Author: CCW

KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 17 September

The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground

And now for something completely different, it might seem. Another account of the creation of our humanity that seems and feels completely different from what we heard in the reading of the first chapter of Genesis. Is it contradictory or complementary? We are being challenged about how we read and think.

Genesis One presents creation as a powerful, orderly and intellectual process and ends with the creation of our humanity. “God created man” – ha’adam meaning human being generically considered and as from the ground, adamah – “in his own image (betsalmo); in the image of God (betsalem ‘elohim) he created him; male and female he created them.” It is powerful concept. Alone of all of the things of the created order, our humanity is said to be made in the image of God. An image both is and is not what it resembles. We are not God. You are not your selfie! All of us, male and female, are said to be made in God’s image. Think about how that challenges us about how we think and act towards one another. To know that you are made in God’s image is to recognise that every other human being is made in that same image.

It speaks to the special dignity of our humanity but to be made in the image of God does not mean that we are God. Both modern science and Genesis agree that nature and therefore our humanity as part of the natural order is not divine. But what does it mean to be made in God’s image? What do we know about God in the first chapter of Genesis? God speaks, commands, names, blesses, hallows, makes and makes freely, looks and beholds, seeks goodness, shows care and concern, sustains and provides. Somehow these verbs suggest some of the features which belong to our humanity. They speak to our rationality.

Our humanity, too, is given dominion over every other living thing. The idea of dominion has been a troubling concept and one which has been often misconstrued. If we assume that it means the power to dominate, manipulate, and exploit nature and, by extension, other human beings, then we become the bullies of creation. Perhaps that has been a feature of modernity and one which worries us, as it should. Yet that expresses a very limited and destructive form of reason that assumes that our rationality is primarily instrumental, as essentially directed to practical actions and outcomes but as nothing in itself. Reason becomes merely a tool, a means to an end. That misses the deeper meaning of dominion. The word (at least in its Latin form) refers to the dominus, to the Lord, to what God does as the model and truth of what humans are to do and to be. It is not about bullying and lording it over everything and everyone. The Genesis account emphasises how our humanity is connected to everything else in the good order of creation as well as having a special dignity within it. That is surely the main point, a dignity that requires our respect for everything and everyone else.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Matthew the Apostle

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

O ALMIGHTY God, who by thy blessed Son didst call Matthew from the receipt of custom to be an Apostle and Evangelist: Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires and inordinate love of riches, and to follow the same thy Son Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 9:9-13

Paolo Veronese, St. MatthewArtwork: Paolo Veronese, St. Matthew the Evangelist, 1555. Oil on canvas, Chiesa di San Sebastiano, Venice.

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Prayers and liturgy

John Coleridge Patteson, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the commemoration of John Coleridge Patteson (1827-71), Missionary, First Bishop of Melanesia, Martyr (source):

O God of all tribes and peoples and tongues,
who didst call thy servant John Coleridge Patteson
to witness in life and death to the gospel of Christ
amongst the peoples of Melanesia:
grant us to hear thy call to service
and to respond with trust and joy
to Jesus Christ our redeemer,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:12-19
The Gospel: St. Mark 8:34-38

John Coleridge Patteson, Missionary, Bishop, MartyrJohn Coleridge Patteson was a curate in Devon when Bishop of New Zealand George A. Selwyn persuaded him to go out to the South Pacific as a missionary. In 1856 he journeyed to Melanesia. He encouraged boys to study at a school Selwyn had founded in New Zealand and later set up a school in Melanesia. He was very proficient in languages and eventually learned twenty-three different languages and dialects spoken in Melanesia and Polynesia.

In 1861 Patteson was consecrated Bishop of Melanesia; he travelled across his diocese constantly, preaching, teaching, confirming, building churches, and living among the people. On the main island of Mota most of the population were converted.

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Prayers and liturgy

Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Theodore of Tarsus (602-690), Archbishop of Canterbury (source):

St_TheodoreAlmighty God, who didst call thy servant Theodore of Tarsus from Rome to the see of Canterbury, and didst give him gifts of grace and wisdom to establish unity where there had been division, and order where there had been chaos: Create in thy Church, we pray thee, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, such godly union and concord that it may proclaim, both by word and example, the Gospel of the Prince of Peace; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Timothy 2:1-5,10
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:42-47

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

“And one of them … turned back … giving him thanks;
and he was a Samaritan”

Last Sunday we had the powerful and familiar story of the Good Samaritan. Today we have another gospel story in which a Samaritan figures also most prominently. It is an intriguing aspect of the Christian Scriptures, particularly of St. Luke’s Gospel, that the Samaritans are often used by Jesus to teach us about what belongs to the truth of our common humanity. At once an implied criticism of religious divisions, particularly among the Jews but by extension to other religions, Jesus talks about what transcends the differences between and within religious cultures. In these back-to-back Sunday Gospels we are reminded about the true nature of our obligations to God and to one another as well as our failings.

Both Gospels, the one a parable, the other an encounter, reveal to us something of ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ about our humanity at the same time as they remind us of the necessity of God’s grace as the operative principle in our lives. There are our failings but there is the triumph of God’s grace in us compelling to “go and do likewise” both towards our neighbour and towards God. “A certain man” is wounded, lying half-dead on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, the heavenly and the earthly cities respectively. “A certain Priest” and “Levite” “look and pass by”. There were “ten men that were lepers,” ten that were healed by Jesus.

Only “a certain Samaritan as he journeyed”, who having seen the man who was wounded, “had compassion on him” and “came where he was”, “tak[ing] care of him.” Only one of the ten who were healed “turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks; and he was a Samaritan.” In the Jewish context of the Gospel, the Samaritans were a despised sect, outcasts, the proverbial “other.” The area of dispute between the Samaritans and the Jews is about the place where the Law of Moses was delivered and about what books truly comprise the Scriptures. In the encounter in John’s Gospel with the woman at the well of Samaria – the most intense Gospel story of Christ in his engagement with the Samaritans – Jesus is very clear about how they have erred on these doctrinal points at the same time as drawing them into conversation, even into communion with him.

Outsiders such as the Samaritans provide a corrective lesson to all the forms of religious self-righteousness and division. Jesus uses the Samaritans to show us our failings and to show us the setting right of our hearts and minds. No one lies outside of the reach of the Gospel.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 18 – 24 September

Monday, September 18th
6:30-7:30pm Sparks – Parish Hall

Tuesday, September 19th
6:00pm Prayers & Praises – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Louise Penny, The Great Reckoning & Donna Leon, Earthly Remains

Wednesday, September 20th
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall

Thursday, September 21st, St. Matthew
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, September 22nd
11:00am Holy Communion- Dykeland Lodge
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, September 24th, Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
7:00pm Holy Communion – KES Chapel

Upcoming Event:

Saturday, September 30th
7:00-9:00pm Newfoundland and Country Music Evening of Musical Entertainment – Parish Hall

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fourteenth Sunday After Trinity

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

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 5:25-6:5
The Gospel: St. Luke 17:11-19

Codex Aureus Epternacensis, Cleansing of the Ten LepersArtwork: Codex Aureus Epternacensis, Cleansing of the Ten Lepers, c. 1035-40. Illumination, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg.

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Prayers and liturgy

Ninian, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Ninian (c. 360 – c. 432), Bishop of Galloway, Apostle to the Picts (source):

Almighty and everlasting God,
who didst call thy servant Ninian to preach the gospel
to the people of northern Britain:
raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land,
heralds and evangelists of thy kingdom,
that thy Church may make known the immeasurable riches
of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Isaiah 49:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:16-20

Saint Ninian windowNinian was the first apostle of Christianity in Scotland. Born in Cumbria to Christian parents, he went to Rome for his education. After being ordained a priest and then a bishop, Ninian was commissioned by Pope Siricus to return to Britain to preach the Christian faith.

Tradition holds that Ninian’s mission to Scotland began in 397, when he landed at Whithorn on Solway Firth. The stone church he built there was known as Candida Casa (“White House”). Recent archaeological excavations in that area have found white masonry from what could be an ancient church.

Saint Ninian’s ministry was centred in the Whithorn and Galloway areas of Scotland, but he is also remembered for bringing the gospel to the “southern Picts”—people living in the areas now known as Perth, Fife, Stirling, Dundee, and Forfar.

As early as the 7th century, Christians were making pilgrimages to St. Ninian’s shrine. By the 12th century, a large cathedral had been built at Whithorn, but it fell into ruins after the Reformation. Yet today, pilgrims still travel there to visit St Ninian’s Cave, where the saint would go when he needed to pray in solitude.

During his 2010 visit to the United Kingdom, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Scotland on Saint Ninian’s Day.

Saint Ninian’s Cathedral, Antigonish, Nova Scotia (“New Scotland”), is the Episcopal Seat for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Antigonish. This prayer is posted at the Cathedral website:

Lord our God, You brought to Scotland the faith of the apostles through the teaching of St. Ninian. Grant that we, who have received from him the light of your truth, may remain strong in faith. We ask this through our Lord, Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

Artwork: Saint Ninian, stained glass, Saint Margaret’s Chapel, Edinburgh Castle. Photograph taken by admin, 24 July 2004.

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Sermons

Meditation for Holy Cross Day

“By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place,
having obtained eternal redemption for us”

Our Prayer Book provides a Collect for Holy Cross Day and appoints the Epistle and Gospel of Passion Sunday for its commemoration. There is something quite wonderful and powerful about that sensibility. We are being recalled through a non-biblical feast based upon a set of post-biblical events to what is central and essential to the Christian faith. We are simply recalled to the centrality of the Cross.

Why? The Cross is at once the meeting place of lovers and the betrayal of all our loves. We crucify Christ. The Cross confronts us with the failings and failures of our humanity, of the disorder and disarray of our hearts and minds that lead to devastation and destruction in every age. But the Cross confronts us with the greatest betrayal – our betrayal of God and his friendship with us. To be recalled to the Cross is to be recalled to the Passion of Christ – to what he wills to endure for us. It shows us the divine love which is greater than all and every human love and which overcomes all our sin and folly. Such is the power of forgiveness.

Forgiveness. The Cross is the sign of forgiveness. Forgiveness is the reconciling love that makes all things new out of the violent nothingness of our sins. Forgiveness is made visible and audible on the cross. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Christ carries us in our ignorant folly and violence into the hands of his Father, into the reconciling love which is his Passion and Death. Such is the radical meaning of the Cross. It is then in turn required of us to live and act in the same way. What is that way? It is the way signaled in the Collect. God’s grace is given so that we take up the Cross and follow Christ through life and death.

The Cross speaks to us about death and resurrection and about the necessity of sacrifice. Sacrifice is about Christ’s life in us. Another lives in me and I in him and only so can we live for one another. It means a dying to ourselves and living to God and one another in the body of Christ, the Church.

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Prayers and liturgy

Holy Cross Day

St. Martin's Cross, IonaThe collect for today, Holy Cross Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O BLESSED Saviour, who by thy cross and passion hast given life unto the world: Grant that we thy servants may be given grace to take up the cross and follow thee through life and death; whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit we worship and glorify, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

With the Epistle and Gospel of Passion Sunday:
The Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20:20-28

Artwork: St. Martin’s Cross (east face), 8th century, Iona, Scotland. Photograph taken by admin, 30 July 2004.

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