him
in his love and compassion for those in need,
and empower thy Church to claim for all people
their inheritance as the children of God;
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: Isaiah 58:6-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25:34-40
One of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, Martin was born to pagan parents and, although intending to become a Christian, followed his father into the Roman army. About three years later, in Amiens, France, came the famous incident portrayed in the painting seen here.
On a cold winter day, he met a beggar at the city gates. Drawing his sword, he cut his military cloak in two and gave half to the man. In a dream that night, he saw Christ wearing the half-cloak he had given away and saying, “Martin, yet a catechumen, has covered me with his garment”. Martin was baptised shortly thereafter.
After being discharged from the army, he met St. Hilary at Poitiers upon the latter’s return from exile in 360. Hilary provided a piece of land where Martin founded the first monastic community in Gaul. He lived there for ten years until 371, when he reluctantly accepted a call from the people of Tours to become their bishop.
2023 Parish Ham Supper
The Annual Parish Ham Supper will be held at Christ Church from 4:30pm until 6:00pm on Saturday, 18 November.
Click here for a larger version suitable for downloading and printing.
KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 9 November
They desire a better country
The principle of mercy shapes all of the Beatitudes, we suggested in Chapel, because it reminds us of the truth and dignity of our humanity as found in blessedness. That is a more transcendent form of happiness that belongs to the good of our humanity. The Beatitudes provide a way to think about difficult things such as war and its atrocities.
Since the 10th century in western Christianity, The Festival of All Saints has been immediately followed by The Solemnity of All Souls. The thread of glory runs through the grave of our common mortality. Remembrance Day is really a secular form of All Souls’ Day. We gather at the Cenotaph in Windsor and then at the School’s Cenotaph. There we remember by name those students who once sat in Chapel where our students currently sit and who went off to the ‘great’ wars and didn’t return. That reality too was made visible in this week’s moving Remembrance Day assembly. We are being asked to remember their sacrifice as something to be honoured and respected.
“They desire a better country” is taken from the Letter to the Hebrews. It is the motto for the Order of Canada and reminds of a fundamental feature of our humanity: we seek, desire, something more and better not just for ourselves but for one another. That is to acknowledge our own incompleteness. That “better country” is explicitly, “an heavenly” one. It is what we pray for in the Lord’s prayer, that God’s “will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We are reminded of the divine mercy which alone perfects all the imperfect forms of human justice which so often turn into the spectacles of radical injustice; in short, hell on earth. Remembrance Day is a necessary reminder of our broken and wounded humanity, a sombre reflection on evil and death. But to remember such dark and difficult things recalls us to mercy and grace.
Paul, in his Letter to the Ephesians, uses the imagery of the accoutrements of war to emphasise the spiritual struggle for the good in our lives. “Put on the whole armour of God,” he says, naming the traditional elements of battle: breast-plate, helmet, and sword, but giving them a spiritual meaning. We are to put on “the breast-plate of righteousness,” “the helmet of salvation,” and “the sword of the Spirit,” but, “above all,” he says, “taking the shield of faith.”
Willibrord, Missionary and Bishop
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Willibrord (658-739), Archbishop of Utrecht, Apostle to the Frisians, Patron Saint of the Netherlands (source):
O Lord our God, who dost call whom thou willest and send them whither thou choosest: We thank thee for sending thy servant Willibrord to be an apostle to the Low Countries, to turn them from the worship of idols to serve thee, the living God; and we entreat thee to preserve us from the temptation to exchange the perfect freedom of thy service for servitude to false gods and to idols of our own devising; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
The Lesson: Acts 1:1-9
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:1-9
Artwork: Cornelis Bloemaert, The Holy Willibrord, c. 1630, Copper Engraving.
Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, in the Octave of All Saints’.