Category: KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

Dust

Genesis 2 complements rather than contradicts Genesis 1 but in an altogether different register. It offers a kind of check upon any notion of presumption about our humanity. In short, it humbles us by recalling us precisely to the dust of the ground and thus to our place within the order of creation. As such it complements, too, the efforts of the Indigenous peoples of Canada to recall our connection to creation and to honour and respect it rather than to presume to dominate and destroy it.

‘Adam, as yet not a proper name, refers to our humanity generically speaking. “The Lord God,” Genesis 2 tells us, “formed the ‘Adam of dust from the ground.” We are dust. Yet we are the dust into which God breathes his spirit and only so did “‘Adam became a living being.” Such is the dignified dust of our humanity, a complement to our being made in the image of God.

The passage read in Chapel this week serves as a further commentary on the question about who we are as human beings and about an educational programme which emphasizes character. ‘Adam is placed in a garden, the proverbial Garden of Eden, later known as paradise, drawing upon an ancient Persian word for a pleasure garden. “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it”. This garden in Genesis 2 is the source of four rivers Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. But the commentary tradition from very early on sees the rivers as symbolic of the classical virtues that belong to human perfection and character, the virtues of temperance, courage, prudence and courage. This connects the Genesis accounts of creation to the poetic and philosophical teachings of ancient Greece and contributes to the idea of the education of the whole person and to the primacy of the ethical.

Genesis 2 introduces us to two important concepts by way of the imagery of trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Living and knowing are somehow closely connected with respect to what it means to be rational and spiritual creatures. Importantly and in relation to our being made in the image of God, ‘Adam is given a commandment in the garden not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil “for in the day that you eat of it you shall die”. Bearing in mind that creation in its parts and as a whole is good, indeed very good, then this commandment has to be taken as good for us as well. The underlying question is about how we come to the knowledge of good and evil. That will be the story of the Fall.

Why are things so bad if everything is so good? The problem can’t be with the world or with God in this view of things. It has more to do with the form of our relationship to God. This will launch us into the long, long story of human redemption understood in its different modalities, not the least of which is learning through suffering and hardship, learning about the good even in and through our separation from it in the experience of sin and death.

(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy

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What is man, that thou art mindful of him?

The question of the Psalmist (Ps. 8.4), the biblical hymn writer, looks back to the story of creation in Genesis. The question reflects what we see before us in the work of the sixth day. Creation, we have discovered, is an orderly affair that marks the distinction of one thing from another. It is poetic and philosophical and as such provides the ground for ‘science’ understood in its different forms over more than two millennia. Creation is about a relation to the Creator, to an intellectual principle upon which the being and knowing of things depends.

The radical nature of this way of thinking is often overlooked. To put it simply, it means that the world is, in principle, intelligible. Creation is sacred but not divine nor is the natural world something to be feared and frightening; in short, something evil. As Genesis 1 makes emphatically clear, it is good in its parts, indeed very good as a whole. That sense of good is intellectual but with ethical implications. It serves as an important counter to our culture of antagonism and fear.

Last Thursday was the first of the first Chapel services. It was also the last service in the Chapel under the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. It was only in the early afternoon of September 8th that we learned of her death at age 96. With this Thursday’s service, a week later, all of the services have entered into history as being now under the reign of King Charles III. I mention these things because the concept of sovereignty, whether diffused throughout the body politic in the manner of republicanism or concentrated in the person of the monarch, is so significant. Order is paramount. Political life in its truth is not simply about power for power’s sake; it is about truth and order, about dignity and respect, about duty and service. In the Christian understanding and as echoed in other religions, the souls of Kings and Queens, of those in authority, are in the hands of God. God is the ultimate author and creation in its varied forms is God’s poetry, God’s making. The Greek word for making or creating is poesis, poetry. God in the wonder of the creation story speaks the world into being.

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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.

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The Dance of the Understanding

The Lord of the Dance is the School’s favourite hymn bar none. It works in part because of its catchy refrain and because it is a story song; essentially the story of Christ told in the first person with a hint of its application to us in our lives. The melody is based on the American Shaker song, ‘Simple Gifts’ (1848), immortalized in Aaron Copland’s ballet, Appalachian Spring, originally commissioned for the dancer Martha Graham in 1943-44 and then reconfigured as a suite in 1945.

We come to the end of another School year. When I reflect on Chapel, the image of the dance comes quickly to mind because it suggests the reconciliation of tensions and oppositions in a unity of understanding and purpose. This is part and parcel of our wrestling with the questions about the ethical which requires a willingness to be challenged about our assumptions and those of contemporary culture, a willingness to give a voice to the wisdom of the ages and to let ideas dance in our minds.

It is easy to note the diverse cultures and languages from which our students and faculty come. It is not so easy to discern the morning miracle of our being together united in the struggle to understand the deep questions about reality. To be reminded of the world in its Greek and Hellenic sense as a cosmos, an ordered whole or in its Judeo-Christian and Islamic sense as created and good belongs to the dance of the understanding in which we just might glimpse what C.S. Lewis called the Tao, the path of wisdom. The path of wisdom is the dance of the understanding when sacred truths begin to live and move in us.

Tomorrow at 9am there is the Encaenia service for the graduating class of 2022 and their parents and grandparents. “Lord of the Dance” will resound for one more time in the Chapel and in the hearts and minds of the class of 2022.

My humble thanks to faculty and students for their attention to the things of Chapel in this up and down year. I wish you all a good and restful summer.

(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy

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Last Chapel!

The last Chapel service for this year was on Monday with the Junior School who have had to contend with more ups and downs and changes than all other students at the School in terms of Chapel. Despite the irregularities of schedules and vagaries of restrictions, Junior Chapel has been exceptional in terms of enthusiasm and singing, in attention and commitment to this important aspect of the educational programme of the School. The leadership of the students has been extraordinary. Some of the best readers in the School are those in the Junior School. It suffices to mention Will Larder and Vinnie Armstrong. It was also the last Chapel service with Head Boy, Will Ahern, playing the organ, something which began when he was in the Junior School!

So it was wonderful to end this up and down year with a Junior School Chapel service and to reflect with them about the importance of the ethical by way of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The story is actually framed by Jesus’ questions about “what is written in the Law?” and about “how do you read?” and the story of Martha and Mary which immediately follows it. In other words, our actions expressed in the injunction to “go and do thou likewise” are shaped and informed by our thinking. There is an essential interplay between the practical and theoretical, between the active life and the contemplative. That Mary has “chosen the better part,” the unum necessarium, signals the priority of wisdom which is found in contemplation but only as the principle which governs and guides human actions.

To think about the ethical is to consider what is the Good and how is it to be realised in our lives. What is especially important about the parable of the Good Samaritan is that it highlights that the ethical demand for compassion is required of us towards everyone in spite of and not because of various particular identity claims. It is not by accident that Jesus uses the Samaritans to underscore what belongs to the truth and dignity of our common humanity. The Samaritans were despised in the Jewish world. There were deep divisions between Jews and Samaritans about the Mosaic Law. And yet, the actions of “a certain Samaritan” illustrate precisely what it means to fulfil the Law in terms of the love of neighbour, the one who is the stranger, the proverbial other, as oneself. It is about the recognition of our common humanity regardless of cultural, linguistic, social, and political identities which are constantly in motion.

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Go and do thou likewise

The setting of the story of the Good Samaritan read in the last Chapels for Grades 11 and 12 this week is intriguing and significant for thinking and doing. It speaks to the challenges and conflicts of our confused and fragmented world. How to act? According to what set of protocols? Whose rules and why? What is it that is right to do? Why does that vary so much from jurisdiction to jurisdiction?

The setting of the parable is one of conflict and self-serving justification. “A certain lawyer” undertakes to tempt Jesus, to put him to the test in order to catch him out. He does so by raising the question about “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” In other words, what is the good? Jesus asks in return a most important question. “What is written in the law? How readest thou?” Ethics is not just about rules. It is about the understanding of what binds us to one another and in what way. Jesus’ question draws out of the lawyer a marvelous summary of the essential ethical teaching that informs the Judeo-Christian and Islamic understanding and which has its strong counterparts in other religions and philosophies, what C.S. Lewis in the Abolition of Man called “the Tao,” referencing ancient Chinese philosophy. Here it joins together the love of God with the whole of our being in Deuteronomy with the love of neighbour in Leviticus.

Jesus applauds the lawyer’s answer as being right; “this do and thou shalt live.” But he, “willing to justify himself” asks “And who is my neighbour?” That is the setting for the powerful and moving parable of the Good Samaritan, as it has come to be known, which draws upon a host of passages from the Hebrew Scriptures about the stranger, the foreigner, the proverbial other as neighbour. The love of God and the love of neighbour, meaning one another, are inseparable. To do the one is to do the other and vice versa. Here is the ethic of care and compassion concentrated in a picture for us to read and in reading to follow.

But how? Only by that love moving in us, a love which is greater than our human loves which are incomplete and imperfect. In the Christian understanding, the love of God and the love of man meet in Jesus Christ, true God and true man, the mediator of the new covenant of love. The Resurrection has been all about the essential life of God revealed through both the Passion and the Resurrection. Here we see the dynamic of divine life at work in us when we allow what we read to move in us.

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Breakfast with Jesus?!

The accounts of the Resurrection all turn on the idea of how we come to know and show us that process of a dawning awareness in which we come to see things in a completely new way that illuminates the past and sets us in motion.

Here Christ appears to the disciples on the beach while they are fishing. It begins with the disciples not recognising Jesus, among them Peter, who it seems has returned to his former labor as a fisherman. But they had “caught nothing” until Jesus bids them cast their net on the other side of the boat wherein they enclose a great number of fishes, indeed, one hundred and fifty three without the net breaking! Only then does Jesus say, “come and have breakfast!”

Why 153 and why the unbroken net? Simply another fish story? Exaggerating the size and number of the fish caught? Mathematicians might note that 153 is the triangular number of seventeen but its symbolic meaning is open to interpretation. The Early Church Fathers in various imaginative ways see the number and the broken net as symbolizing the totality of salvation, namely, all who are enclosed in the unbroken net of the Gospel. This leads to a barbecue breakfast on the beach with Jesus. Not so much the last supper as the first breakfast! A strong affirmation of the bodily reality of our spiritual lives, we might say. And another image of our being gathered to God out of our confusions and disappointments. But fish? Well, in the later Christian imaginary, Christians identified themselves by the sign of the fish. Fish in Greek forms an acrostic: ICTHUS (ιχθυς), meaning “Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour,” a prayer and an expression of faith.

All of this suggests how the accounts of the Resurrection bring out a feature common to Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well as other religions and philosophies, a feature which we forget at our peril. It is about a sacramental understanding.

A sacramental understanding has very much to do with the relation between Word and Sacrament and with the way in which the things of the world belong and contribute to our life of faith and to the forms of our participation in the life of God in Christ. In the Christian sense, the sacraments are “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”. They are a critical feature of all religions. Something invisible and spiritual is made known through what is material and visible. This is the counter to our gnostic and technological flights from the world and the body as if it were evil.

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Did not our heart burn within us?

This week in Chapel, the second part of Luke’s story of The Road to Emmaus was read. It is a powerful story about how we come to know things; in this case, it reveals the way in which the idea and the reality of the Resurrection comes to birth in us through the interplay of words and deeds. The story illustrates what will become a distinct feature of the Christian religion, along with other religions, namely, Word and Sacrament, something proclaimed and heard and something seen and touched, ideas which are received in our hearts and minds. “Did not our heart burn within us?”

The Resurrection is an important doctrine of the Christian Faith but not a concept which is exclusive to Christians. The concept and idea appears in late Judaism and is an important feature of Islam as well. The idea of the Resurrection connects as well to other traditions of philosophical questions about what it means to be ‘you’, a self, a person, an individual, that involves the idea of the immortality of the soul, on the one hand, and the place of the body and nature in relation to the soul, on the other hand, in such things as reincarnation. The Resurrection affirms the idea of the individual as soul and body; the body matters in a radical way and belongs to your individuality.

The story of the Road to Emmaus is profoundly counter-culture in several ways. It affirms the individual as embodied and as an integral part of a community as distinct from being isolated and separate from others and in flight from the world and the body. It is the Christian event that opens us out to the universal event of God as essential life. As such it shows how death and sin are not ultimate but neither are they denied. The past is not eclipsed in some techno-fantasy flight to an imaginary future of our own devising. The Resurrection never lets us ignore or forget the Passion.

Last week we read about Jesus coming alongside the two disciples who were fleeing from Jerusalem in fear and uncertainty. Jesus engages them unawares; “their eyes were holden.” They didn’t recognise him since they had assumed he was dead. Our assumptions quite often constrain and limit our understanding. We often only see and hear what we want to see and hear. But in true Socratic fashion, Jesus draws out of them their fears and uncertainties and their expectations. That is part of the teaching.

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“Who is the third who walks always beside you?”

This line from T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Waste Land, draws upon the lovely story of ‘The Road to Emmaus’ in Luke’s Gospel, the first part of which was read in Chapel this week along with the story from John’s Gospel of Mary Magdalene coming in grief to the empty tomb only to encounter the Risen Christ. Both stories belong to the Resurrection of Christ. Both stories reveal how the idea and the reality of the Resurrection come to birth in our hearts and souls. They are both about the teaching of Christ himself.

The Resurrection is the Christian form of the ancient philosophical “wisdom of the ages and the sages” (Neil Postman) about God as eternal life in our midst. Easter, contrary to what is commonly said, is not the ending but the radical beginning, the beginning which has no ending because it is about eternal life. It is what has been opened out to us in the spectacle of Holy Week and now in the wonder of the Resurrection. It is what Christ teaches us about himself as the principle of radical life. It is not hard to see that the Passion of Christ in all four gospels can only have been written and can only be contemplated in the light of the Resurrection.

Christ’s Resurrection is the event that opens us out to the greater event of God himself. “In the beginning God.” “In the beginning was the Word.” “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” These words from Genesis and John shape our understanding of the Resurrection which is nothing less than the triumph of life over death, of light over darkness, of good over evil. Such is the powerful lesson of Christ’s Death and Resurrection. The Resurrection never lets us forget the Passion. The sorrows of the Passion deepen the joys of the Resurrection even as the joys of the Resurrection are intensified by the sorrows of the Passion.

The accounts of the Resurrection show us how this idea and its reality come to birth in us and as a consequence shape the accounts of the Passion. Here immortality extends beyond the soul, beyond such ideas as reincarnation – a kind of cycling in and out of various life-forms – to the idea of Resurrection: the body matters. It too belongs to the deeper truth of our humanity, to the fullest possible affirmation of our human individuality. The Resurrection is emphatically counter-culture precisely because it is not a technological flight from reality, from the reality of the body into some imaginary techno-fantasy about the isolated and separated self of gnostic existentialism – effectively a denial of the goodness of creation and of its restoration in redemption.

Mary comes seeking a dead body, a corpse. She encounters beyond all expectation the risen Christ. His words to her are most intriguing. “Touch me not,” he says but then sends her on a mission to the others. She is apostle apostolorum, an apostle to the apostles, the first witness to the Resurrection, the first to be taught by Christ himself. “Touch me not” means that she is to know him in a new way, no longer as clinging to the things of the past. The Resurrection is the new beginning, the beginning of a new order and relationship to Christ.

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