Category: KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.

In the soft gentleness of October, there is much for which to be thankful even in the midst of the anxieties of our age. Paradoxically, the ‘fall-out’ from the Fall in the Book of Genesis, despite the curses and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, contains the seed, if you will pardon the pun, of thankfulness and blessings. It is found in the 15th verse of Chapter Three and is known, in the Christian understanding, as the Protoevangelium, the first Gospel, understood to point to a Saviour who will overcome all evil.

Gospel means good news. The Protoevangelium is understood to point to Christ the redeemer, the one who overcomes the tempter. Speaking of the serpent, God says to Eve, “he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” but only through “her seed,” meaning Christ in a symbolic sense, where Mary is the new Eve. So while we read about the consequences of humanity’s disobedience, as it were, or, philosophically, of the contradiction between our knowing and our willing, in terms of the curses of the pain of childbirth, and of the necessity of human labour in the sweat of our brow, there is also an intriguing note of good news which is the underlying theme of redemption. A blessing in the curses! Something good comes out of our evil, which does not excuse our evil, I hasten to add!

The story of the Fall endeavours to provide an explanation for human suffering and pain and for our alienation from the paradise of creation. Our humanity “has become like one of us,” God says, “knowing good and evil,” but knowing good and evil, not as God knows good and evil, namely, intellectually and spiritually, but experientially, by way of separation. Our  ‘likeness’ to God is not the same as being God, a critical distinction. We are sent forth into the world “to till the ground from which [our humanity] was taken.” Our vocation is to learn about our way back to God through our connection and engagement with the world. Salvation, our being made whole, is not about a flight from the world in some sort of technocratic and rationalistic fantasy. It has altogether to do with the nature of our thinking and doing within the order of creation. We are part of something greater than ourselves.

It has very much to do with how we think about the nature of the good, of God himself, in relation to the created order and in relation to one another. Something redemptive is at work through creation and our labours in the land, even in the sweat of our brow, learning the hard way but learning something about the power and the wisdom of God which are one in God albeit divided in us. That division takes the form of pain and labour and importantly the idea that there is no going back. The Garden of Eden, it turns out, is not our end but only a starting point to a deeper and more profound relation to both God and nature, including ourselves.

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One turned back … giving him thanks

The Headmaster often says that Thanksgiving is his favourite festival of the year. I think I know what he means. It is so simple and pure, uncluttered and unencumbered by commercialisation. Already in the stores there is merchandise for Halloween and even for Christmas! Thanksgiving seems blessedly free of such hype.

Thanksgiving is profoundly spiritual and counters explicitly the narcissisms of contemporary culture. How? Because thanksgiving requires an acknowledgment of what is other than you; in short a kind of reflection and thoughtfulness about God, nature, and other people. It is actually universal to human culture and civilization on several different levels. The oldest and most common sense of thanksgiving has to do with harvest festivals, a recognition that the fruits of the earth and human labour cannot be taken for granted and that human labour requires our working with the order of nature. This is a profound kind of wisdom. It counters the tendency to take things for granted or, even worse, the idea of entitlement. It checks the assumptions, too, of our technocratic mastery of nature which has shown itself to be so destructive both of nature and of one another.

But beyond the wonder of harvest, there are other kinds of thanksgivings such as social and political thanksgivings, like national thanksgiving days or times in human history when a nation has a particular reason to pronounce a day of national thanksgiving whether it is for deliverance from some natural catastrophe or some political act of intended destruction, such as the Gunpowder Plot of November 5th, 1605, the attempt to blow up King and Parliament in England. The plot was foiled but the sense of the enormity of the attempt and the thought of the devastation and chaos it would have occasioned had a strong hold on the imaginations of the peoples of England in the 17th century such that it remained a national day of thanksgiving for deliverance for a very, very long time. In Canada, the Thanksgiving weekend precedes the Monday holiday which is Canada’s national day of Thanksgiving. In the United States, it occurs much later, in November. Different nations have different days of national commemoration. So thanksgiving embraces a range of concerns.

In every case, thanksgiving is essentially reflective and helps us to think about our relation to the created order and our engagement with one another. It is in that sense profoundly spiritual and is an essential feature of the religions and philosophies of the world. It is central to the Christian understanding as well as to Judaism and Islam because at the heart of thanksgiving is an active openness to God and to what comes from God in terms of creation and providence; an openness to the goodness of creation which is such a powerful idea in our times of negativity and fear about the world and about one another. The central act of worship for Christians is the Eucharist, a word meaning thanksgiving.

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Did God say?

If creation and the natural order are good, indeed very good, then unde malum, from where does evil come?

Our reading of the opening chapters of Genesis has considered creation as orderly and in principle intelligible. We have asked ourselves about where our humanity fits in with respect to the pageant of creation. Genesis 1 argues that we are at once connected to everything in creation but are also uniquely said to be made in the image of God and are charged to act in the image of God the Creator in terms of our care and concern for creation. This, we suggested, counters the more modern idea of our exploitation, manipulation, and so-called technocratic dominance of nature.

The second Chapter of Genesis read on Tuesday complements the first chapter with respect to the place of our humanity. In a more intimate manner than the thundering and impressive pageant of Genesis 1, our humanity (‘adam) is said to be formed of dust from the ground into which God has breathed his spirit. Nothing could emphasize better the connection of our humanity to the natural world. In short, it humbles us. As we have noted before, the collective term ‘adam plays on the word ‘adhamah referring to the dust. We are dirt, as it were! Dust! But we are the dust into which God has breathed his spirit. Such is the dust of dignity, the dignity of our humanity. And in this account, ‘adam is given a commandment not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To be given a commandment presupposes human rationality. It further confirms what it means to be made in God’s image. All good but, then, whence evil?

The story of the Fall in Genesis 3 provides an account of evil and in an intriguing way, namely, through the contrast of questions. The very first question in the Bible is that of the beguiling serpent, a symbol of human reason in denial and in contradiction with itself. Did God say? But we know what God said. The serpent insinuates another way of thinking, another interpretation, not to understand but to undermine what in fact is known. Thus we disobey and act contrary to what we know. The story reveals the age-old nature of the human condition in the conflict between reason and will, between what we know and what we do. Paul captures this dilemma succinctly and brilliantly: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Rom. 7.19). It starts here with the questions of Genesis 3.

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“And behold, it was very good”

“God is the beginning and end of all things, and especially of rational creatures,” Thomas Aquinas says at the beginning of his Summa Theologiae. It calmly and clearly states a philosophical understanding of the concept of God that belongs in one way or another to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Implied in the statement is the understanding that God is clearly not one of those things which God creates. What kind of thing is God? He is nothing, no kind of thing at all but is distinct from all things as their source and end; in short as Creator, the principle of the being and knowing of all reality.

Junior Chapel on Monday considered the first Chapter of Genesis, touching upon the first day and then leap-frogging ahead to the fourth and fifth days. The simple but profound point is that creation is an orderly affair that involves distinguishing one thing from another: light from darkness, heaven and earth, earth and sea, creatures of the air and creatures of the land and the sea. “God saw that it was good” is the recurring refrain throughout the entire chapter. It is a powerful statement that speaks to our contemporary anxieties and fears about the natural world as if it were something evil or threatening. At issue for us is about learning how to honour and respect nature or creation. This stands in contrast to both ancient and modern fears that chaos might just be stronger and greater than order. Creation is something intellectual. As the 12th century Islamic theologian, Al Ghazali, notes, eight of the ninety-nine beautiful names of God, Allah, are all about God as Creator. The Quran echoes Genesis and John:  “Originator (Badi’) of the heavens and earth. When He decrees a thing, He says only  ‘Be!’ and it is” (Qur’an 2:117).

The biblical account is not primarily descriptive; it is a poetic explanation, a way of thinking about the world and, ultimately, about our place in it. We are in this story. Thus the Thursday and Friday Chapels looked at the work of the sixth day and about the seventh day. Where do we as human beings fit into this orderly picture of a world spoken and called into being by an intellectual principle, God as Word? We are the work of the sixth day. Whatever we mean by day, and there are many different ways of marking time in various cultures such as the four day ‘market week’ in the Nigerian Igbo culture, it functions as an ordering principle and pattern in a rhythmic, liturgical and mnemonic way. Here it belongs to the unfolding or process of a world that exists for thought in its order and pattern; an order in which we ultimately find our humanity. We are the work of the sixth day.

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Beginnings

“In the beginning.” These words begin both of the readings read in the first Chapel services of the year: one from Genesis 1.1-5, and the other from John 1. 1-5. “In the beginning God” … “In the beginning was the Word.” They are profoundly formative and foundational texts that belong to a long and complex history of human culture. The start of the School year is certainly a beginning for half the student body of the School who are new this year, But for everybody, there is a sense of excitement and, no doubt, a mixture of uncertainty about the beginning of the year. It is all about stepping into the order and pattern of the life of the School.

Chapel is an integral part of the School’s life. It relates to all four pillars of the educational project at King’s-Edgehill and in a sense holds them together: academics, athletics, aesthetics (Arts) and leadership. All four are front and center in each Chapel service. We sit to listen and think about what is being read and said just like in class, hence academics. We stand to sing and praise – ‘Yay God,’ and all that jazz, as it were! We kneel to pray. Thus standing, sitting, kneeling (or squatting) are our morning calisthenics, thus athletics! The Arts pillar is there in terms of the music and the spatial qualities of the Chapel in its architecture and stained glass windows which, of course, tell a story. Our Head Boy, Will Ahern, is also our organist on Mondays and Tuesdays while Mr. Steven Roe plays on Thursdays and Fridays. We may not have a mass choir but at present we have a masked choir – all the students in Chapel! Singing involves paying attention to written words and music and so contributes to the acquisition of two skills and certainly this is important for students who are learning English as a second language. Leadership is present by way of the Chapel Prefects under the direction of the Head Chapel Prefect, Stanislav Matkovskyi. Students exercise leadership in reading the Scripture lessons, in leading the Prayers, and in serving. All of these pillars go together and reinforce each other.

The Chapel service is intentionally and explicitly Christian and reflects the School’s history and Anglican origins. But faith or religion like education cannot be forced. Students and faculty come from a great variety of religions and non religions, cultures and linguistic communities. The point of Chapel is educational. It is about exploring the great questions that belong to human culture and which never really go away. Through the readings from the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Scriptures we engage the philosophical questions that relate to other religions and philosophies as well such as Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism), Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as the different forms of atheism. The point is to do this through the idea of the dignity of difference; in other words, respecting the different outlooks and thinking that belong to our humanity in all of its remarkable variety.

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I am the vine, ye are the branches … abide in my love

We had hoped that the school year would not end this way but there are sometimes things that are beyond our control. At issue is how we face them. And so, too, with Encaenia which, like last year, will have to be delayed formally. It would have been wonderful to gather in the Chapel on the last day of the year and to hear Righo Etou read Isaiah 55. 6-12 and Sarah Bell read John 15. 1-14. They are powerful readings which contribute to our thinking about the graduating class of 2021 and about the nature of their time at King’s-Edgehill School. Encaenia reminds us of the foundational principles and ideals that belong to our abiding in the intellectual community of the School.

Many of you who are graduating have been physically abiding for several years here at the School but Encaenia is also about our metaphysical abiding, our abiding in the things that are beyond the physical, to take the word in its most literal meaning (μετα φυσισ). Chapel speaks to all of the pillars of the school: the athletic, the academic, the artistic, and to leadership. In that sense it has been a reminder to you about an education which concerns the whole person in relation to a whole community, the School in its purpose and intent. Encaenia is really the celebration of those principles and ideals as they have shaped and formed you over your time here at the School and have become an important part of your experience.

I want to commend all of you for your spirit and determination over the course of the last year and a half. It has not always been easy for some of you to be isolated and separated from your families for such long periods of time, whether it be your homes in the other Atlantic provinces or on the other side of the world. This place has been your place of abiding in a more than usual sense. It has become, if anything, more intense, more concentrated. I commend you on how well you have borne with all of the ups and downs, changes and alterations of this unusual year. We have been, I think, very fortunate – blessed, really – here at King’s-Edgehill over the past year. Some of you have faced more risks of COVID-19 in your travels home than here in Nova Scotia and especially here at the School. There are lessons, no doubt, to be learned about ourselves and about our communities in and through these challenges.

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Lazarus, come out

This would have been the week of ‘last Chapels’, a time of reflection and an attempt to gather up, in my own poor fashion, the meaning of Chapel in the educational life of the School. I want to think about an extraordinary scene in John’s Gospel about Jesus’ engagement with our humanity at times of death; his encounter with us as mourners.

It is the scene of the raising of Lazarus (John 11.38-43). It is the last of three occasions in the Gospels where Jesus meets us as mourners. There is, first, the story of Jesus’ raising the daughter of Jairus who has just died. Talitha cumi, “Little girl, I say to you, arise,” Jesus says in the face of the sceptical ridicule of the attendants (Mark 5. 35-43). It is one of the few Aramaisms, words in Aramaic in the Gospels but then translated into Greek.

There is, secondly, the wonderful story of his encounter with the Widow of Nain on her way in grief to bury her only son. We are meant to feel her grief, her loss, and the way in which the community grieves with her. Yet “do not weep,” Jesus says to her and then to the young man, he says, “arise.” He sat up, we are told, “and began to speak.” And in a marvelous touch, Luke tells us, Jesus “gave him to his mother” (Luke 7.1-17). The story identifies the active principle that moves in all these encounters. “When the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.” It is only on that basis that Jesus can say to her, “do not weep,” meaning, ‘don’t always be weeping’. The divine compassion shown through the humanity of Christ grounds our life in God’s life and as such we are not simply defined by suffering and death, by grief and sorrow. Instead through suffering and death we participate in God’s own life. Such is the meaning of these encounters.

The raising of Lazarus takes place in the context of Jesus with Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus. An intriguing story, it names the divine reality of the triumph of life over death for us as resurrection. Jesus says explicitly to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life,” radical words which belong to the deep insight of the religious and philosophical traditions in their Christian form. God is life and that life is made known in all of its wonder and mystery in Christ. Lazarus has been dead four days, as Martha points out, saying that “by this time there will be an odor” (or as the King James Version more graphically puts it, “Lord, by this time he stinketh”!). All of these encounters are emphatic about the reality of the body and death. All of them show Jesus not just as another mourner. He is with us in our griefs – they are not denied any more than death is denied – but death is overcome. The Resurrection of Christ testifies to the radical nature of human individuality in and through suffering and death. These stories show us the truth and dignity of our humanity as found in the love of God. That alone changes everything and sets us in motion towards one another in knowledge and love.

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In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost

How many times have you heard that said in Chapel! A text, usually taken from the Scripture reading by one of you in Chapel, and then these words are added to it at the beginning and end of the homily. What does it mean? Simply this. The Chapel services at King’s-Edgehill School are explicitly Christian but in the awareness of the necessity of connecting the Christian understanding to the ways of thinking and speaking that belong to other world religions and philosophies. Why? Because they all contribute in one way or another to an ethical understanding of our lives together at once as selves, as a community, and as part of a global world in and through the diversities of language and culture.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are the terms and images that belong to the Scriptural revelation of God in the New Testament and in the Christian understanding but as building upon images in the Jewish Scriptures and as drawing upon imagery and language from Greek culture. The point is not the cultural specificity of such things; the point is the universality of meaning that belongs to a consideration of the dignity of our common humanity.

But such familiar if mysterious words also point to an important feature of Chapel at the School. It is simply this: no name religion is no religion. It is only through the integrity of theological thought that one can engage in a respectful and responsible way with the different forms of thinking about reality that is an essential feature of education and of Chapel. The doctrine of the Trinity is the highest form of the Christian thinking about God; yet it compels a commitment and relation to other traditions, a thoughtful, responsible and dignified engagement which honours the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ idea of “the dignity of difference” between and among the religions and philosophies of the world.

What does it mean in the context of the Chapel service? Simply this. With these words, I place myself under an authoritative tradition and theological way of thinking. The homilies are not simply my poor words and endeavours to communicate or to entertain (hardly!). They are nothing apart from the words of Scripture which they attempt to serve. They are little more than an explication of the understanding of the images of Scripture, an attempt to connect through what has been communicated in the truest form of preaching, namely, the proclamation of the Word by you or your fellow students, words which provoke thought and challenge our thinking.

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We do hear them speak in our own tongues

“The love of truth (charitas veritatis) seeks a holy quiet but the necessity of love (necessitas charitatis) accepts a righteous busyness.” A wonderful phrase attributed to Augustine, it captures wonderfully the interplay of activity and contemplation essential to spiritual life and to the life of intellectual communities such as a school. Usually the King’s-Edgehill campus is a buzz with much busyness and with all manner of comings and goings but now there is a strange and empty quiet about the place. Instead of the sounds of many voices and in different tongues or languages, there is only the quiet beauty of a Maritime Spring in full bloom.

Yet the life of the School goes on albeit through distance learning. Students (and teachers!) are to be commended for their efforts in connecting through zoom. It is, to be sure, somewhat surreal to see a screen full of students in little boxes, full knowing that some are here in the Maritimes while others are, quite literally, on other continents and in far away places. The desire to learn somehow continues to motivate, it seems, along with the sense of connection that belongs to the School as a community of learners. It is not the same thing as being in person but it is a way of reminding ourselves of that quintessential desire to be together in the pursuit of the understanding, in the quest for wisdom. Being together in the spirit is what truly unites.

The strange silence of the campus, owing to the Covid-19 lockdown, stands in stark contrast to the wonder and mystery of Pentecost or Whitsunday. In the Christian understanding, Pentecost celebrates the descent or coming down of the Holy Spirit as the animating principle of the Church. A reprise of the ancient Jewish story of the Tower of Babel, the story of Pentecost marks the redemption of the God-created languages and cultures of the world as against the attempt to enforce one language and one culture through dominance and coercion upon the world – an ancient and a modern story! Pentecost counters, we might say, all the different forms of cultural chauvinism in our divided and polarized world.

I often think of the School in terms of the Pentecostal miracle. For it is about unity in and through diversity, particularly in terms of language and culture. In any given year at King’s-Edgehill, we have more than twenty different languages and cultures represented in the student body. And yet, like the miracle of Pentecost, there is a wonderful unity, a kind of harmony and a spirit of cooperation, that belongs to the character of the School, at once its aspiration and its reality.

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