Author: CCW

Sermons

Sermon for Harvest Thanksgiving/Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity

Link to the audio file of the service of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity 18/ Harvest Thanksgiving Sunday

So shall my word be … it shall not return unto me empty

Harvest Thanksgiving is the logical extension of the idea of Creation. Once you grasp that creation is a gift, the gift of life, it changes your attitude and approach to the world around you and to others. The idea of Creation as a gift moves in us in thanksgiving, giving back to God what God has given to us. It is profoundly spiritual in the intellectual gathering back to God that which has come from God. It is grace moving in us and in ways that belong to the truth and dignity of our humanity as made in the image of God. To see Creation as a gift means seeing one another as a gift, a point which Paul makes in the Epistle reading for Trinity 18. “I thank my God always on your behalf for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ.”

Thanksgiving is a profoundly spiritual activity because it is at once the human response to the marvellous givenness of things and equally God’s grace moving in us. In short, it belongs to the truth and dignity of our humanity in its wholeness and completeness as found in the return to God. Thanksgiving is the return to God of what has come to us in Creation and Redemption.

It is a theological way of thinking that counters the overly simplistic and destructive narratives which have so possessed and inhabited our contemporary world; “systems and ideologies” which are, as the writer and theologian, Marilynne Robinson suggests, both “simple and simplifying” in their attempts to explain reality (Theology for This Moment (2016) in What are We Doing Here – Essays (2018). These ideologies are captured in such tropes as ‘the invisible hand’ of certain forms of capitalism, ‘the survival of the fittest’ in the Darwinian competition for life, ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ in Marxist political thought, and the ‘id, ego and superego’ of Freudian psychology, to name some of the most familiar. What they have in common is that they are all materialistic and determinist, effectively denying agency and responsibility. They are also, for all intents and purposes, bankrupt and gone, things of the past which linger on in the present like so many ghosts. Paradoxically, in seeking to displace theology and religion, they are parodies of what they sought to displace; substitute religions, we might say, a point which George Steiner made in his 1974 Massey Lectures. The old world, as Feuerbach says, made spirit parent of matter; the new world makes matter parent of spirit. But such materialist claims are for the most part no longer credible. They are empty and no longer command allegiance, no longer dominate our minds.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 12 – 18 October

Tuesday, October 13th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting

Sunday, October 18th, St. Luke/Trinity 19
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
7:00pm Holy Communion – KES Chapel

Upcoming Event:

Tuesday, October 20th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Violet Moller’s The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found and Justin Marozzi’s Islamic Empires: Fifteen Cities That Define A Civilization.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Eighteenth Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

LORD, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 Corinthians 1:4-8
The Gospel: St. Mark 12:28-37

Nicolò Barabino, The Redeemer EnthronedArtwork: Nicolò Barabino, The Redeemer Enthroned, c. 1878-80. Oil on canvas, Royal Collection, Great Britain.

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Prayers and liturgy

Paulinus, Missionary and Archbishop

Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Saint PaulinusThe collect for today, the Feast of St. Paulinus (c. 584-644), Monk, first Archbishop of York, Missionary (source):

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy servant Paulinus, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the people of northern England. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land evangelists and heralds of thy kingdom, that thy Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

With the Epistle and Gospel for a Bishop or Archbishop, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

The St. Paulinus stained glass was made by the firm of C.E. Kempe of London and installed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1913. Photograph taken by admin, 7 September 2009.

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Prayers and liturgy

Robert Grosseteste, Bishop and Scholar

The collect for today, the commemoration of Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253), Bishop of Lincoln, Scholar (source):

Robert GrossetesteO God our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Robert Grosseteste to be a bishop and pastor in thy Church and to feed thy flock: Give to all pastors abundant gifts of thy Holy Spirit, that they may minister in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 20:28-32
The Gospel: St. Luke 16:10-15

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Denys, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Denys (d. c. 258), Bishop of Paris, Patron Saint of France, Martyr (source):

O GOD, who as on this day didst endow thy blessed Martyr and Bishop Saint Denys with strength to suffer stedfastly for thy sake, and didst join unto him Rusticus and Eleutherius for the preaching of thy glory to the Gentiles: grant us, we beseech thee, so to follow their good example; that for the love of thee we may despise all worldly prosperity, and be afraid of no manner of worldly adversity. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Lesson: Acts 17:22-34
The Gospel: St Luke 12:1-9

Bellechose, Martyrdom of St DenysArtwork: Henri Bellechose, Martyrdom of St Denis, 1416. Panel transferred onto canvas, Louvre, Paris.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 8 October

One turned back … giving him thanks

The week of Thanksgiving is always a special time at the School. My thanks to the Junior School for decorating the Chapel with the fruits of creation gathered into the Chapel. The emphasis this week has been on the theme of thanksgiving as the logical extension of the idea of creation. Once you grasp that creation is a gift, the gift of life, it changes your attitude and approach to the world around you and to one another. The idea of creation as a gift moves in us in thanksgiving, a giving back to God what God has given to us. It is profoundly spiritual in the intellectual gathering back to God what has come from God. It is grace moving in us and in ways that belong to the truth and dignity of our humanity as made in the image of God.

The Junior Chapel service on Monday focused on the lovely and rich passage from the Book of Deuteronomy about the good land and its fruits given to us by God and yet grounds those material aspects of creation in the word of God. “Man cannot live by bread alone but from everything which proceeds from the mouth of God.” We enjoy the bounty of creation only through our working with the order of creation, honouring the word of God in creation through our labours. Gathering apples and zucchini into the Chapel remind us of our connection to the created order. They teach us that creation reveals God in his truth, and beauty and goodness to us. We learn even from zucchini! It is about thanksgiving not thanks getting. Such is our response and acknowledgement of creation as God’s gift.

In Canada, Thanksgiving is at once a national holiday and a celebration of the Harvest, a much more ancient concept that reminds us that we cannot take for granted the fruits of creation. By extension, as we have seen in our considerations of the pageants of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 along with Job and Wisdom, our reflection on the wisdom of God in creation teaches us our connection to everything else in the created order and to our relation to God as made in his image, the image of his ordering care for the world. This gives no warrant for our abuse and misuse of the natural world or of one another.

The Grade 10 Chapel service on Tuesday featured the classical Thanksgiving story of the healing of the ten lepers, one of whom turned back, glorifying God and giving him thanks. As Luke tells us he was a Samaritan, an outsider, a member of a sect despised within Judaism which Jesus sometimes uses to critique and correct Israel. Here Jesus calls the one who turned back a “stranger.” The point is that we learn from the stranger about the true nature of our humanity. It is in turning back and giving thanks that we are not merely healed but made whole. Our humanity is radically incomplete without God. Thanksgiving for creation in all of its splendour and riches is complemented by our thanksgiving for the healing and the redemption of our humanity in Christ. Thanksgiving is our turning to God who has turned to us.

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Prayers and liturgy

William Tyndale, Translator and Martyr

Embankment Statue, William TyndaleThe collect for today, the commemoration of William Tyndale (c. 1495-1536), Priest, Translator of the Scriptures, Reformation Martyr (source):

O Lord, grant to thy people
grace to hear and keep thy word
that, after the example of thy servant William Tyndale,
we may both profess thy gospel
and also be ready to suffer and die for it,
to the honour of thy name;
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 Epistle: St. James 1:21-25
The Gospel: St. John 12:44-50

Artwork: Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm, William Tyndale statue, 1884, Victoria Embankment Gardens, London. Photograph taken by admin, 30 September 2015.

Inscription on bronze plaque:
William Tyndale
First translator of the New Testament into English from the Greek.
Born A.D. 1484, died a martyr at Vilvorde in Belgium, A.D. 1536.
“Thy word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path” – “the entrance of thy words giveth light.” Psalm CXIX. 105.130.
“And this is the record that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his son.” I. John V.II.
The last words of William Tyndale were “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes”. Within a year afterwards, a bible was placed in every parish church by the King’s command.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

Link to audio file of the service of Matins & Ante-Communion for Trinity 17

Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called

And what is that vocation? “Friend, go up higher,” as the Gospel suggests, pointing to the idea of life as an ascent to something more, to something better, to what is the Good. Yet Epistle and Gospel concur that the way up higher is by way of humility “with all lowliness and meekness,” and even “with long-suffering,” as Paul puts it. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted,” Jesus says. The way up seems to be the way down.

The way up is only accomplished through humility not presumption. And so this loaded phrase is the antithesis of presumption and pride at the same time as it sets us on a pilgrimage to God and places us with one another and with God. It counters all of the obstacles of human perversity and self-righteousness. Jesus here challenges a narrow and restrictive understanding of the Sabbath. It is made for man, not man for the Sabbath, as Jesus memorably says elsewhere. Something of what that means is captured in the phrase, “Friend, go up higher,” which in turn signifies the vocation of our humanity. It is about our life to God, in God and with God and so with one another in “the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

To go up higher is to enter into what God seeks for our humanity. It means a certain kind of conversion of the soul – our being turned around and turned to God. The turning here is through dialogue, even if it is one sided. “They could not answer him again to these things,” Luke tells us about the Lawyers and Pharisees who appear to disapprove of Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath. Like Socrates, the questions of Jesus confront us with ourselves. Only in that confrontation can we begin to make sense of the positive injunctions of the parable which follows this encounter between Jesus and the Lawyers and Pharisees.

“Friend, go up higher” has nothing to do with the overrated and disastrous pre-occupations of the idea of endlessly upward mobility in our world and day. The most over-used phrase in our current discourse is “going forward.” We might be better off in going back to what we have lost if ever we might hope to be going higher. Higher, though in what sense? Does this mean a repudiation of our quotidian lives, our lives as lived in the messiness of the everyday? Quite the opposite. But it does suggest a far different orientation than what is implied in the false idol of endlessly expanding economic growth and the even more disastrous illusions of the ideology of progress which has so bedeviled our culture.

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