Month: December 2025

Prayers and liturgy

Saint Stephen the Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, O Lord, that in all our sufferings here upon earth, for the testimony of thy truth, we may stedfastly look up to heaven, and by faith behold the glory that shall be revealed; and, being filled with the Holy Spirit, may learn to love and bless our persecutors, by the example of thy first Martyr Saint Stephen, who prayed for his murderers to thee, O blessed Jesus, who standest at the right hand of God to succour all those that suffer for thee, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 7:55-60
The Gospel: St. Matthew 23:34-39

Antonio Carracci (attrib.), The Martyrdom of Saint StephenAll that is known of St. Stephen’s life is found in the Acts of the Apostles, chapters 6 and 7. He is reckoned as the first Christian martyr–the proto-martyr. Although his name is Greek for “crown”, he was a Jew by birth; he would have been born outside Palestine and raised as a Greek-speaking Jew. The New Testament does not record the circumstances of his conversion to Christianity.

Stephen first appears as one of the seven deacons chosen in response to protests by Hellenist (Greek-speaking) Christians that their widows were being neglected in the distribution of alms. The apostles were too busy preaching the word of God to deal with this problem, so they commissioned seven men from among the Hellenists “of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom”, then prayed and laid hands on them. Stephen, the first among the seven, is described as “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit”. A few verses later, Stephen is said to be “full of grace and power [and] doing great wonders and signs among the people”.

Clearly, St. Stephen was a man of exceptionally fine character with miracle-working power and abilities of teaching and preaching. Although just a deacon, he had received divine gifts apparently equal to those of the apostles. Some Jews from Greek-speaking synagogues debated with Stephen about the gospel of Christ and were not able to overcome his wisdom. In their anger, they had Stephen arrested and dragged before the Jewish council on unjust charges of blasphemy against the Law of Moses and against God.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 10:00am Holy Communion service, Christmas Morn

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 10:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on Christmas Morn.

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Sermons

Sermon for Christmas Morn

“Now it came to pass in those days … the days [that] were accomplished
that she should be delivered”.

What days? The days in which “there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed”, as Luke tells us, alluding to matters of politics and power, but, even more as he tells us, “and so it was, that while they [meaning Mary and Joseph], were there [in Bethlehem], the days were accomplished that she should be delivered”. Such is the miracle of birth but as the Christmas Gospel makes clear this is the greater miracle of the birth of Christ, the babe who is Christ the Lord.

All this is the miracle of Christmas which reveals to us the miracle of God making himself known to us in the commonplace and contingent realities of human experience. Not so as to be collapsed into our world and the limitations of our thinking and living but to reveal to us the wonder of God’s will for our humanity, here so wonderfully expressed in the angel’s word to the shepherds. “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people”. What is that good tidings of great joy? The birth in Bethlehem, the city of David, of “a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord”.

So much contained in so few words. “All wonders in one sight”, as the poet Richard Crashaw writes, “eternity shut in a span,/ summer in winter; day in night; /heaven in earth, God in man”.

It begins with words which seem like a fable or a fairy tale. “Now it came to pass in those days”. But then, more concretely yet poetically, “the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.” We will learn in the mysteries of Christmastide from Paul in Galatians, that “when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law”. And why? “To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons”. Even more, “because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” So much made, it seems, out of so little, yet it is all the muchness of God, on the one hand, and something more, wondrously more for us, on the other hand.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Nativity of Our Lord

The collect for today, the Nativity of our Lord, or the Birth-day of Christ, commonly called Christmas Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us thy only begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin: Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: Hebrews 1:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 1:1-14

Bartolo di Fredi, The Adoration of the ShepherdsArtwork: Bartolo di Fredi, The Adoration of the Shepherds, c. 1374. Tempera on panel, The Cloisters Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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Sermons

Sermon for Christmas Eve

“God … hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son”

There is very little that is sentimental about Christmas Eve, contrary perhaps to all our expectations. We hear in the readings from Hebrews and the Prologue from John’s Gospel tremendous things that awaken wonder. But we hear nothing about the baby Jesus, nothing about the stable or manger, nothing about shepherds visited by angels, nothing about a star in the east, nothing even about Jesus or Mary by name, apart from their mention in the Christmas anthems and the hymns. Yet everything about this holy night speaks to our hearts and minds.

Christmas speaks to the meaning of our humanity embraced by God in Christ’s holy birth. Far from being a touching and sentimental story about the birth of a child, a miracle of nature, as it were, our readings speak about the miracle of the Son of God, this day begotten in the flesh but who is from everlasting, the first-born brought into the world whom the angels of God worship and whose throne and kingdom is for ever and ever, as Hebrews puts it. The Son is the Lord who in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens. He is eternally God who speaks to us in these last days. For, “the Word made flesh” is the Word, Son, and Light of God who was “in the beginning with God”, and has come unto the world made by him and has come unto his own; in short, to us.

This is a curious kind of speaking, to be sure, speaking here is a metaphor about the nature of God’s revelation to us, thus using aspects of our thinking and being to make known something which is entirely beyond our imagining in any other kind of way. It is quite simply the mystery of God’s eternal love for our humanity made manifest so that we might live through the only-begotten Son of God. Only-begotten eternally in the mystery of the Trinity; only-begotten for us as conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary, made man and born this night of her. It is the divinum mysterium revealed in the fullness and wonder of this holy night, a challenge and a blessing but not one which we can take for granted nor one which we can in any way domesticate and reduce to ourselves. We cannot make Christmas. The mystery of this holy night seeks to gather us into the mystery of God with us. God speaks things into being. God is the maker.

Hebrews exalts the mystery of Christ eternally. John signals both his eternal birth from the God the Father everlasting and his birth in flesh and in time through Mary. Yet John also signals the further wonder: he comes into the world which was made by him and yet knew him not, he comes unto his own, our humanity, yet his own received him not. There is at once the affirmation of the wonder of the Word made flesh dwelling among us and the wonder of his being rejected by the world which knew him not and by his own which received him not; all so gently, so firmly, so poetically stated. A testament to human perfidy in the face of God’s infinite love and faithfulness. Such a wondrous mystery; the wonder of God’s doing in the very being of our humanity. How can our hearts and minds not be moved? All this belongs to the mystery and wonder of Christmas in and through all of the richness of the images that circle around the Bethlehem scene.

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Prayers and liturgy

Christmas Eve

The collect for today, Christmas Eve (source):

Almighty God,
who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance
of the birth of thy only Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as we joyfully receive him as our redeemer,
so we may with sure confidence behold him
when he shall come to be our judge;
who liveth and reigneth with thee
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Titus 2:11-15
The Gospel: St. Luke 2:1-14

Ilya Repin, The Nativity

Christmas Eve
(a poem by Christina Georgina Rossetti)

Christmas hath darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answering music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Artwork: Ilya Repin, The Nativity, 1890. Oil on canvas, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Thomas

“My Lord, and my God”

In the wonder of God’s Providence, the Feast of St. Thomas, which falls on the 21st of December, on the longest night and shortest day of nature’s year (at least in the Northern hemisphere – a reminder to us of the conditions and realities of creation and where we are placed within it), was also The Fourth Sunday in Advent. Andrew and Thomas are the Advent Saints but, especially Thomas, whose feast always falls within the Advent season; Andrew’s feast day, the 30th of November sometimes falls just before Advent begins, though this year in the wonder of Providence it, too, fell on a Sunday, indeed, The First Sunday in Advent.

In the case of both Andrew and Thomas and in keeping with the logic of their place in the Sanctorale, the cycle of saints’ days that intersperse and shape and in turn are shaped by the seasons of the Church Year, their commemorations are transferred to the following Tuesday. Thus both Andrew and Thomas give place to what they themselves bear witness to and by which they are defined: the Advent of Christ. So tonight on the eve of Christmas Eve we commemorate Thomas the Apostle.

In an important way, the whole meaning of Advent (and so of Christmas) is profoundly encapsulated in Thomas’s words, “My Lord, and my God”, borne out of his encounter with the Risen Christ as recorded in the 20th Chapter of John’s Gospel. His words bring all of the questions of Advent to their fullness of meaning. Somehow so-called doubting Thomas, as the Collect suggests, drawing in part upon another Thomas, Thomas Aquinas, provides “the more confirmation of the faith” precisely through his being doubtful. Doubtful about what? Christ’s resurrection.

What does this have to do with Advent? Everything. There can be no resurrection without a body. The Christian Advent in its fullness of meaning is all about the body – Christ incarnate and born of the Virgin Mary. The encounter between Thomas and the Risen Christ in the Upper Room on the eighth day of Easter testifies to the truth of Christ’s humanity, the truth of the Word and Son of God made flesh. For what end? The resurrection is the redemption of our humanity and witnesses to the sacrifice of Christ so powerfully presented to us in the Gospel for the Feast of Thomas.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Thomas the Apostle

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

ALMIGHTY and everliving God, who for the more confirmation of the faith didst suffer thy holy Apostle Thomas to be doubtful in thy Son’s resurrection: Grant us so perfectly, and without all doubt, to believe in thy Son Jesus Christ, that our faith in thy sight may never be reproved. Hear us, O Lord, through the same Jesus Christ, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory, now and for evermore. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 2:19-22
The Gospel: St. John 20:24-29

Peter Paul Rubens, The Incredulity of Saint ThomasSt. Thomas’s name is believed to come from an Aramaic word meaning twin, but it is not known whose twin he was. He is included in all the lists of the twelve apostles, but he is mentioned most often in St. John’s Gospel, where he is called “Didymus” (“twin” in Greek) three times (11:16; 20:24; 21:2).

St. Thomas appears to have been an impulsive man. He says he is prepared to go with Jesus to the tomb of Lazarus even if it means death (John 11:16). At the Last Supper, however, he confesses his ignorance about where Jesus is going and the way there (John 14:5). In response, Christ said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

After the resurrection, Thomas was unwilling to believe his fellow disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead (John 20:24). He would not believe, he declared, unless he actually touched the wounds. Eight days later, Jesus gave “Doubting Thomas” the evidence he had asked for, whereupon Thomas confessed him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus then pronounces a blessing on all who have not seen and yet believe.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Fourth Sunday in Advent

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

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent

“The Lord is at hand”

Last week, we thought about the questions of Advent in terms of the witness of John the Baptist and Mary, Virgin and Mother. The questions of Advent articulate an essential feature of our humanity, namely, the desire to know. Questions are not about doubting, negating, or undermining knowledge but about seeking to know more fully; in short, to understand. What we are being challenged to understand and enter into its meaning is nothing less than the motions of God’s love coming to us in the pageant of the Word.

Advent shows its meaning. It is the redemption of our humanity but that only makes sense in the awareness of sin and darkness, of evil and wickedness, not just in our troubled world – “the distress of nations”, the vagaries of natural catastrophes, “the sea and the waves roaring”, our mental anxieties, neuroses, and fears, “men’s hearts failing them for fear”, as we heard on The Second Sunday in Advent. In the face of such things we are shown what God seeks for our humanity: “the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me,” Jesus says, which we heard last Sunday. It is a vision of wholeness and completeness, of the restoration of our humanity to its truth and being as found in God. We can, it seems, only come to this understanding through questions: our questions and the questions of God to us. Both belong to our learning and to the active form of our engagement with what is to be known, lived, and, above all, loved.

The questions of Advent, whether we start with the question of Jesus to John’s disciples in the Gospel in the Canadian BCP for The Sunday Next Before Advent – “what seek ye?”, or whether we begin with the question of the whole city about Jesus’ triumphal yet humble entry into Jerusalem, “who is this?” on The First Sunday in Advent. Or whether we then examine the implicit questions on The Second Sunday in Advent, namely, what are the Scriptures and what are they for? Not to mention, what do they teach? Or whether we ask with John the Baptist in the prison of our experiences, “Art thou he that should come or do we seek for another?” Or the questions of Jesus to the multitude in the wilderness about John the Baptist, “what went ye for to see?”, all on The Third Sunday in Advent. In all of these we are presented with the desire to know and to learn.

In our Advent meditations on Wisdom Literature, we learn that “the fear of the Lord,” as Job puts it in a famous passage, “is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding” or as Proverbs and the Psalms put it, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. Wisdom itself complements this by noting that “the beginning of wisdom is the most sincere desire for instruction, and concern for instruction is love of [wisdom].” And why? Because of another theme in the Wisdom Literature, immortality. This speaks to the ultimate truth and dignity of our humanity as made in the image of God. As Ecclesiastes says, “God has put eternity into our minds”, even though we experience everything “under the sun” as vanity and emptiness considered in itself. Yet it points us to what is above and beyond the mundane; in short, to God. “Fear God and keep his commandments for this is the whole duty of man”. As Wisdom says in the face of human evil, “God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of his own eternity.”

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