Category: Sermons

“So shall my word be”

Thanksgiving is a profoundly spiritual activity. It is about a certain kind of attitude and approach to life. It is about being thoughtful, the exact counter to the many forms of thoughtlessness in our culture and world. Thanksgiving, too, is counter-culture especially in relation to the entitlement culture which surrounds us. Thanksgiving is not about taking things for granted or worse, thinking that we are owed whatever we think we should have and want. Thanksgiving is not thanksgetting!

The idea of thanksgiving is a powerful concept that connects to the theme of creation. Thanksgiving speaks to the respect and dignity of our humanity and to our human vocation. It complements the idea in Genesis about God placing our humanity in the proverbial Garden of Eden “to till it and to keep it”. Thanksgiving extends that idea to taking delight in the good order of creation and in the good will of the Creator. Thanksgiving is a kind of grammar lesson, too, because it involves the idea of being thankful for the good things of creation which we are privileged to enjoy and to the idea of being thankful to God. You’ve got to love the power of prepositions!

Thankfulness is a kind of thoughtfulness, a redire a principia, a return to a principle but that return is something fundamentally positive. It involves our recognition that the world as intelligible and orderly is not just there for us but is something which is to be honoured and respected both in itself and because it is God’s world. It says something about us as human beings that we can be thankful. It is a profoundly spiritual idea. As the poet, George Herbert, notes, it belongs to our humanity to be “the secretaries of thy praise”, the secretaries of the praise of God, giving voice to the voiceless creation, giving praise for the simple truth that a zucchini is a zucchini, or in the context of Windsor, that a pumpkin is a pumpkin even when it is being used as a boat! All of which comes from God. Our praises and thanksgivings all go to God.

The Thanksgiving weekend in Canada combines several forms of thanksgiving. Traditionally and globally, there are the celebrations of the harvest, harvest thanksgiving. In the countries which derive many of their cultural traditions from northern Europe, harvest thanksgiving is a bit of a movable feast, depending on when the harvest is gathered. The idea of harvest has very much to do with our engagement with creation raised to a higher order by gathering the fruits of the harvest into the churches as a symbol of our recognition of the Creator and his creation. To that notion of thanksgiving has been added the idea of giving thanks for political freedoms, the idea of national thanksgiving. All of these things speak to our spiritual freedom.

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“That ye may know”

The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, also known as Michaelmas, celebrated Thursday past, reminds us that there is a cosmic dimension to the conflicts between good and evil. “There was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels”. Here there be dragons? Who is this dragon? We are told that he is “that old serpent, called the devil and Satan which deceiveth the whole world”. We are presented with the reality of finding ourselves in a moral universe where there are conflicts and tensions, battles between good and evil. It is a world which, perhaps, we know only too well (unless we have deceived ourselves).

But left at that we have simply a kind of fatalistic dualism in the idea of two equally powerful and opposing principles, good versus evil. Yet that is neither the lesson of Michaelmas nor the lesson in today’s readings. “The dragon fought and his angels”, but, more importantly, they “prevailed not” against Michael and his angels. There was war but there was also victory, the triumph of good over evil.

Michaelmas reminds us of the idea of evil as that which opposes the good, hence the concept of Satan, the devil, “that old serpent”, recalling us to the story of the Fall in The Book of Genesis as well as to the theme of deception. But the important point is that the power of the good outweighs all and every form of evil. In the Christian understanding, St. Michael and his angels defeat the dragon and his angels, not through any special force or merit of their own simply, but “by the blood of the lamb”, an obvious reference to Christ and his sacrifice, and “by the word of their testimony”, their witness to God in Christ, and by extension, our witness. There was war in heaven, not there is war. A major point of difference.

Yet Michaelmas also reminds us that the dragon and his angels have been “cast out into the earth”. Conflict and war are inescapably features of our world and disturbingly so. Who cannot be moved with indignation and outrage at the bombing of relief and aid convoys in Aleppo, Syria, to mention but one of many global atrocities? Is the world, then, the place of dualism between two equal but opposing forces? No. The radical idea of Michaelmas means that while there is no end of wars and conflicts between good and evil in the world, the good is always greater in principle and in truth. At issue is whether we are capable of grasping this thinking any more. Not the least of our problems lies in how we think about good and evil whether in relativistic terms which deny their reality or in dualistic terms which despair of the ultimate truth of the good and its power over all evil. Part of the problem for all of us has to do with our discernment about what is the good and what is evil in our world and in ourselves.

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“Michael and his angels fought against the dragon”

“Is it perfume from a dress that makes me so digress … In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo” (T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock). Michelangelo? The ninja turtle? No, the great Renaissance artist. Or is this simply all a digression? The name, Michelangelo, derives from The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels’ which marks the closing down of September, on the one hand, and the beginning of the School Term, on the other hand, especially at Oxford and Cambridge and the schools which derive their traditions of education from them.

Turtles and angels do have something in common. They are both part of the created order. They both belong to our reflections upon the world as intelligible. Angels remind us of some very important features of our humanity. They remind us that we are spiritual creatures by virtue of our thinking and our loving. When we think and love we are in the company of angels.

Michaelmas speaks about the things which belong to our intellectual and spiritual life. One of the wonderful thing about angels is that you can’t see them. You can only think them! For some that seems crazy. If you can’t see it, then it doesn’t exist; it isn’t real, some may think. Well, to the contrary, there are lots of things which we can’t see but nonetheless respect and recognise: our thoughts and feelings for one thing as well as lots of things in particle physics such as quarks, neutrinos, and nuons or in math with such things as numbers and shapes – these are not sense perceptible things. They are realities grasped by our minds through our thinking. Like the angels, we can only think them.

Angels belong to a long and profound tradition of poetic and philosophical reflection, to the ways in which the world is intelligible. They are the invisible reasons for the visible things of the world, intellectual principles which are intermediate, in some form or other, between God and man. We can only think the angels and, in some sense, when we are thinking we are in the company of angels.

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“Thou shalt love …with all thy mind”

There is something wonderfully reflective about the Scripture readings in the late part of the Trinity season that is particularly necessary in our rather unreflective age, however challenging we may find it. Here we are being told to love with the whole of our being including “with all thy mind”. Something inescapably intellectual belongs to the spiritual realities of our life in Christ.

We are presented with an imperative, something commanded, not a maybe or a might be but a must be. Here are strong words that challenge all our assumptions about what we think is love. Strong words, too, that are voiced in the context of controversy, a controversy between Jesus and the questioning scribes, one of which, at least, “answered intelligently” by recognizing the significance of the Jewish Shema, what is sometimes called the Summary of the Law, as being “better than all the burnt offerings and the sacrifices.”

But it is a curious thing. Jesus’ answer to the question “which commandment is the first of all” is to relate the Summary of the Law. Love here is about the orientation and direction of the inner activity of our being. Love is commanded. It means loving God with the whole of our being – “with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” With the exception of “all thy mind”, this is simply to quote Deuteronomy, though the addition is really only an explication of what is implicit in the Hebrew parallelism of “all thy heart” and “all thy soul.” Much has sometimes been made of the absence of “all thy mind” in Deuteronomy and its presence in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Certainly it reflects a new and important focus on the logos of God, the Word of God, as apprehended by our minds in the Christian understanding of things. And certainly, the word here for mind is the term which Plato uses as the highest form of human intellectual activity, διανοια.

But Jesus doesn’t stop with just that passage from Deuteronomy; he goes on to say that “the second is like it, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” to which he also adds “There is none other commandment greater than these.” And, at least one of the scribes responds positively recognizing that the Summary of the Law is a complete statement. It comprehends the true meaning of the Law of Israel. The Law is love. We are commanded to love.

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“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.

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“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.

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“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.

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“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!

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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.

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