Category: Sermons

“When all things were in quiet silence
and the night was in the midst of her swift course,
then, thy almighty Word leapt down from heaven, from thy royal throne.”

These wonderful and wise words from the Book of The Wisdom of Solomon capture prophetically the wonder and the mystery of Christmas night and bring us into the holy quiet of Christmas morn. They refer, in their context, to political judgment; the Word of God is the heavenly warrior who comes to bring justice and peace. But theologically, the leaping down of the Word of God who takes flesh and is born of Mary is our peace and justice. “The Lord our Righteousness,” as Jeremiah says. He is our redeemer. He is Jesus our Saviour. Christmas morn holds us in the quiet wonder of God’s being with us in the intimacy of Christ’s holy birth.

Bethlehem is the humble scene of the redemption of our humanity. It is judgement, inescapably. It is the divine judgement upon our wounded and broken humanity, torn apart by sin and pride, bloodied and terrible in the cravings for power and domination. The occasion of Christ’s holy birth, as St. Luke makes clear, is entirely political – a census dictated by the Roman powers, a census taken for the purposes of taxation and control, as all censuses are. Yet God uses the powers of the world to effect his greater will and purpose for our humanity. All the wheels of the great power of Rome are turned by God to bring Joseph and Mary, heavy with child, to the lowly stable in little Bethlehem. A myriad of prophetic statements begin to find their newer and deeper truth in what unfolds in the birth of the Child Christ.

It confounds the politics of the world. A child born to be king, not in any worldly sense of power and majesty, but in the far greater sense of overruling ourselves in our selfishnesses and self-preoccupations, in the far greater sense of overturning a world turned in upon itself, and in the far, far greater sense of turning the world back to its truth in God. God wills to engage our humanity to bring redemption, a redemption that is cosmic in scope.

(more…)

Print this entry

“And the Word was made flesh”

Christmas Eve! And yet, not a mention of the name of Jesus or Christ either in the great epistle reading from The Letter to the Hebrews or in the great gospel reading from the Prologue to The Gospel according to St. John! Plenty of mention in the carols, of course, but doesn’t seem a bit strange that on Christmas Eve, there is no mention in the Scripture readings of the name of Jesus Christ? No mention of Santa Claus, either, I suppose! And yet, this text is the great and definitive Christian Christmas message. “And the Word was made flesh.”

Christmas means the Mass of Christ; in short, the celebration of Christ. We celebrate the birth of Jesus in the simple and lowly scene of little Bethlehem. What does that mean? Why all the fuss and bother about another birth of another child from another time and in another world; long ago and far away, as it were? “What mean ye by this service?” Moses, in The Book of Exodus, asks in relation to the Passover. A question that defines the worship of Israel, it carries over for us, I think, into this and every service. What do we mean by the celebration of Christ and his nativity?

We could respond historically to say that His Birth quite literally changed the world, which is quite true. It placed the world upon an entirely new foundation, shaping cultures and generations yet to come, including even our own, despite its rage and spite against all things religious, despite its demand that religion, if it is to be allowed at all, serve our own immediate and practical concerns and interests. Whether His Birth will change you, make you look at yourself and one another in a new way, is another question.  The answer is really up to you in the sense of either pondering this mystery in your heart or running away from it in disgust, dismay, and denial. But the mystery remains. But what is that mystery?

(more…)

Print this entry

“The Lord is at hand. In nothing be anxious”

Are we ready, really ready, for Christmas? Do we really know what it means to be ready? Ready, exactly, for what? Perhaps that is why we are often so anxious.

Therein lies the problem and the necessity of the Advent season. The problem is that in so many ways, Advent is anticipatory of Christmas. There is the sense of impending fulfillment such that the celebrations already seem to have begun. Yet Advent is the season of expectancy, a season of hope in the realization of what has come to pass, “this thing that has happened,” the holy birth of Christ.

Advent looks to Christmas and so it seems that Christmas has already come. We find it hard to remain in that mode of holy waiting, of holy expectancy. We rush on to what we think is the celebration. We forget the message sounded so profoundly and so importantly in the scripture readings for this day.

“The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ.” What powerful words, words, too, which have shaped our liturgy, words which inform the blessing at every service of the Holy Eucharist. “The Peace of God which passeth understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The Peace of God! This seems so diametrically opposed to the mad rush and busyness of this season, a holy season that threatens to become anything but holy, anything but peaceful and calm. (more…)

Print this entry

“Of his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace”

The Advent and Christmas season is a busy time with all manner of expectations, all manner of anxieties, all manner of fears and worries. There is a rich fullness, to be sure, to Christmas itself.

It is something which one day cannot presume to capture nor that even twelve days with all the festivities of our social, family and communal gatherings can ever hope to exhaust. Such things belong, to be sure, to the rich fullness of this season, but only as attendant events. They circle about the central scene of Christmas. In a way, the businesses of the Advent and Christmas season are really only our poor attempt to capture something of the rich fullness of the Mystery of Christmas.

In truth, there is but one poor, humble scene of Christmas. It is the stable of Bethlehem. Therein lies all the rich fullness of Christmas. That poor, humble scene contains a great crowd of scenes, a great gathering of Christmasses; in short, it opens to view a rich fullness of grace, even “grace upon grace,” to use John’s arresting phrase. There is more here, we may say, than meets the eye. It is altogether something for the soul. We are bidden to ponder the Mystery of the Word made flesh. The attitude of the Church is an essentially Marian attitude. “Mary kept all these things” – all these wondrous things that were said about the Child Christ by Shepherds and Angels – “and pondered them in her heart.” And only so can they come to birth and live in us.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Art thou he that should come?”

Questions upon questions upon questions. Advent is the season of questions, questions that open us out to the majesty and the wonder of God. “How shall this be seeing as I know not a man?” Mary asks, and in this season of questions, everything, we may say, hangs upon her answer, “be it unto me according to thy word.” But to enter into this mystery, the mystery which takes flesh and comes to birth through her at Christmas, we need the figure of John the Baptist as well.

Mary and John. There is a pattern here, we may say, a pattern woven out of the coincidence of names: Mary and John the Baptist in Advent; Mary and John the Beloved Disciple in Lent and, most especially, at the Cross on Good Friday. Two different figures named John but one Mary, the Mother of God. Yet somehow this coincidence of names helps us to appreciate the role of Mary, on the one hand, and the complementary voices of prophecy and discipleship, on the other hand. And such things are very much to the point of the Advent season and especially on the Third Sunday in Advent. They remind us of the dual nature of the ministry of Word and Sacrament.

John the Baptist points us to the one who comes both by his questions – “art thou he that should come or do we look for another?”- and his declaration, “behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” Question and answer, in a way, even as Mary’s question leads to the response about “the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit” by which “the Lord shall be with thee.” Yet it is only through her answer: “be it unto me according to thy word” that this will be accomplished. Somehow John the Baptist and Mary complement one another to form the delightful and wonderful tableau of the Advent of Christ.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Thy word is a lantern unto my feet, / and a light unto my path”
(Ps.119. pt. 14, v. 105)

What is the Bible? It is a book, to be sure, even ‘The Book’, as it were, though it was not always a book exactly. Formerly, there were scrolls of parchment as the Bible itself shows us. Jesus, for example, takes up the scroll of Isaiah and reads from it and proclaims the fulfillment of what he reads. But, at any rate, it has become a book, that is to say something enclosed between two covers. It is, moreover, a library of books, a book containing within itself a great number of books, a wide variety of literature, of things written at different times and in different places and by many different hands. Is it just a collection of literary artifacts from times and places long ago and far away? And if so, why read it now? As an historical curiosity? No.

Because it speaks not only to particular cultures but beyond them. Something of the answer to the question ‘what is the Bible?’ is captured in this characteristic. What we call ‘the Bible’ bears witness to this phenomenon of speaking beyond the particular context and circumstance for which or about which a particular text was originally written. It also bears witness to the writing down in one context of what is remembered from another context. For example, the people of Israel wrote down and put together while in exile in Babylon what was remembered of God’s Word to them at the time of the Exodus from Egypt. The prophets, too, are constantly recalling Israel to the Law.

Somehow what is remembered and written down is received as being altogether definitive, as defining the fundamental identity of Israel in quite different political and cultural circumstances. Somehow what is written down cannot be constrained to just one context. It reaches beyond.

(more…)

Print this entry

Fr. David Curry preached this sermon at Choral Evensong, Trinity Church, Saint John, New Brunswick, on the occasion of the 225th anniversary of The City of Saint John.

“The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night”

First, let me begin by thanking your Rector, the Rev’d Dr. Ranall Ingalls, for the great privilege of being here this evening and for the honour of speaking to you in the beauty of this Advent Sunday Service and upon the occasion of the celebration of the 225^th anniversary of the Loyalist founding and incorporation of this great Maritime city, the City of Saint John.

“The night is far spent,” St. Paul tells us in this morning’s epistle. Tonight he notes that “the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” We meet in the quiet darkness of Advent Sunday.

There is the darkness in which we either wait in hope for the light or die in despair. There are degrees of darkness. There is the literal darkness of the night in the twilight of the year. There is the metaphorical darkness of civilisations and cultures in their decay and disarray. There is the social and economic darkness of communities and families in their distress and dismay. There is the darkness of institutions when they betray their foundational and governing principles. There is the darkness of souls in psychological confusion – distraught, anxious, angry and fearful. The “far spent night” is the hour of deepest darkness. There is the darkness of the fear of death.

In one way or another, these darknesses are all forms of spiritual darkness. They all belong to the darkness of sin and doubt, the darkness of death and dying, the darkness of despair. The darkness of despair is the deepest darkness, the darkness of the “far spent night” of the soul, the darkness of darkness itself, as it were. Why? Because it is the darkness of denial. Despair is the denial of desire. It signals the rejection of the possibilities of light, of faith; the rejection of the possibilities of hope, of what is looked for; and the rejection of the possibilities of love, of what is embraced in the knowing delight of what is good and true, of what is holy and beautiful, of what is true and good.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on
the armour of light”

Advent signals the coming of God towards us. But what is our response? Are we watching and waiting? Are we aware of humanity’s need for the coming of the one who alone can redeem? Are we looking for something more beyond the dull, dark empty loneliness of our anxious and troubled lives? In short, are we prepared for the Advent of Christ to us? That is the challenge of the readings on this day.

So often we think of Advent as simply the season of preparation for Christmas. To be sure, it is, but it is also something more. It is a season and a doctrine which has a real meaning and significance in and of itself. For Advent is the coming. Are we prepared for it or not? The coming is about the challenging presence of God. There is the constant coming of God’s Word to us in proclamation and celebration.

In the great gospel for this day, Christ comes to Jerusalem. He enters the city triumphantly. It is a royal procession. The King has come to his own city. All is light and grace and glory, it seems. “Hosanna to the Son of David; Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest,” “the multitudes that went before, and that followed” cry, both those who went before, them, and those that followed, us. But will we not shortly hear at Christmas that “he came unto his own and his own received him not”? The whole city was moved to say in wondering ignorance and in perplexity, “Who is this?” We know the story. The King – God’s own Word and Son – will be rejected. All that is light and life ends in darkness and death, it seems; the darkness of Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the darkness of the cross and the grave.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts; / Show the light
of thy countenance, and we shall be whole”

It is, to my mind, a most intriguing scene. It belongs to the beginning of John’s Gospel and yet we read it at the very end of the Christian year. It is the first scene in his Gospel in which Jesus speaks directly. Quite apart from the miracle of John’s Prologue, which speaks to us from the eternal heights of heaven, as it were, and which we will hear at Christmas, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”, this is the first scene in which Jesus comes out of the background and into the foreground of the Scriptures. But has he been in the foreground of our lives in this past year of grace?

The prophetic finger of John the Baptist points to Jesus directly. “Behold the Lamb of God,” he says, twice actually. The first time is just before our gospel reading here. It is followed by the Baptist’s profound reflection upon the meaning of the one whom he sees and whom he has pointed out. He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” something we hear and pray repeatedly in our liturgy. The second time is followed by Jesus stepping out into the centre which he is and around which everything turns. John points him out to us again with the words: “Behold the Lamb of God.” In some sense the ministry of John the Baptist is already fulfilled even as it seems it has only begun. As he says in a related passage, Christ “must increase but I must decrease”(Jn.3.30) He gives place to him who is “the Alpha and the Omega” of our lives and who must have his increase in us.

The witness of John the Baptist is all the more remarkable because it points to the Revelation of God in our very midst. As he says, “I myself did not know him; but for this I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel”(Jn.1.31). And again, “I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (Jn.1.33).

(more…)

Print this entry

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends”

They are, perhaps, familiar words. They adorn many an empty tomb, a cenotaph, around which we gather on Remembrance Day just past. But what do we remember and how?

Remembrance Day is a kind of secular All Souls’ Day. The intention of All Souls’ is to remember our common mortality, to commemorate all who have died and to do so within the greater context of All Saints’, the celebration of our common vocation to holiness. The intention of Remembrance Day in the secular aspect of our culture is to remember those who died for the sake of our political and social freedoms .

To say that Remembrance Day is a kind of secular All Souls’ Day is not to say that our remembrance is not religious. It is, and profoundly so. It reminds us of the spiritual and, specifically, Christian principles which underlie the modern national states even in their contemporary confusion and disarray. To remember the fallen is to honour what they fought and died for in far away places and in scenes of absolute horror far beyond our imaging, despite the efforts of the film industry and even the purple prose of preachers.

We remind ourselves of the hell of war and of the destruction and evil which we inflict upon one another. The dust of our common humanity is soaked in blood. But if, and ‘if’ is the big, little word here, if we can remember in a spirit of forgiveness, so much the better. For then our remembering will be joined all the more surely to God’s forgiving remembrance of all our follies, all our sufferings and all our griefs. We will be remembering them in the greater sacrifice of Christ for the whole world, a remembering that enters in to all we do in our liturgy.

What we are remembering are the sacrifices for the rational freedoms of our political and social life, to be sure. But what underlies that remembrance is something profoundly spiritual. It is, perhaps, best captured in the scriptural phrase which adorns thousands of cenotaphs throughout the world. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

(more…)

Print this entry