Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity.
Author: CCW
Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity
“Go, and do thou likewise”
It is not too much to suggest that the remarkable seventy year reign of Queen Elizabeth II bears eloquent testimony to the ethic of compassion set before us in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. She was a uniting figure in the face of the culture of antagonism in the divisions and conflicts of our postmodern world. A Queen who was deeply devoted to her people who in turn were devoted to her, and “knowing whose minister she [was],” as the Collect puts it, Elizabeth sought in her own gracious way the honour and glory of God through her devotion to duty and her compassionate commitment to sacrificial service. We mark her passing with profound gratitude for her witness and life of service and commend her soul to God’s gracious keeping.
In the two hundred and fifty one years of the life of this Parish, first as the Parish of Windsor, and then, and now, as Christ Church, there have been nine monarchs, two of whom were Queens whose combined reigns, the reigns of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II, were the longest, totalling one hundred and thirty four years. The passing of Elizabeth marks the end of an era and the beginning of another under the reign now of her son, Charles III, the tenth monarch in the history of our Parish. Long live the King.
The passing of a monarch gives us reason to reflect upon the significance and nature of sovereignty whether in its republican or monarchical forms, whether diffused among the citizenry or concentrated in the person of the sovereign. As Queen Elizabeth’s long reign reminds us, all sovereign power derives from God, from what is greater than ourselves. When that is forgotten there is only tyranny and abuse. What is forgotten is the relation of mercy and truth and the necessary interplay of wisdom and power, of thought and action, we might say. This is what is set before us today in the Gospel story and its setting.
How do we face the troubling and difficult things of our world and day? Through the renewing of our minds upon the wisdom of the ethical. What is the Good and how does it live in us? It can only be through the opening of our souls and minds to “the fear” or wonder “of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom,” and which, even more, as Job says, “is wisdom” (Job. 28.28). This is equally about our being open to the epekeina of Plato, the Beyond, the Good which is beyond the being and the knowing of things as their ground in which the soul participates even in its suffering; this, too, is the insight of Job and Jesus. It is ancient wisdom. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the death of Enkidu moves Gilgamesh to embark upon the greater journey, the quest for wisdom. These reminders counter the spectre of “endism” which hangs over us and paralyzes us in our contemporary fears and anxieties about our world and one another.
The story of Mary and Martha, the images of contemplation and action respectively, bookends the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Christian ethic of compassion par excellence. We easily overlook how the parable is framed by the quest for wisdom; first, by the lawyer’s question “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” which is a question about ‘what is the good as something to be done’, and by Jesus’ response. “What is written in the Law? How readest thou?” and, then, at the end by the story of Mary and Martha which immediately follows it in Luke’s Gospel. In between is the parable given as illustration and answer to the cynical and dismissive second question of the Lawyer: “And who is my neighbour?”
Week at a Glance, 12 – 18 September
Tuesday, September 13th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting
Thursday, September 15th, Holy Cross (transf.)
7:00pm Holy Communion
Sunday, September 18th, Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Event:
Tuesday, September 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: The Madness of Crowds by Douglas Murray (2019) and The Madness of Crowds (2021) by Louise Penny.
The Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity
The collect for today, the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY and merciful God, of whose only gift it cometh that thy faithful people do unto thee true and laudable service: Grant, we beseech thee, that we may so faithfully serve thee in this life, that we fail not finally to attain thy heavenly promises; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Galatians 5:16-24
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:25-37
Artwork: Vasily Surikov, The Good Samaritan, 1874. Oil on canvas, Krasnoyarsk Museum of Art, Krasnoyarsk, Russia.
Edmund J. Peck, Missionary
The collect for today, the commemoration of Edmund J. Peck (1850-1924), Priest, Missionary to the Inuit, Translator (source):
God of our salvation, whose servant Edmund James Peck made the testimony of the Spirit his own and gladly proclaimed the riches of Christ among the Inuit people, give the joy of your gospel to us also, that we may exalt you in the congregation of all peoples and praise you in the abundance of your mercies; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
The Epistle: 1 St. John 5:6-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:16-20
In Memoriam: Queen Elizabeth II
In Memoriam: Queen Elizabeth II
Our parish in its history and life has existed under the reign of nine monarchs over its 251 year history since its founding in 1771 during the reign of George the Third. He provided through the auspices of the Archbishop of Canterbury gifts of “two sets of [silver] communion plate” which we use on High Feast days such as Christmas and Easter. They arrived in 1790 before the original Christ Church building was completed. Some of the silver dates to 1729. But in that long history of the Parish under monarchical rule and governance, the longest reigns were those of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth who together constituted 134 years out of 251. The longest reigning monarch in English history and the history of the Commonwealth was Elizabeth II whose platinum jubilee (70 years!) was observed in Windsor at King’s-Edgehill School last spring and remembered in our prayers at Christ Church.
Elizabeth II embodied the very model of steadfastness and devotion to duty for which we can only be thankful. Her remarkable reign was testament not to the power of dominion and domination, of force and coercion, but to the power of duty and service in and through the changes and challenges of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. She was a figure of unity in divided times.
Her passing marks the beginning now of the reign of the tenth monarch, Charles III. God save the King. We remember Elizabeth II with gratitude and thanksgiving for her long reign of devotion and duty and commend her soul to God’s gracious keeping.
O God, the King of Glory, who raises up Kings and Queens as the instruments of your justice and mercy, we give thanks to you for the seventy years of faithful, compassionate, and dedicated service of Elizabeth II, Queen of England, of the Commonwealth of Nations, and of this country Canada, for her witness to truth and order, to peace and good government and the flourishing of all who are under her reign, and we beseech your grace and mercy upon her soul at this time of her passing at age 96, ever mindful that the hearts and souls of Kings and Queens are ever in your sight to the praise and glory of your Name and for the good of your church and people; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Fr. David Curry
Friday, September 9th, 2022
KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 8 September
In the beginning God … in the beginning was the Word
It has become a tradition to have the Head Boy and Head Girl read the Scriptures lessons at the first Chapel services of the year. Thus, Lucy Goddard and Levi Spence read the first five verses of Genesis 1 and John 1. Nothing perhaps signals better what Chapel is about as an integral part of the educational programme of King’s-Edgehill School. Usually each little Chapel service features one lesson either from the Hebrew Scriptures or from the Christian Scriptures of the New Testament. At the first Chapel services we have two readings, one from each, and yet it is not too hard to see how these lessons complement one another and in ways that highlight things intellectual and spiritual.
Things intellectual and spiritual. That’s the point, the challenge, and the real place of Chapel at the School. It is about character, about the whole person, about ourselves as part of a whole, about something bigger than ourselves. This challenges the culture of outrage and antagonism that views everything – the world and others – in oppositional terms.
“They were tired of being afraid,” a character in Louise Penny’s post-pandemic novel, The Madness of Crowds, observes about a large gathering of people intensely divided in their emotions and commitments. Ça va bien aller. All will be well, it is said, echoing Julian of Norwich’s wisdom that “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well”, words spoken to give comfort in a time of suffering. Her words, however, have been co-opted to a more sinister agenda. “All shall be well” but not for all. Only for the elite, for the few at the expense of the vulnerable. It is a question about the good, an ethical question.
Chapel is not about tradition for tradition’s sake. It is a strong reminder of the School’s history and tradition, to be sure, at the same time as providing a profound critique of the way in which institutions fall short of their ideals and principles and/or struggle to live up to them. That is the point of the prayer of confession, individually and corporately. The mottoes of King’s and Edgehill speak profoundly to the School’s character. Deo Legi Regi Gregi and Fideliter, “For God, for the Law, for the King, and for the People,” and “Faithfulness.” These are words with substance and meaning that speak to an education that is about public service and commitment to what is more than self-interest and narcissism. They give substance and meaning to the ethos of “be more”. Chapel reminds us constantly that we are part of a reality that is greater than ourselves and which is not reducible to our minds in a kind of solipsism – as if reality is simply mind-dependent. Nor is it, on the other hand, simply mind-independent. Instead there is the constant challenge to think our relation to the natural world, to creation in a biblical and as well an indigenous view, and to one another.
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The collect for today, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O GOD Most High, who didst endue with wonderful virtue and grace the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Lord: Grant that we, who now call her blessed, may be made very members of the heavenly family of him who was pleased to be called the first-born among many brethren; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Lesson: Acts 1:12-14
The Gospel: St. Luke 1:39-49
Artwork: Le Nain Brothers, Birth of the Virgin, c. 1645. Oil on canvas, Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, Paris.
Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Twelfth Sunday after Trinity
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity.
Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity
“Ephphatha, that is, Be opened”
It is one of a handful of ‘aramaisms’ in the New Testament, words in Aramaic, a northern semitic dialect used in Syria which became the lingua franca throughout the Near East, and thus common within the Hebrew world, too. In Mark’s Gospel the Greek translation of the Aramaic word is always provided, as it is here. “Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.”
What does it mean to be opened? The literal sense is obvious, it seems, in terms of the healing by Jesus of “one that was deaf and had an impediment in his speech.” His ears are opened to hear and his tongue loosened so that he can speak. Remarkable enough, but is that all there is to it? What does it say to us? “The letter killeth,” after all, as Paul reminds us, “but the spirit giveth life.”
Yet isn’t that really what the healing miracle is all about? “He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.” “The spirit giveth life.” Intellectual and spiritual life is conveyed through physical and sacramental means. In other words, in Christ we are opened out to life in its fullness, life with God. “Our sufficiency is from God” and not “of ourselves.” The real miracle is life. God is essential life. Being opened here is about the “trust we have through Christ to Godward”; the opening is the orientation of our lives towards truth and life and light, to what is more than ourselves. It is not about trusting in ourselves for that is to be closed in upon ourselves in our current obsessions about the self and self-image.
This is largely negative because in the culture of outrage and antagonism the self is constructed in contrast to what is other than self in ways that are oppositional. The pronoun wars reveal the inherent ambiguity of third person pronouns which run the risk of turning one another into an object for others and even for oneself thus negating the self as subject. The same thing can be observed with the digital phenomenon of ‘selfies’. A ‘selfie’ is not you; it is only an image, partial and incomplete, a construct of you and sometimes curated by you. Yet you are more than your ‘selfie’ which becomes merely a projection of your self-image of how you want others to see you or, worse, how others want to persuade you about yourself; i.e. manipulate you. This is the toxicity of the social media world which reflects a sense of antagonism towards the world which is seen as fearful and threatening and in turn projects that sense of antagonism onto others. Things go viral in the social media world just like infectious diseases in the material world. Such is the madness of crowds.