Year: 2023

Sermons

Sermon for Palm Sunday

“All the people hung upon his words”

It is the challenge of Holy Week and of our lives in faith. We are to hang upon the words of the one who hangs upon the cross for the salvation of the world. The Passion of Christ is all our interest. The Passion of Christ crucified is the fullest attestation of the Incarnation. He suffers for us in what he has from us in body and soul. Redemption is not a flight from the world or the body as if it were evil. It is the redemption of the world and of our humanity.

We confront ourselves in all of the contradictions that belong to sin and evil. Palm Sunday marks the beginning of one long liturgy that culminates in the Resurrection. It marks the beginning of the intensity of the Passion through the reading of all four accounts of the Passion. We are meant to hang upon every word; in short, to listen attentively and to find ourselves in the madness of crowds. Like the exodus journey of the ancient Hebrews, we are meant to learn from the greater exodus of the Son to the Father. The Passion teaches us “two vast, spacious things,” as the poet George Herbert puts it, namely, sin and love. Both go together. The paradox of the Passion is the paradox of the Christian faith. It is only through sin that we know love. “God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5.8). Only so can we learn what it means to be human, to know even as we are known in the all-embracing love of God for us. But only if we hang upon the words of Christ who hangs upon the cross in love for us and for our redemption.

Palm Sunday highlights the deep meaning of the Passion by revealing to us the contradictions of our humanity. We who cry out “Hosanna to the Son of David” in exaltation and praise then turn about and cry “crucify.” “Let him be crucified! Let him be crucified.” We are in this story. It is a powerful and necessary indictment of our humanity, of each of us in the folly of ourselves. For in one way or another we all have an incomplete and false understanding of ourselves whether in overstating our faults or our virtues. On the one hand, we are too much with ourselves, and on the other hand, quite mistaken about ourselves. We see but “in a glass darkly.”

To be aware of this is the beginning of our learning. It is, to put it another way, to know that we do not know, even about ourselves. But that is a beginning. That is to know something which impels the greater journey of learning through the greater wilderness of Christ’s Passion. The greater wilderness is the wilderness of human sin in all of its wildness and violence, its confusion and disarray. Holy Week confronts us with the fullest and most compelling picture of our disorder and disarray. For only so can we learn the greater good of God’s love for us.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 3 – 9 April

Monday, April 3rd, Monday in Holy Week
7:00pm Vespers & Holy Communion

Tuesday, April 4h, Tuesday in Holy Week
7:00pm Vespers & Holy Communion

Wednesday, April 5th, Wednesday in Holy Week
4:00pm Tenebrae

Thursday, April 6th, Maundy Thursday
7:00pm Solemn Liturgy

Friday, April 7th, Good Friday
7:00pm Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday

Saturday, April 8th, Holy Saturday / Easter Eve
10:00am Matins & Ante-Communion
7:00pm Easter Eve

Sunday, April 9th, Easter Day
7:00am Sunrise Service – Fort Edward
8:00am Easter Communion
10:30am Easter Communion

Upcoming Events:

Monday, April 10th, Easter Monday
10:00am Holy Communion

Tuesday, April 11th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

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Prayers and liturgy

The Sunday Next Before Easter

Juli Borrell i Pla, Entry of Jesus into JerusalemThe collect for today, the Sunday Next before Easter, commonly called Palm Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 2:5-11
The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to St. Matthew
The Gospel: St. Matthew 27:1-54

Artwork: Juli Borrell i Pla, Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, 1896. Oil on canvas, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona.

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Sermons

Lenten Programme III: The Book of Homilies

On the Holy Spirit

The Second Book of Homilies (1563) contains a number of homilies which are attributed to Bishop John Jewel (1522-1571). Among those is “An Homily concerning the coming down of the Holy Ghost; for Whitsunday”. It establishes a number of the basic themes which would be taken up and enlarged upon by others after him, such as Lancelot Andrewes’ remarkable series of fifteen sermons on the sending down of the Holy Spirit prepared and preached before King James I in the first three decades of the 17th century. As with Cranmer, Jewel’s homily complements the Articles of Religion, in this case, Article V, “Of the Holy Ghost”.

Jewel first locates the Scriptural sources for the liturgical Feast of Pentecost or Whitsuntide in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament; in each case highlighting their divine authorship. It belongs to the Exodus story of deliverance and to the giving of the Law, on the one hand, and to the descent of the Holy Ghost on the disciples in Jerusalem, on the other hand, both observed on the same day, the fiftieth day after Easter and the Jewish Passover. Jewel then considers “what the Holy Ghost is” and what the Holy Ghost does, namely, “his miraculous works towards mankind”.

This establishes the classical Anglican teaching about the Holy Spirit, emphasizing first, the essential divinity of the Holy Spirit, as attested by Scripture and Creed understood in tandem, and, secondly, the western understanding of the double procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (filioque). This, too, is the burden of Article V.

The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory, with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God.

Thus Jewel states that “The Holy Ghost is a spiritual and divine substance, the Third Person in the Deity, distinct from the Father and the Son, and yet proceeding from them both,” as witnessed by “the creed of Athanasius,” and by the witness of Christ’s baptism in Jordan and by the dominical injunction “to baptize all nations, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Jewel notes that “his proper nature and substance … is altogether one with God the Father, and God the Son; that is to say, spiritual, eternal, uncreated, incomprehensible, almighty; to be short, he is even God and Lord everlasting … the Spirit of the Father” who “is said to proceed from the Father and the Son.” From this consideration of Deus in se, he moves on to the works of the Holy Ghost, Deus pro nobis, “which plainly declare unto the world his mighty and divine power”.

The first of those works concerns the illumination and inspiration of the Patriarchs and Prophets by the Holy Spirit. Prophecy comes “not by the will of man;” but “as they were moved inwardly by the Holy Ghost.” Secondly, there is the work of the Holy Ghost “in the conception and nativity of Christ our Saviour.” Thirdly, there is the work of the Holy Ghost “by the inward regeneration and sanctification of mankind.” The works of the Holy Ghost are understood in connection and communion with the Father and the Son. “For, as there are three several and sundry persons in the Deity; so have they three several and sundry offices proper unto each of them: the Father to create, the Son to redeem, the Holy Ghost to sanctify and regenerate.” This echoes the instructions in the classical Prayer Book Catechisms about the Apostles’ Creed.

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Administrative, Events

Tonight’s Lenten Programme cancelled

Due to uncertainties regarding the weather, tonight’s Lenten Programme on the Book of Homilies has been cancelled.

The meditation on the homily pertaining to the Holy Spirit will posted on the website shortly.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 30 March

Five barley loaves and two small fishes

“But what are they among so many?” The story of the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness along with the story of the Canaanite woman who seeks the healing of her daughter “grievously vexed with a devil” are important teachings for us. For we, too, are in the wilderness. The question is about what is learned in the wilderness. These stories in the Christian scriptures recall the Exodus in the Hebrew scriptures.

Wisdom, Thomas Aquinas observes, is spiritual refreshment. Wisdom takes three forms. There is the wisdom that belongs to teachings of the ancient philosophers. There is the wisdom that belongs to the Law of Moses. But both those forms of wisdom are limited and incomplete, partial truths, we might say. Why? Because of sin and evil. Thus creation, though good, is not perfect and the Law, though good, is not perfect. Indeed, the Law, as Paul observes, is sin in the sense that it convicts us of what we would like to be but are not. Something more is needed, namely, grace. In the Christian understanding, Christ is “the power and the wisdom of God.” Both these stories show us that power and wisdom and in intriguing ways. Both are about what is learned in the wilderness, itself a powerful metaphor for the human condition.

How do we deal with the realities of suffering and evil? Wilderness is imagined in a number of different ways: as a kind of pristine paradise of nature but sometimes without the presence of humans, as a refuge and a retreat from the “madding crowd” of the city, as the urban jungle of contemporary life, or as a “wasteland,” to use T.S. Eliot’s famous image for his poem, The Waste Land. He saw our modern world as a desolating wilderness of destruction and emptiness following the devastations of the First World War. Dante, in the early 14th century, says that he awoke to find himself in a selva obscura, a selva selvaggia, a dark and savage wood. And yet he says that there he discovered “a great good”. There are things to be learned in the wilderness. That is the point of the Exodus for Israel that provides the larger context that informs the stories read in Chapel this week. It is really about what can be learned in the wilderness journey of our lives. Wisdom is spiritual refreshment.

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Prayers and liturgy

John Keble, Scholar and Poet

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Keble (1792-1866), Priest, Tractarian, Poet (source):

Father of the eternal Word,
in whose encompassing love
all things in peace and order move:
grant that, as thy servant John Keble
adored thee in all creation,
so we may have a humble heart of love
for the mysteries of thy Church
and know thy love to be new every morning,
in 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: Romans 12:9-21
The Gospel: St Matthew 5:1-12

John KebleJohn Keble’s Assize Sermon entitled “National Apostasy“, delivered at Oxford on 14 July 1833, is regarded as the beginning of the renewal movement known as the Oxford Movement or Tractarian Movement. In that sermon, preached at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Rev. Keble condemned the growth of liberalism in the Church of England and took the nation to task for turning away from God and ignoring the prophetic calling of the church. The sermon caused a sensation across Britain.

Between 1833 and 1841, Rev. Keble, John Henry Newman, Edward Bouverie Pusey, and others issued a series of 90 pamphlets called Tracts For The Times (hence Tractarian Movement), in which they presented their views on ecclesiology and theology. Tractarianism emphasised the importance of the ministry and the sacraments as God-given ordinances and ultimately developed into Anglo-Catholicism, which has been highly influential in the Anglican Communion as well as other Christian traditions.

Keble College, Oxford, was founded in his memory in 1870. The College was designed by William Butterfield, a leading exponent of Victorian Gothic who had been raised in a Nonconformist family but later became a convinced High-Church Anglican. He and other architects influenced by the Oxford Movement looked to medieval cathedrals for inspiration and designed churches full of colour as a celebration of God’s creation. The walls of Keble College Chapel are lined with brilliant mosaics showing scenes from the Old Testament and the life of Christ, and patristic and medieval saints. Some see Keble College and Chapel as the high point of Butterfield’s architectural achievements.

John Keble’s page at Hymnary.org lists dozens of hymns. Some of Rev. Keble’s writings, including “National Apostasy” and seven Tracts For The Times, are posted here. All of the tracts are posted here.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Passion Sunday

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

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Sermons

Sermon for Passion Sunday

“The Son of man came … to give his life a ransom for many”

The Lenten Sunday Gospels may be seen to anticipate and to prepare us for the intensity of the Passion in Holy Week. For then we read through all four of the Gospel accounts of the Passion, a remarkable feature of the eucharistic lectionary in the classical Books of Common Prayer. It begins on Palm Sunday with Matthew’s account of the Passion.

The Temptations of Christ on the First Sunday prepare us for the reading of the Passion from Mark’s Gospel, beginning on Monday in Holy Week, which is framed by the breaking of the alabaster box of ointment by which Christ is anointed and by the tears of Peter at his betrayal of Christ. It includes Christ’s further temptation in Gethsemane and the betrayal of both Judas and Peter who succumb to the forms of human weakness and temptation, we might say. On the Second Sunday in Lent, the Gospel story of the Canaanite Woman, a testing of the disciples and a testing of her faith in perseverance, anticipates in some sense the continuation of the Passion from Mark in Christ’s cry of dereliction in the depth of the Passion, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me,” but which nonetheless leads to the faith profession of the Centurion that “truly this man was the Son of God.” As the woman said, “Truth, Lord, yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.”

The Gospel for the Third Sunday of Christ’s casting out a devil only to be accused of being demonic himself anticipates the beginning of the Passion according to St. Luke on Holy Wednesday with all of its intensity not only in the picture of Christ’s agony in Gethsemane but also in his remark to Peter about the temptations of Satan in Peter’s betrayal and, even more, his look of compassion that brings Peter to the tears in repentance in recalling Christ’s words to him. A powerful story powerfully told. The story of the miraculous feeding in the wilderness last Sunday, set in the context of the Passover, anticipates the beginning of the Triduum Sacrum on Maundy Thursday which explicitly connects the last supper to the Passion of Christ. The continuation of Luke’s Passion presents us with three of the seven last words of Christ from the Cross, especially the last word: “Father into thy hands, I commend my spirit.” He who carries himself in his own hands in the institution of the eucharist commends himself and our humanity into the hands of the Father.

Today’s readings on Passion Sunday anticipate Good Friday with its emphasis on the theology of the atonement. Throughout Holy Week in the Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer we read the Passion according to St. John in all of its fullness. The Sunday evening Office readings in Lent immerse us in the Passion according to St. Mark and St. Luke (Year I and Year II respectively). In every way, Lent and Holy Week concentrate our attention on the Passion of Christ and the nature and meaning of our participation in that Passion. It is about human redemption understood in terms of the theology of the atonement, our being made at one with God. But that doesn’t mean that God becomes less or other than God or that we become less or other than human.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 27 March – 2 April

Thursday, March 30th
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Programme III

Holy Week at Christ Church – 2023

Return to ‘Big’ Church

Sunday, April 2nd, Palm Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion & Palms
10:30am Holy Communion & Palms

Monday, April 3rd, Monday in Holy Week
7:00pm Vespers & Holy Communion

Tuesday, April 4h, Tuesday in Holy Week
7:00pm Vespers & Holy Communion

Wednesday, April 5th, Wednesday in Holy Week
4:00pm Tenebrae

Thursday, April 6th, Maundy Thursday
7:00pm Solemn Liturgy

Friday, April 7th, Good Friday
7:00pm Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday

Saturday, April 8th, Holy Saturday / Easter Eve
10:00am Matins & Ante-Communion
7:00pm Easter Eve

Sunday, April 9th, Easter Day
8:00am Easter Communion
10:30am Easter Communion

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