Christ Church

Joseph and his brothers

The story of Joseph and his brothers ends the Book of Genesis on the poignant and moving idea of reconciliation. It is in that sense a wonderful illustration of what the poet George Herbert calls “the two vast and spacious things” which are most needed to be pondered and known, “sin and love.”

Joseph, as we saw last week, was hated by his brothers because he was the favourite son of their father, the problem of sibling rivalry, on the one hand, and the limitations of human love, on the other hand. How to love our children in ways that respect each in their own particularity? How to avoid the temptation to quantify our loves, our likes and our dislikes, about who loves who more than others? Do we need to let the love of one for another consume us with resentment and envy? Yet it so often does when love becomes a matter of competing for attention either on the part of children or for that matter, of parents, as in Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear. “Which of you,” he says, using the royal ‘we’, to his three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia, “shall we say doth love us most, that we our largest bounty may extend?”

Joseph, who was not killed by his brothers despite their intent, was thrown into a waterless pit, his coat taken by his brothers and smeared with the blood of a lamb to deceive their father, Jacob, about his death. Unbeknownst to them, he is sold into slavery in Egypt where he rises after various adventures to a position of authority in Pharaoh’s government where he stores up food in anticipation of a period of famine. Years later during the time of famine, his brothers came to Egypt seeking food. Joseph sees them but they do not know him. What will happen in that encounter? Will it be an occasion for Joseph’s revenge on them for their evil intent?

Marilynne Robinson notes that the Book of Genesis “is framed by two stories of remarkable forgiveness, of Cain by the Lord, and of his ten brothers by Joseph.” Cain who killed Abel is protected from being killed himself. Out of his lineage will come Enoch and Jubal, the one who will, like Elijah, be taken up into heaven, and the other, who is the father of musical instruments. While the concept of a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a kind of measured revenge as a form of human justice, appears in Genesis, it is constantly questioned. As Robinson nicely puts it, “Whoever kills a man will be killed by a man. Adam kills Adam for killing Adam, an image of God destroys an image of God for having destroyed an image of God,” suggesting that this is “the fundamental absurdity even of punishment limited by strict equivalence.” It is a human way of looking at things which contrasts with the sense of divine restraint that operates in so much of Genesis and which qualifies the simplistic view of divine retribution. Even the story of the flood ends not with the complete annihilation of the human world which has so abused creation but with a renewal of creation and the setting of bounds to human behaviour in the form of covenant and law. In this sense, Genesis as a whole acts as a check on revenge and violence.

Read the rest of this entry »

The collect for today, the commemoration of George Herbert (1593-1633), Priest, Poet (source):

King of glory, king of peace,
who didst call thy servant George Herbert
from the pursuit of worldly honours
to be a priest in the temple of his God and king:
grant us also the grace to offer ourselves
with singleness of heart in humble obedience to thy service;
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.
Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 5:1-4
The Gospel: St. Matthew 5:1-10

The hymn, “Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing”, was originally a poem by George Herbert, published in The Temple.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

The heavens are not too high,
His praise may thither fly:
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

The church with psalms must shout,
No door can keep them out:
But above all, the heart
Must bear the longest part.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing,
My God and King.

George Herbert was born to a wealthy family in Montgomery, Wales. Educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he appeared headed for a prominent public career, but the deaths of King James I and two patrons ended that possibility.

He chose to pursue holy orders in the Church of England and became rector at Bemerton, near Salisbury, in 1629, where he died four years later of tuberculosis. His preaching and service to church and parishioners contributed to his reputation as an exemplary pastor. He did not become known as a poet until shortly after he died, when his poetry collection The Temple was published.

He is buried in Saint Andrew Bemerton Churchyard.

Artwork: William Dyce, George Herbert at Bemerton, Salisbury, 1860. Oil on canvas, Guildhall Art Gallery, London.

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

The 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: Jan de Beer, Martyrdom of Saint Matthias, c. 1510-15. Oil on wood, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

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

“The good ground are they which in an honest and good heart having heard the word keep it and bring forth fruit with patience”

Sexagesima Sunday recalls us to our origins and to our end. It signals our identity in God’s will and purpose for our humanity. We are recalled, yet again as last week, to creation but more explicitly this week to the dust, to the ground of our lives. We are in a profound sense “of the earth, earthy,” for such is Adam and we are all in Adam, literally, “of the ground,” adhamah. And yet, we have a heavenly vocation, namely, to be the dust transformed or as our gospel parable puts it, to be “the good ground.” It is a metaphor for ”an honest and good heart” which “having heard the word keep it and bring forth fruit with patience.” The echoes of Genesis are all too evident. The teaching is explicit; the seed is the word of God. We are the ground but what kind of ground?

Sexagesima Sunday brings out the deeper dynamic and meaning of the doctrine of Creation. As created beings we have a relation to the dust of the ground. Dust here is an image for the most basic elements of the material world, the dust out of which God has made and fashioned everything else. Long before the metaphors of ‘quarks and antiquarks’, as it were, there was dust, the dust of the ground of God’s own making. Our humanity too is understood to be made in God’s image but also “formed of dust from the ground,” the dust into which God has breathed his spirit. Thus the idea of our selves as created beings requires the realization of our special relation to the Creator, to God. So there are two things, our relation to the dust of the ground, and our relation to God; both belong inescapably to the idea of creation.

We are the dust into which God has breathed his Spirit. Will we turn to the dust or to God who raises us up from the dust? Only if we nurture the life-giving and spirit-forming Word that has been sown in the dust and ground of our souls can we be raised up. The ‘ground of our being’ is not simply the dust of the earth. More profoundly, it is the Word and Will of God as sown in the ground of God’s creation, in us as human beings.

Today’s gospel presents us with the parable of the Sower and the Seed. To put it bluntly, we are dirt. That is not an insult. It is a salutary reminder. It is a call and a challenge because it asks us, ‘What kind of dirt? What kind of ground will we be? The good ground or the bad?’

On these “gesima” Sundays, the emphasis is on human activity, or to put it more precisely, on the activity of the virtues of the soul which belong to the truth and purpose of our humanity as spiritual and intellectual creatures. They belong to the ways in which human activity is taken up into God’s greater activity and perfected. The “gesima” Sundays place us on the ground, in the land. Such too is the meaning of our Parish. We are here and not elsewhere. This land, this place, this community, is the place where God’s Word has been sown. What kind of ground will we be? The question is both for each of us individually and corporately.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Services in the Hall until Palm Sunday, April 13th, 2025)

Sunday, March 2nd, Quinquagesima
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Wednesday, March 5th, Ash Wednesday
12:15pm Communion & Ashes

Thursday, March 6th, Comm. of Thomas Aquinas
5:00pm King’s College Chapel: Fr. Curry preaching

Sunday, March 9th, First Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

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

Sunday, March 16th, Second Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Sunday, March 23rd, Third Sunday in Lent
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

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

Artwork: Ivan Grohar, The Sower, 1907. Oil on canvas, National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana.

Two vast and spacious things

The Book of Genesis is a rich theological text. It is foundational for the scriptural and philosophical traditions of Judaism and Christianity especially. It is not a scientific treatise nor a collection of fables and myths haphazardly thrown together. It is theology, a commentary on the overarching justice or righteousness of God in creation and human experience despite the repeated and constant failings of our humanity. As the theologian and novelist Marilynne Robinson notes it is really “a theodicy, a meditation on the problem of evil” that “acknowledge[s] in a meaningful way the darkest aspects of the reality we experience” and undertakes to “reconcile them with the goodness of God and Being itself against which the darkness of our world stands out so sharply.”

Much of Genesis is the story of sibling rivalry, a story of brothers. There is the story of Abraham and Lot, the story of Isaac and Ishmael, of the sisters Leah and Rachel, of Jacob and Esau, all of which ultimately culminate in the story of Joseph and his brothers. The tensions and divisions that these stories present are the setting through which God’s goodness and will, his purpose and patience, are glimpsed and known. It is all the grace of providence at work in and through our sins and failings. The first story after the fall of our humanity from Paradise is the story of Cain and Abel, the first murder. The last story of Joseph and his brothers, so beautifully and movingly told, is about forgiveness and reconciliation. Ultimately, it is the overcoming of the resentments and envy, and even violence that are so often a feature of sibling rivalry.

Joseph is the youngest son and the so-called favourite of his father, Jacob, of which the coat given to him by his father is the constant reminder, it seems. This excites the hatred of his brothers towards him especially when he tells them his dreams which they think proclaim his superiority over his older brothers. They conspire to kill him and throw him into one of the pits in the wilderness near Shechem and to tell their father that a wild beast has devoured him. Only Reuben intervenes to prevent them from killing him, planning to “rescue him out of their hand, to restore him to his father,” as the text puts it.

Joseph is left in an empty and waterless pit only to be found by Midianite traders who sell him to the Ishmaelites, in one version, or to an Egyptian officer of Pharaoh, Potiphar, in another. In any event, he is not killed but instead rises to prominence in Egypt through an intriguing set of events related again to his dreams which are really about prophetic insight.

Read the rest of this entry »

Click here to download the full Rector’s Annual Report for 2024 (in pdf format).

The Rector’s Annual Reports for 2003 through 2023 can be accessed via this page.

Rector’s Annual Report for 2024
Fr. David Curry
February 16th, 2024

“Whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.”

The Annual Parish Meetings are special occasions and not just because of the culinary pleasures of a pot-luck! They are an important and crucial aspect of our corporate life as a Parish because they locate the temporal life of the Parish within the primacy of our spiritual mission and vocation. On the one hand, it is about ‘taking care of business,’ if you will pardon the commonplace expression, but, on the other hand, it is a profound moment of collective reflection about our life together in the body of Christ, a way of looking back on the year past and looking ahead to the year before us. It is a way of concentrating our attention on our life in Christ, recognising the various challenges that we have faced and continue to face.

Septuagesima is the first of the pre-Lenten Sundays that orient us towards Lent as the pilgrimage of love, charity, to use the older English word from the Latin, caritas. The ‘gesima’ Sundays point us to Easter by their very names. They signify the weeks and days before Easter: the weeks of the seventieth, sixtieth and fiftieth days. Lent itself is known as quadragesima, pertaining to the idea of forty days, symbolic of the forty years in the wilderness of the Exodus and the forty days of Christ fasting and praying in the wilderness. The ‘gesimas’ belong to the transition from Christmas and Epiphany to Lent and Easter and remind us of their crucial interrelation. Light and life are grounded ultimately in love, the charity without which “all our doings are nothing worth,” as the Quinquagesima Collect so emphatically states. “If I have not charity, I am nothing,” Paul reminds us.

The ‘gesima’ Sundays highlight the transformation of the classical or cardinal virtues of temperance, courage, prudence, and justice by love. They speak to a profound sense of the forms of the ethical that belong to the pilgrimage of our souls to its end in God, an end in which we participate now in our life together as a Parish through service and sacrifice, through word and sacrament, and in worship as penitential adoration.

In other words, these activities that belong to human character are perfected by the divine love, the charity of God, which as Paul says, “never faileth.” That cannot be said about our human loves which are always incomplete, partial, and often in disarray. But God seeks something more for us than what belongs to human sin and experience. And as Holy Week shows, he makes a way for us out of our sin and evil. Tears of sorrow, and tears of joy. All because of the love of Christ.

Read the rest of this entry »

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