Category: Sermons

“What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you”

Paul’s speech on the Areopagus in Athens shows something of the meaning of his so-called conversion. Saul, the persecutor of the followers of the Way, the followers of Jesus, becomes Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles. It is not a conversion from Judaism to Christianity because the latter does not yet really exist. It marks instead a conversion in thought and understanding and therein lies the real importance and significance of Paul’s conversion and indeed, the meaning of all conversion.

The Book of the Acts of the Apostles deals with the emergence of the early Church focusing largely on the apostolic characters of Peter and Paul. The story of Paul’s conversion, of which the change in name from Saul to Paul is a part, is told in Acts three separate times. The accounts are all interesting and informative and reveal the tensions and the dynamic of the time. In a way, the stories and the accounts of the missionary travels of Paul provide the foundations for the apostolic and catholic nature of the Christian church as it begins to emerge out of the cauldron of Jewish religion, Greek philosophy and Roman political order.

Paul’s speech to the men of Athens is a kind of highlight moment. It marks an essential feature of Christian witness, namely, the engagement with other cultures and religious philosophies and allows us to see what is distinct about Christianity. Paul is a major theological voice who sets the stage for the development of Christian doctrine about Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Hans Urs Von Balthasar notes, as a kind of thought experiment, however, that Paul’s speech would never get off the ground today simply because it assumes that God is a concept and a topic which while widely shared then cannot be assumed as such now. The idea of God was the starting point from which to talk about judgment and resurrection; in short, Christ as the God “in whom we live and move and have our being”, referencing the poets of ancient Greece, specifically, Aratus, whose invocation to Zeus has been appropriated by Paul.

That is itself significant and shows the nature of the cultural and intellectual interplay that belongs to the emergence of Christianity and, especially, as grasped by Paul whose learning and grasp of languages as well as his deep study of the Torah make him such a significant figure.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Ephphatha, that is, Be opened”

On behalf of The Prayer Book Society of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, let me thank the Parish of St. George’s for the great privilege and pleasure of being here this evening for this service of choral evensong and for the wonderful music provided by Garth McPhee and the choir. Boyd and Buxtehude, words of Sedulius and a tune named St. Venantius – it doesn’t get any better! Thank you.

Epiphany is the most theological of the seasons of the Church year. It is God in your face, as it were, and yet speaks profoundly about who we are, who we are in God’s sight. The whole focus and emphasis is upon what are sometimes known as the divine attributes, the attributes of God. Three of the essential attributes of God that are made known in the season of the Epiphany are “the infinite wisdom, power and goodness” of God, concisely named in the first of The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion as found in our Canadian Prayer Book. They are attributes that belong to the theological reflections of Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought. For Christians these are all made manifest through the humanity of Jesus Christ.

Epiphany is pre-eminently the season of teaching and therein lies the modern dilemma and challenge for our divided, confused, and despairing world. The Magi-Kings from Anatolia came to Bethlehem bearing gifts to the one to whom the star brought them. Unlike the Caesars of the world whose veni, vidi, vici, “I came, I saw, I conquered”, captures the dominance meme of the regimes of power, the Magi-Kings viderant, venerunt, et adoraverunt, “they saw, they came and they adored”; in short, they worshipped. The gifts they present are gifts which honour and teach, “sacred gifts of mystic meaning”. Epiphany is the pageant of mystical theology. We participate in what we behold. We are in the midst of great mysteries. Gold signifies that Christ is King; frankincense that he is God; and myrrh that he is sacrifice.

Such things are both revelation and redemption; the revelation of God and the redemption of humanity. But only through something taught and learned. That makes all the difference – then and now. “They departed into their own land another way”, having been warned in a dream, Matthew tells us, “not to return to Herod”. There is a sense of ominous danger that foreshadows the richly allusive but disturbing story of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents; the theme of myrrh and sacrifice, the theme of redemptive suffering. “How vain the cruelty of Herod’s fear”, as we sang. But they return, as T.S. Eliot famously intuits, “no longer at ease”, no longer comfortable and secure in their former assumptions and outlooks. The suggestion is that they are changed by what they have been given to see. Such is the purpose of Epiphany. It opens us out to the presence of God and to the purpose of God for our lives. The intent is to change how we see, how we think and feel about God and about the suffering realities of our humanity. But what kind of change?

(more…)

Print this entry

“Speak the word only”

The Gospel which orders our thoughts on this The Third Sunday after Epiphany is the double healing of the leper and the Centurion’s servant by Jesus Christ. Epiphany season abounds in miracles. They belong to the making visible of the glory of God. A miracle, after all, is a sign of wonder. The healing miracles are a wonder. But what exactly do we see? Only the signs of the glory in the effects of what is said and done. The wonder, really, is the wonder of Christ.

Christ heals a leper and he heals the paralysed servant of the Centurion. He speaks and he acts. There is healing. The healings are within Israel and also beyond Israel. “He came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.” It is at once universal and particular. Such are the properties of God. Through the history and meaning of Israel the glory of God is not only made known to the world but for the world. The leper is healed within the context of the particular customs and practices of Israel and is held to the requirements of the Law in Israel. But with the Centurion’s request, Jesus acknowledges something more: there is the wonder of faith which coming out of Israel transcends Israel. “I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel,” Jesus says about the Centurion. For both the leper and the Centurion, Christ is the wonder. There is an epiphany. Something is make known about who God is for us in Jesus Christ.

He is the wonder before he puts forth his hand and before he speaks. The healing miracles are surprisingly not the glory. They are only the making visible of the glory which is present in Christ Jesus. He is the glory. And he is the glory which is somehow known and known not just in his effects but in his person.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”

Saying and doing. Acting upon what has been said. Does it mean just simply doing what you are told – mindlessly and without thinking? By no means. Epiphany presents us with the great wonder and mystery of God revealed to us through the words and deeds and person of Jesus Christ. The Feast of the Epiphany itself marks the break-out from Bethlehem in the sense of the making known of Christ’s birth to all people. The Magi-Kings present gifts to the Child Christ. They are gifts which teach. Christ is King, and God and Sacrifice. And then The First Sunday after Epiphany presents to us the story of the boy Jesus at the age of twelve being found in the Temple in Jerusalem in the midst of the doctors of the Law. The scene is all about teaching and learning, things which have very much to do with our humanity in concert with divinity. God and Man. Jesus the Divine Teacher; Jesus the human student. What is signaled ever so profoundly, too, is the mission and purpose of Christ’s Incarnation.

“Wist ye not”, he says to Mary. “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business”, or as another possible way of translating puts it, “in my Father’s house”. Epiphany is all about the things of God revealed to us through the humanity of Jesus. Central to the teaching or doctrine of Epiphany is the relationship between power and wisdom. The first article of the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, for instance, identifies three essential attributes of God: his infinite wisdom, power and goodness. When wisdom and power fall apart then we have abuse and destruction, bullying and domination – all at the expense of wisdom and truth. It is the story of the 20^th century and continuing into the 21^st. Epiphany, to the contrary, points out the essential and necessary connection between wisdom and power. Such things belong to God and only then by extension to the shaping and ordering of our lives in community.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Wist ye not that I must be about my father’s business?”

Jerusalem and Bethlehem. They are the twin poles of Christian contemplation, the twofold centre around which, as in an ellipse, we move in thought and prayer, in love and devotion, in service and sacrifice. Each is bound up with the other – distinct and yet inseparable. Christmas focuses, of course, on Bethlehem as the place of Christ’s birth. Yet his birth is itself a kind of epiphany, a making known in the flesh of our humanity of the things of God. Christmas at once concludes and continues with the Epiphany. And with the Epiphany there is, we might say, the break-out from Bethlehem and suddenly Jerusalem begins to come more and more into the picture.

Epiphany means manifestation. It signals the idea of something that is made known to us as opposed to something that is invented by us. Like Advent, it is a season of revelation, a season of teaching. That is what is so wonderfully and clearly set before us on this day, The First Sunday after Epiphany which often falls within The Octave of the Epiphany. What is the Epiphany? It is the celebration of the coming of the Magi-Kings to Bethlehem and so it connects to Christmas and belongs to the Christmas imaginary. But it is also about going from Bethlehem, “depart[ing] into their own country another way”, as Matthew puts it, after having fallen down in worship before the child, “present[ing] unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh”.

The gifts are symbolic and meaningful. They are gifts which teach; “sacred gifts of mystic meaning” as one of the Epiphany hymns puts it. And that in a way is the point of Epiphany. It is about the making known of the things of God in the world of our humanity. The light of God shines out from within the world to teach us about our life with God and with one another. The emphasis is upon the divinity of Christ made visible through his humanity. Christ is King and God and Sacrifice.

It is not by accident that the Gospel for The First Sunday after The Epiphany focuses on Christ as teacher. Jesus is found in the Temple in Jerusalem at the age of twelve. We go from Bethlehem to Jerusalem in the mystery of the Epiphany. It is, we might say, his bar mitzvah, his coming of age and entry into adulthood. He is found “in the midst of the doctors” of the law, the wise ones of Israel, as it were, “both hearing them, and asking them questions”, Luke tells us for just as the story of the Magi-Kings is told only by Matthew, so this story of the boyhood of Jesus is told to us only by Luke. “And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers”. There is a sense of wonder. Epiphany is the season of wonders and the wonders begin with teaching and learning.

(more…)

Print this entry

“They departed into their own country another way”

Unlike Caesar who famously said, “veni, vidi, vici” – “I came, I saw, I conquered” – the Magi-Kings of Anatolia, “viderant, venerunt, et adoraverunt” – “they saw, they came and they adored”. It makes all the difference. Instead of conquest, there is adoration. They saw a star which they followed. They came on a long journey, it seems, to Bethlehem. They worshipped – adored – the child Christ and “they presented unto him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh”.

It is all part of the Christmas pageant, part of the rich tableau of images that confronts us and amazes us at Christmas. For some, Christmas is too much: too much fuss and bother, too much stress and worry. Some are only too glad that it is over and gone. For others there is never too much Christmas, even Christmas in July! But the real spiritual wonder of Christmas is that it lasts for more than a day, more than a week. There are the proverbial twelve days of Christmas! There are even the festivities in parts of the western world of “twelfth night” – not to mention Shakespeare’s play by that name. For the vast world of Eastern Christian Orthodoxy – for Russian, Greek, and Coptic churches, for example – Christmas really only begins with the coming of the Magi-Kings, the Wise Men to Bethlehem. Why? Because with the coming of the Magi-Kings from Anatolia (from the East), Christmas is omni populo, for all people. There is a rich fullness to the Christmas mystery and to the forms of its imaginary. So much is clustered into that simple scene in Bethlehem. A rich fullness in the midst of human poverty.

Only Matthew tells us about the coming of the Magi and yet his simple story has inspired a wealth of other things belonging to the work of holy imagination. The Magi, quite literally, have captured the imaginations of artists and poets from the carol “We Three Kings of Orient Are” to the Huron Carol, from simple crèche scenes to elaborate Baroque-style crèche displays. The Magi-Kings are a major part of the Christmas story. And yet we really know precious little about them. We don’t really know how many. Were there three? The tradition of three is based simply upon the three gifts. But holy imagination builds wonderfully and significantly upon the sparse details of Matthew’s account to provide them even with names – Casper, Balthazar, and Melchior, for example – and addresses in terms of different cultures and races from exotic places. No doubt they would be nowadays equipped in our imaginaries with GPS and cell-phones (in the hopes that they might get there on time, perhaps!).

(more…)

Print this entry

The seven homilies delivered during Christmastide by Fr. Curry have been collected into one pdf document, available for downloading here.

Print this entry

“But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart”

There is a rich fullness to all of the celebrations of Christmas; a kaleidoscope of images in a whirl of sounds and light surrounds us. How do we make sense of it all or indeed of any of it all? It may seem like a whirlwind of things that serve to distract us either to amuse us or destroy us. How are to make sense of the rich fullness of Christmas especially on this The Octave Day of Christmas? It is a day, to be sure, which is also designated in other terms at once secular and sacred. It is The Octave Day of Christmas which brings us home and into the eternal mystery of Christ’s nativity, gathering into one all of the particulars of our Christmas celebrations. It is The Circumcision of Christ which marks another aspect of the mystery of the Incarnation. And to top it off, it is also New Year’s Day so as to bring the secular ordering of time into the mystery of God with us. A rich fullness indeed. How are we to make sense of it all?

We are to be like Mary who having heard “those things which were told them by the shepherds”, “kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” She doesn’t just hold onto these things zealously clinging to them as we might to our favourite gifts. No, she keeps them “and ponder[s] them in her heart”. It is a very rich phrase. The things that have been said and heard are weighed and considered; they are thought upon. To ponder is to give something serious consideration. It is to be attentive to the meaning of what has been said and heard, seen and done.

For what are “all these things” which she keeps in her heart? They are all the things which cluster around the angelic announcement to the shepherds about “a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger”, a child who is “born this day in the city of David [as] a Saviour, Christ the Lord”. It is “good tidings of great joy”, to be sure, but even more a mystery to be considered. The shepherds say one to another, “Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass,” this thing “which the Lord hath made known to us”. They are themselves evangelists, the bearers of good news. They do not keep this to themselves but “made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child”. All who heard it “wondered at those things which were told them”. Mary, too, it seems, but even more she “kept all these things and pondered them in her heart”. That is the mystery of the Church and her purpose and being. We are to be like Mary.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Rachel weeping for her children, And would not be comforted,
because they are not”

There is no more disturbing and troubling image than the deaths of the little ones whether as here in the witness of the Scriptures or in the horrendous pictures of the suffering children of the world – in Calais, in Aleppo, in Kenya and elsewhere. We live in a world where children are not only commodities but collateral damage in the pursuit of power and dominance. There is no innocence, it seems.

There is blood in Bethlehem. To be sure, we have already seen blood, as it were, in the martyrdom of St. Stephen who was stoned to death confessing Christ and in imitation of the sacrificial sufferings of Christ. But that was in Jerusalem. Here we have the slaughter of the Holy Innocents, as they have been called, in Bethlehem, killed as a policy of infanticide in Herod’s effort to eradicate a potential rival to his kingdom. Herod’s policy to kill all the little ones, two years and under in Bethlehem, echoes the policy of infanticide by Pharaoh to control the population of the Hebrews in Egypt out of which came the birth of Moses. Thus we are made aware of a deeper theological idea, the idea that God and God alone can make something good out of the machinations of human evil.

“Never that which is shall die”, a famous fragment from the Greek poet, Euripides, avers. In a way, the Christian story both challenges and confirms his poetic insight. Christ, the everlasting Son of the Father, comes to redeem and save by dying for us. His rising to life again though is testament to the greater power and truth of God who ever is, the God who negates the negation, as it were. The death of death itself is accomplished in the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. “Never that which is shall die” because it dies and lives again for it is what lives forever. Love conquers all because love never dies.

This is all part of the dark mystery and wonder of the disturbing Christmas feast of the Holy Innocents. They are innocent because in truth they are unable to harm and yet they are seen as a threat to Herod just by virtue of being infants like the child king sought by the Magi. They are already viewed as in Christ and that is the deeper wonder that redeems the horror and their slaughter. Their deaths, like the deaths of the little ones throughout history, are not without meaning. They share in the infancy of Christ and so in the purpose of Christ’s coming.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written”

“Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh,” Ecclesiastes observes, an observation, no doubt, with which many a student would concur. John, too, at the very end of the last chapter of his Gospel reflects on the writing of books; somehow the reality and full meaning of Christ would comprise more books than what the world could contain. There is always something more and more to the meaning of Christ as Word.

The Word proclaimed “at sundry times and in diverse manners … unto the fathers by the prophets”, Hebrews reminds us, “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.” That Word and Son is the Word made flesh, as John reminds us in his powerful Prologue read as the great Gospel of Christmas Eve. There is a focus on Word; Word proclaimed, Word made flesh, but also the Word as written “even if the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”

The Feast of John the Evangelist belongs to our Christmas observances. His Epistles and his Gospel provide the strongest testimony to the idea and reality of the Incarnation, the greatest insight into the mystery of God with us in the humanity of Jesus Christ. “That which was from the beginning,” he says, echoing at once the opening words of his Prologue but also the opening words of Genesis, “which we have heard,” he says, “which we have seen with our eyes,” he says, “which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life,” he says, that is what “declare we unto you.” And to what end? “That ye also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” It is a remarkably concise and stirring theological testament to the Incarnation and the Trinity, to the deeper mystery of Christmas.

(more…)

Print this entry