Author: CCW

“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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“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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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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The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon at St. George’s Round Church, Halifax, for Choral Evensong, Easter IV.

“And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus.”

First, allow me to thank your Rector, Fr. Westhaver for the privilege of being here this evening, and secondly, allow me to compliment the choir for such a wonderful musical offering of the “Five Mystical Songs” of Ralph Vaughan Williams based on the poems of George Herbert.

Given the fears, worries and uncertainties about swine flu and the media attention on King’s-Edgehill School, where I am the Chaplain and teach, it seemed to me that “Touch me not” might not be an appropriate text for the sermon! We will have to make due with “a certain beggar named Lazarus.”

“Lazarus, come out!” Jesus says, but that is to another Lazarus, an actual figure and a friend of Jesus in The Gospel of St. John and not the fictional figure of the parable which Jesus tells which we heard tonight from The Gospel of St. Luke. Lazarus, the friend of Jesus, had been dead four days and buried for three, “Lord, he stinketh,” Martha tells Jesus. It is the setting for Jesus words, “Lazarus, come out;” he is restored to life, a resuscitation anticipating Jesus’ own Resurrection and a sign of divine love. “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awake him,” Jesus says, and, lest there be any ambiguity about the phrase, he tells the disciples plainly, “Lazarus is dead.” He goes to awaken him, to bring life and healing, the renewal of fellowship and joy, but only out of the encounter with suffering and sorrow. “Jesus wept. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’” Healing and resurrection flow out of the generosity and compassion of divine love.

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