Author: CCW

King's-Edgehill School Sermons, Sermons

Church Parade 2009: Reflections

An Evening Service with the King’s-Edgehill Cadet Corps
Thursday in Ascensiontide

King’s-Edgehill Students, Omer Mullick – Head Boy, Ashley Snow – Head Girl, Bryn Bowen, Beka Boutin, Micha Cromwell, Jenna Vidito, and Jared Smith read the following “Reflections” at the Church Parade held on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at Christ Church. The Scripture readings were Exodus 33.7-14 and John 21. 15-19.

Reflections

I.

The Book of Exodus tells the story of a journey. Exodus means “going forth.” As students, we, too, are on a journey. It is the journey of learning.

This evening, too, we have been on a journey. The School as a Cadet Corps has marched through the Town of Windsor. Don’t worry, it is not an invasion! It is simply a parade.

But what kind of parade? Are we calling attention to ourselves? Or is about ourselves as a School in one of the aspects of the life of the School?

We meet in this “tent of meeting.” We meet together, sit together, stand and sing together, think and reflect together. It, too, is part of our journey.

We come from many different cultures, communities and religions but together we are a community united in our respect for one another and for our School and united in our quest to learn and in our desire to serve.
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King's-Edgehill School Sermons, Sermons

A decade of King’s-Edgehill School sermons

The Rev’d David Curry, in his capacity as Chaplain, King’s-Edgehill School, preached these sermons on the occasions of Church Parade and Encaenia. Click on the links to download as pdf documents.

Church Parade Sermons

Encaenia Sermons

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Bede the Venerable

The collect for today, the Feast of The Venerable Bede (673-735), Monk, Historian, Doctor of the Church (source):

Almighty God, maker of all things,
whose Son Jesus Christ gave to thy servant Bede
grace to drink in with joy
the word which leadeth us to know thee and to love thee:
in thy goodness
grant that we also may come at length to thee,
the source of all wisdom,
and stand before thy face;
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.

For The Epistle: Wisdom 7:15-22
The Gospel: St Matthew 13:47-52

stbede_codexSt Bede was born and, as far as we know, lived his entire life in the north of England, yet he became perhaps the most learned scholar in all of Europe. At the age of 7, he was sent to Wearmouth Abbey for his education; at age 11, he continued his education at the new monastery at Jarrow, eventually becoming a monk and remaining there until his death. He lived a routine and outwardly uneventful life of prayer, devotion, study, writing, and teaching.

Bede’s writings cover a very wide range of interests, including natural history, orthography, chronology, and biblical translation and exposition. He was the first to translate the Bible into Old English. He considered his 25 volumes of Scripture commentary to be his most important writings. His best-known book is Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731. This work earned him the popular title “Father of English History”, and not just because it was the first attempt to write a history of England. His historical research was thorough and far-reaching. For example, he asked friends traveling to Rome to bring him copies of documents relevant to English history, and he made use of oral traditions when written materials were not available. The book provides much historical information that can be found in no other source.

His pupil Cuthbert, later Abbot of Jarrow, has left a moving eyewitness account of St Bede’s last hours. Bede fell ill shortly before Easter 735, when he was in the midst of translating the Gospel of John into the Anglo-Saxon language. Everyone realised that the end was near, but he was determined to complete the translation. Between Easter and Ascension Day, he persisted in the task while continuing to teach his students at his bedside.

After a restless night, he resumed dictating the translation on the morning before the Ascension. That afternoon he called the priests of the monastery to him to distribute his remaining earthly possessions. Seeing they were overcome with grief, he comforted them with these words:

“If it be the will of my Maker, the time has come when I shall be freed from the body and return to Him Who created me out of nothing when I had no being. I have had a long life, and the merciful Judge has ordered it graciously. The time of my departure is at hand, and my soul longs to see Christ my King in His beauty.”

The young man who had been writing down the translation said there was still one sentence remaining, and Bede dictated the final words.

After a short while the lad said, “Now it is finished.”

“You have spoken truly,” he replied. “It is well finished. Now raise my head in your hands, for it would give me great joy to sit facing the holy place where I used to pray, so that I may sit and call on my Father.”

And thus, on the floor of his cell, he chanted, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit” to its ending, and breathed his last.

When he received word of the great scholar’s death, St Boniface, who had used Bede’s Bible commentaries, said, “The candle of the Church, lit by the Holy Spirit, has been extinguished”. Within a generation or two, St Bede was being called “Venerable”. His bones were translated from Jarrow to Durham Cathedral in the mid-11th century; in 1370 they were placed in the cathedral’s Galilee Chapel. (A photo of the tomb can be seen about halfway down this page).

These are the final words of the Ecclesiastical History:

I implore you, good Jesus, that as in your mercy you have given me to drink in with delight the words of your knowledge, so of your loving kindness you will also grant me one day to come to you, the fountain of all wisdom, and to stand for ever before your face.

St Bede is the only Englishman named in Dante’s Paradise. He is also the only English Doctor of the Church.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Augustine of Canterbury

St Augustine of CanterburyThe collect for today, the Feast of St Augustine (d. c. 605), first Archbishop of Canterbury (source):

O Lord our God, who by thy Son Jesus Christ didst call thine apostles and send them forth to preach the Gospel to the nations: We bless thy holy name for thy servant Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose labors in propagating thy Church among the English people we commemorate today; and we pray that all whom thou dost call and send may do thy will, and bide thy time, and see thy glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 5:17-20a
The Gospel: St Luke 5:1-11

More on St Augustine of Canterbury here and here.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Sunday after Ascension Day

“The end of all things is at hand”

“It’s the end of the world as we know it and we feel fine,” or so Great Big Sea claims. But do we feel fine? Or are we fearful and afraid, worried and, like Martha, “anxious about a multitude of things”? St. Peter’s words sound either a note of foreboding or a note of rejoicing. Which is it? A note of impending judgment or a note of joy, indeed the fullness of joy? Everything depends on what we mean by “end”? Do we mean a sense of judgment and finality or the sense of accomplishment and purpose; in short, do we mean by “end”, death or life?

On The Sunday after Ascension Day, we celebrate two related but almost forgotten teachings – the Ascension and the Session of Christ. What do they signify?

The Ascension signifies the homecoming of the Son having finished his course, having accomplished the will of him who sent him, and now returning to the Father. The whole life of the incarnate Christ is about his going forth and returning to the Father in the power of the Spirit. The Session celebrates the rule of Christ with the Father in the bond of the Spirit over the whole of creation. He is King. “See the conqueror mounts in triumph,/ See the King in royal state,” as one of our hymns puts it. Why? Because in his going forth and return to the Father, he returns all things to their source and end, to the divine life which he shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 25-31 May

Tues., May 26th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place

Thursday, May 28th
1:30-3:00pm Seniors’ Drop-In
7:00pm Evening Service with KES Cadet Corps

Thursday, May 28th – Saturday, May 30th
Synod of the Diocese of Nova Scotia & PEI
Student Union Bldg., Dalhousie University, Halifax

Sunday, May 31st, Pentecost
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
4:30pm Evening Prayer or Holy Communion at King’s-Edgehill School

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Prayers and liturgy

Sunday After Ascension Day

The collect for today, Sunday After Ascension Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O God, the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven; We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St Peter 4:7-11
The Gospel: St John 15:26-16:4a

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Sermons

Meditation for the Ascension

“God has gone up with a merry noise/ the Lord with the sound of the trumpet”

It is the psalms, as often as not, that strike the right tone of approach to our liturgical observances. In this case, the high note of rejoicing and delight that belongs to the Feast of the Ascension is nicely captured by the words of the psalmist. “God has gone up with a merry noise/ the Lord with the sound of the trumpet” (Psalm 47.5).

The Ascension of Christ, as The Book of the Acts of the Apostles suggests, marks the fortieth day of Easter. It marks the end, in the sense of the completion, of the Easter season. One of the creedal mysteries of the Christian Faith, the Ascension is often overlooked, perhaps because it doesn’t fall on a Sunday, but on a Thursday. And yet, it provides some very important and powerful teaching.

What is the Ascension about? It is the homecoming of the Son to the Father, for one thing. Jesus in the Rogation Sunday Gospel said “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world: again, I leave the world and go to the Father.” There is a sense of mission accomplished. And that mission concerns our good and the good of the world. In other words, the Ascension brings to a certain completion and fullness the redemption of the world and the redemption of our humanity. The Son returns to the Father, not in flight from the world, as if matter or the physical world were inherently evil, but having accomplished the redemption of the world.

And that is where the Ascension speaks so profoundly to our present-day concerns, fears and worries. You see, the Ascension means that the world and our humanity have an end in God, an end in God in the sense that the meaning and purpose of the world and the meaning and the purpose of our human lives is found in our relation to God in Jesus Christ. Against the perversity and folly of thinking that the world is just there for us to manipulate, exploit or destroy, the Ascension reminds us that the world is God’s world. It exists for his will and purpose. And so do we. Ascension is about the sense that we have an end and a place with God. “I go to prepare a place for you” as Jesus so beautifully puts it.

His going up is his homecoming for us. As the Fathers put it, the Ascension is “the exaltation of our humanity.” In prayer and praise, in the liturgical pattern of our worshipping lives, we lift up our hands and hearts to Christ our Lord and our Redeemer whose Ascension is the fullness of joy and delight to our souls. “We ascend in the ascension of our hearts” as Augustine says, signaling how the whole of our life is about this Godward direction which locates the meaning and purpose of the world and ourselves with God.

“God has gone up with a merry noise/ the Lord with the sound of the trumpet”

Fr. David Curry Ascension ‘09

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Prayers and liturgy

The Ascension Day

The collect for today, The Ascension Day, being the fortieth day after Easter, sometimes called Holy Thursday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continuously dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

For the Epistle: Acts 1:1-11
The Gospel: St Mark 16:14-20

Donatello, Ascension of Christ

Artwork: Donatello, Ascension of Christ, 1465. Bronze, Detail of the North Pulpit, Basilica di San Lorenzo, Florence.

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Sermons

Sermon for Rogation Sunday

The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon for The Fifth Sunday After Easter/Rogation Sunday.

“In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer,
I have overcome the world.”

We are a practical people, or, at least, so we like to think. And yet, it is about the practical that we seem to have the greatest problems and the greatest worries. Ours is a fearful and uncertain world, a fearful and uncertain world about practical things such as the economy and the environment. Whether anything can or cannot be done about them is our fear and worry.

Behind our practical preoccupations with jobs and the economy, work and the environment, lie a host of assumptions about ourselves and our relation to the world. Some of those assumptions need to be challenged, corrected and overcome. “In the world,” Jesus says, “ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

Such a statement seems to imply that the world is the enemy. Yet, what is meant here is our attachment to the world seen as standing over and against God; preferring our material comforts and concerns, our immediate practical interests, as it were, to the spiritual and intellectual principles that properly define and dignify our lives. For here is the paradox. There are no practical solutions to theoretical problems and our problems, in a way, are wholly theoretical, by which I mean that they have to do with the assumptions that underlie our practical preoccupations; in short, our attitudes and approaches to our world and day. Our neglect of things spiritual and intellectual results in our fearful paralysis about things practical.

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