Category: Sermons

“Follow me”

Today’s epistle appointed for The Feast of St. Matthew reminds us that “we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake”. The focus is entirely on Christ. The call of Matthew is altogether about the resurrection of Christ in us and about our being with Christ; in short, the commemoration of St. Matthew illumines the very nature of salvation for us. We are called to follow him who comes to us and who is raised up for us.

It begins with Jesus passing by, the Jesus who is always passing by. “As Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man called Matthew”. It all seems so casual, so accidental, so incidental but, to the contrary, Jesus’ passing by is not casual; it is essential. That is to say, it belongs to the very principle of God who is life itself, who is always active, and never static, and whose activity is always purposeful and therefore, always requires a response. We are always in his sight.

His passing by is not without consequence. Something happens. He glances upon us. “Salvation begins by our being seen by Jesus, by his turning toward us his compassionate eyes”. Here Jesus “saw a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom”, at the tax collector’s bench. Everything unfolds from that glance of Jesus.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Friend, go up higher”

What’s this? Upward mobility for Christians? Ambition or presumption? Neither. It’s really about the hope of transformation. It is really about our Christian vocation. We are called to something more that counters all the fearful fatalisms of our world and day as well as the endless narcissisms of our self-obsessions. It signals ever so profoundly the necessary condition of soul for the realization of God’s will and purpose for our lives. The necessary condition is humility. “He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”

The operative words in the Gospel reading are “friend” and “go up higher”. The Epistle from Ephesians reminds us of our baptismal identity and vocation; “walk[ing] worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called”, for “ye are called in one hope of your calling” for there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” In our baptisms we have been called up higher but only through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; such is the heart of baptism. We are identified with Jesus in his free-willing identity and sacrifice for us. We live from him and with him in the Holy Eucharist, the spiritual and sacramental means of his continuing presence with us in our lives.

Jesus calls us “friends”. He does so not merely by way of a parable but also more directly. He calls us friends at the height of his passion, on the night of our betrayal. God makes us his friends when we were his enemies! This turns the ancient world on its head. It turns our world on its head. We live in a hopeless and fearful world. Here is the antidote to our hopelessness and fear. It challenges us to redeem us. It calls us up but only by our being lifted up by him and in him.

(more…)

Print this entry

“And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me”

There is something quite wonderful about saints’ days and holy days, whether major or minor. They often bring out connections and associations which belong to the spiritual coherence of our life together in the body of Christ, the Church. In September, for example, there is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary that already points us towards the Nativity of Christ at Christmas. Though there is not a shred of biblical or scriptural reference to Mary’s birth, only later legends and many depictions in art, it is a necessary and reasonable deduction that she was born and that her birth (like her conception) is part of the divine economy, part of God’s plan and purpose for our humanity. She is the chosen vehicle and vessel through whom God becomes man and those ideas as tied to the Annunciation illumine the mystery of the Incarnation. Her active acquiescence to the divine will conveyed by angel’s words is the essence of faith. “Be it unto me according to thy word.” The purpose of her whole being is discovered in her willing the divine will for our salvation.

That in turn leads to another feast, The Feast of the Holy Cross. It actually refers to the post-biblical event of the supposed discovery or invention and subsequent exaltation of the true Cross by the Empress Helena in the fourth century. It is a way of calling our attention to the deeper purpose of Christ’s Incarnation. His conception and birth through Mary is now seen in the light of his passion. The passion concentrates on the cross. The Feast of the Holy Cross focuses our attention on the purpose and meaning of the cross.

At once a hideous and uncouth thing, a symbol of the reality of cruelty and torture, of death and shame, it has become the means of our being joined to Christ, to our being gathered to him in love and joy. But only if we look upon the cross. In his being lifted up on the cross and our looking upon him there is the hope of our being lifted up into the love of God.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Be not anxious”

We live, if not in interesting times, according to the familiar Chinese proverb, then certainly in anxious times. I do not need to chronicle the different things which belong to the anxieties of our world and day. Certainly it has been an anxious time for all of us in Windsor and for some far more than for others at the loss through fire of Edgehill. 2016, I have been saying, is the year of Edgehill referring to the 125^th anniversary of the founding of the Edgehill Church School for Girls, an institution closely connected to this parish. And while Edgehill as an institution has been amalgamated with King’s Collegiate School since 1976 to form King’s-Edgehill School, the building itself still stood as visible reminder of times past and was an iconic structure in the landscape of the town. Some of our parishioners were living at Edgehill and have suffered great losses. I will keep you informed about what help might be needed for them.

So anxious times indeed. Yet, as Providence would have it, anxiety is the word that confronts us in the Gospel for today, though to talk about anxiety, it seems to me, only runs the risk of increasing our anxieties. The Gospel, however, provides the only and real counter to all and every form of anxiety. The word itself is of rather modern provenance, really only appearing in the 17^th century and really only taking on a whole freight of meaning in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the phenomenon of existentialism and the psycho-analytic philosophy of Freud. The German word, angst, has entered into our ordinary discourse; this is anxiety weighted with a whole lot of other concerns, what I would call anti-philosophical assumptions. It has to do with how we see the world: as empty and meaningless, indifferent and even hostile to the human condition; in short, as almost evil, or as essentially good and wonderful, a place of beauty and truth because it is God’s world of which we are an essential part. That difference in how we see things makes all the difference for our lives.

It was not until 1959 that the word anxiety appeared in the Prayer Book Gospel reading for this Sunday. All of the Epistles and Gospels in English were taken from the King James Version of the Bible in the mother book of the Common Prayer tradition, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Before that the English translation of the Scripture readings in the English Prayer Books was derived from the Great Bible which, like the 1611 King James Version, too, was largely informed by William Tyndale’s English translations of the 1530s. Only the Psalms have remained in Miles Coverdale’s 1535 translation in the Great Bible, probably because of their quality of memorability and poetic power. But what was the word in the Great Bible and in the King James Bible now rendered as anxiety in our Prayer Book? “Be not careful.” Wow!

(more…)

Print this entry

Fr. David Curry preached this sermon at Old St. Edward’s, Clementsport, at the 95th annual anniversary service in the 219th year of the building.

How readest thou?

It is Jesus’ question and one which sets up the scene for the very familiar parable of the Good Samaritan. It is the Gospel reading at Holy Communion on this day, the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity. How we read the Scriptures goes to the heart of what it means to be the confessing church in a post-Christian age. For Anglicans, classically speaking, the Collect, Epistle and Gospel for each Sunday provide the critical matrix through which to think about the readings in the Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer which in turn shape our actions.

The 17^th century poet and priest, George Herbert, for example, made it his goal and practice to teach about how and what we read and why. “The Texts for all his future Sermons”, his biographer, Izaak Walton, tells us, “were constantly taken out of the Gospel for the day; and he did as constantly declare why the Church did appoint that portion of Scripture to be that day read: And in what manner the Collect for every Sunday does refer to the Gospel, or to the Epistle then read to them”, explaining all the things which belong to our liturgy. Why? “That they might pray with understanding” and that it would be shown “that the whole service of the Church, was a reasonable, and therefore an acceptable Sacrifice to God”.

My deep thanks to Fr. Gordon Neish for the privilege and honour of preaching here at Old St. Edward’s, a place redolent with so many memories and associations that belong to the history of the Anglican diocese and, indeed, to the wider witness of the Church in Canada. I would like to dedicate my brief and, no doubt, poor remarks to the memory of Nellie Neish, one who attended so well to Jesus’ question and whose life was itself a parable of the parable of the Good Samaritan in terms of her care and compassion for so many.

The evening prayer lessons speak profoundly to the significance of this holy ecclesiastical place and its purpose. Ezra talks about the Lord moving Cyrus, the King of Persia, a non-Israelite, to be sure, to issue a proclamation directing the rebuilding of the house of the Lord at Jerusalem. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, speaks about the foolishness of God being greater than the wisdom of men; his power and strength being greater than ours. Such is the divine wisdom that belongs to the real purpose and meaning of our churches.

(more…)

Print this entry

“No-one can say JESUS IS LORD but by the Holy Spirit”

There is something quite wonderful and compelling about this morning’s readings as difficult and challenging as they may be. They remind us in no uncertain terms of the creedal form of reading the Scriptures, reading the Scriptures through the Creeds. Here we are in the midst of our summer sojournings in the land of the Trinity, as it were, and yet here is something which recalls us at once to the Advent of Christ and to the Passion of Christ; in short, to the creedal principles of our Christian lives. Paul is emphatic. “No one can say JESUS IS LORD, but by the Holy Spirit.” The capitalisation is a form of emphasis.

It is one of the earliest creedal statements from within the Scriptures themselves and which goes to the question of being able to say what is the Faith. It is a Trinitarian statement really, the nucleus of what we proclaim more fully in the great Catholic Creeds of the Church which come out of the Scriptures, out of such words as these, and which return us to the Scriptures within a pattern of understanding.

“Concerning spiritual gifts … I would not have you ignorant,” says St. Paul. “Now there are diversities of gifts…” and he goes on to list them. They are gifts which arise out of this fundamental proclamation, out of what we have been given to say about God by God himself. “No one can say JESUS IS LORD but by the Holy Spirit.”

The diversity of gifts belongs to our life with God in the communion of God, the Trinity. The different gifts are about his grace in our lives. To esteem them is to honour him. This is something communicated to us by the grace of God with us, Jesus Christ, God’s Word and Son. To confess Jesus as Lord acknowledges him as “I am who I am,” as God with us, God in the very flesh of our humanity, God made man. Only so can he be Lord. In Jesus the Old Testament mystery of God’s name, “I am who I am,” is opened to view, explored and explicated in terms of the spiritual relation of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. God’s relation to us radically depends upon his self-relation, upon the communion of God with God in God, the communion of the Trinity. Such is the heart of the Christian religion and the burden of our proclamation in which we are privileged to participate. For if we cannot proclaim with clarity the God of our salvation, then we cannot participate with charity in the divine life opened to us through Christ’s sacrifice.

(more…)

Print this entry

“Brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant”

The readings for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity are the least favourite for preachers, it seems, particularly the Gospel, and, perhaps, the least favourite of readings, too, for you. And yet, these readings from 1^st Corinthians and Luke 16 belong precisely to the pattern of themes of the Trinity Season with its emphasis upon the relation between the theoretical and the practical, between our thinking and our doing, wonderfully captured in the Collect. They provide us with a necessary challenge and as Paul suggests it has to do with our ignorance.

Ignorant of what? Ignorant of what belongs to the nature of our identity in Christ. But, we are, I am afraid, only too ignorant. And because of our ignorance, we are easily “overthrown in the wilderness” of our lives, both individually and corporately. The good news is that even the things of our ignorance can be used to bring us to understanding, to the understanding of the good and to the doing of all “such things as be rightful”, as the Collect puts it.

In the witness of the Scriptures, we have the stories of the ignorance of our humanity written out for us to read just so that we will not be ignorant. “These things”, Paul tells us in First Corinthians, a people remarkable for their willful ignorance, “were our examples”. What things? The things belonging to our identity in the body of Christ which we ignore and deny. But in making such things known to us, we may learn “not to lust after evil things, as they also lusted” and to avoid idolatry. He has in mind the stories of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness; in particular, the stories of disbelief and complaint on the part of Israel towards Moses and more significantly, towards God.

Paul is doing two things here. First, he is saying that these formative stories of the people of Israel are things from which we can learn. They are “our examples”. Secondly, he is saying something even more significant. He is saying that we are in these stories. The Old Testament stories, he is saying, actually belong to the story of our life in Christ. One of the forms of our ignorance is that we do not or cannot think this but it is a profoundly Christian point-of-view. Paul sees in the wilderness journeys of the ancient people of Israel something which anticipates and participates in the definitive journey of human redemption signaled and accomplished in the passion of Christ.

(more…)

Print this entry

“You have received a spirit of sonship, in which we cry aloud, Abba, Father”

“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well”, Dame Julian of Norwich, the famous mystic and theologian said in the 14^th century. Hardly a time one might think of as being well and good. It was a time when northern Europe was convulsed by plagues and death was rampant and regnant. Is her famous saying simply a kind of desperate optimism? Or is it based upon a deeper understanding of the world and our humanity in relation to God?

I think it is the latter. It is a profound insight into the idea of Divine Providence which always sees the goodness of God at work in everything. It belongs to the radical idea of God himself. Perhaps, therein lies our modern dilemma. We have lost the confidence in thinking God and his ruling providence. We are too much enamoured of our own desires and fantasies in the projections of our will and power upon the world and upon ourselves. Therein lies the way to misery because we have forgotten God and find ourselves in what Amin Maalouf rightly calls a “disordered world”.

This morning’s readings help us to think about Divine Providence in challenging ways. The passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans locates our Christian identity in Christ’s sonship and makes it clear that our being “children of God” requires the idea of suffering with God, suffering with Christ. Somehow even suffering becomes something good and not just an evil. We are the “children of God” who are the “heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ”, Paul says, “if so be that we suffer with him” for only so can it be “that we may also be glorified with him”. Powerful words that counter the prevailing assumptions about suffering and death in our world and day. They are words, too, that are based upon the idea of God and God’s Providence as being the real truth of human experience.

But how can we think this? Only because of the witness of the Scriptures to the story of Jesus Christ. Notice that what Paul is saying goes beyond the simple oppositions of flesh and spirit. Led by the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Father and the Son, we learn about our essential sonship precisely through what happens in the world of human experience. We are not in flight from the world and the flesh as if it were something evil. That would be a kind of Gnosticism. No. What changes is how we see ourselves in the world. We are, Paul is saying, to know ourselves in Christ and he in us. That changes how we experience the world and ourselves. It makes it possible to live in a principled way in a fallen and dismal world and even in a fallible church where councils have and may err, particularly when the forms of our spiritual understanding and identity are forgotten or compromised.

(more…)

Print this entry

“I have compassion on the multitude”

Compassion. It is a rich and wonderful word and one which is frequently bandied about in the therapeutic culture of our world and day. What does it mean? Literally, it is about suffering with others or at least being able to identify with the sufferings of others. The word is used a number of times in the Gospels where it takes on a much more radical meaning than its use in our contemporary culture. In the Gospels the word is used entirely with respect to human redemption. As such it extends beyond any worldly sense of sentimental kindness. It speaks to the radical healing and restoration of our wounded and broken humanity. It is really about “the quality of mercy which is not strained”, as Portia puts it in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. In other words, it is not limited or constrained by the finite world of our everyday experiences, our experience of suffering and pain. No. This mercy seasons or perfects human justice and human care. How? Because compassion in the Christian perspective cannot be understood apart from the passion of Christ.

Compassion belongs to the idea of redemptive suffering. What is that about? Simply this. God and God alone can bring good out of evil, out of our evil. That, too, by the way, is why Jesus can command us to love our enemies as we heard last week. Compassion belongs to the radical goodness of God which is greater than all and every evil. To let that idea take a hold of our minds and souls changes us and allows us to face the hard and harsh realities of a world of suffering, both our own and that of others.

Christ is said to “have compassion” or says himself that “I have compassion” a number of times in the Gospels, sometimes in relation to the healing of infirmities or illnesses, sometimes in relation to the raising of the dead, as in the story of the widow of Nain where Christ’s compassion upon seeing her leads to the restoration of her only son, and sometimes in relation to our humanity collectively speaking as in the stories of the feeding of the multitudes in the wilderness. Yet, most importantly, the word is used to establish an ethic of compassion for us in the powerful parable of the Good Samaritan.

(more…)

Print this entry