Category: Sermons

King's-Edgehill School Sermons, Sermons

Sermon for Encaenia 2015

“How readest thou?”

“How came we ashore?” Miranda asks her father, Prospero, in Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest. And perhaps, you and your parents, grandparents and guardians, too, are asking yourselves that very same question. How did you get here? How did you do it? For you have done it! Today you step up and step out. In a short while you will be no longer students but graduates and alumni!

You have done it, to be sure, but how? Simply on your own? Because it’s just you? Think again. Prospero answers Miranda’s question with a wonderfully profound phrase. “By Providence divine.” Something good and wonderful, “a sea-change into something rich and strange,” has happened in spite of the vagaries of time and experience, in spite of our own follies and mistakes, even, as the play reveals, in spite of human wickedness and sin, of betrayal and deceit. And that is the wonder. Miranda is a wonder – both our Miranda, to be sure – but all of you are the wonder on this day. Not just because of each of you by yourselves but because of the wonder of all of you together in the purpose of this place, in the wonder of the education that belongs to the School. “By Providence divine,” indeed.

The events of this day might seem to suggest an ending but the term for this service is Encaenia from a Greek word signifying something new and fresh, a kind of beginning (εγκαινια: εν & καινος). The term is used for festivals of dedication in which there is a renewal of devotion, commitment and consecration to the defining principles and ideas that belong to institutions in their truth and integrity. Originally used for the anniversary dedication of temples and churches, it is associated with “the annual commemoration of founders and benefactors at Oxford University in June” (O.E.D), and by extension to schools and colleges, such as King’s-Edgehill, founded upon those traditions of learning. Sometimes known as Commencement, it means that something begins, not just ends. That, too, is all part of the wonder of this day.

“How readest thou?” In some way or other the wonder has entirely do with our reading and understanding. Ideas have been presented before you, not altogether unlike the story of Ezra reading from a newly discovered book of the Law, probably, Deuteronomy, in the lesson from Nehemiah which Cooper read. That sense of being gathered around words proclaimed and ideas presented is a feature of Judaism, Christianity, and of course, Islam, not to mention the schools of ancient philosophy. There is a sense of awe and wonder. All the people stood and listened attentively to the proclamation of the Word and to its interpretation. I am not going to ask you when was the last time you heard a lesson from The Book of Nehemiah! Suffice to say this is probably the only encaenia service in the world where such a text has been read! Yet how profoundly it captures the wonder of your education. The challenge is about your understanding, about the way in which you have made what has been presented to you your own.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Barnabas

“This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you”

The Saints’ Days commemorations provide us with wonderful ways to reflect upon the essential nature of our Christian identity. They concentrate for us at once our vocation to holiness of life and witness and to our communion with God. They are a poignant reminder of our life in Christ here and now. They encourage us and perhaps never more so than in the commemoration of St. Barnabas whose name means “son of consolation” or “encouragement.”

Can there be any greater consolation or encouragement than this commandment to love as Christ has loved us? Can there be any greater consolation or encouragement than to realise that we are the friends of God and not simply servants? In short, can there be any greater consolation or encouragement than to be recalled to our communion with God?

The Gospel reading for the Feast of St. Barnabas is from the 15th chapter of John’s Gospel. The passage follows immediately upon the last and perhaps greatest of the seven so-called “I am” sayings of Jesus, sayings where through metaphor and image, Christ indicates the forms of our incorporation in the life of God. The last and perhaps greatest of those images is that of the vine. “I am the vine,” Jesus says and goes on to talk about our abiding in him and he in us for “without me,” he says, “ye can do nothing.” Here the force of that image extends to the explicit idea of friendship; our friendship or communion with God in Jesus Christ which is the basis of our friendship or communion with one another. We live in the love of God.

This is the wonder which turns the world on its head. The idea of communion and fellowship with God and with one another. But why a commandment? Do friends command friends? Yes and no. The wonder here lies in the communion between God and our humanity that has been established – created – by God. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” Jesus says. The distance between God and Man is not denied even as a connection and an intimacy between God and Man has been created. The God who is love commands love because of the necessity of love itself – because of its essentially divine nature.

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Sermons

Sermon for the First Sunday after Trinity

“If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded
though one rose from the dead.”

“God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.” Familiar words perhaps, though we know them better through the scriptural sentences in the Offices for the Trinity season with the word, “abideth” rather than the King James version, “dwelleth.” Either way the phrase captures the essential point of the Christian Faith – our being with the God who dwells with us. We live in the love of God without which we do not live at all. Something of the radical meaning of our communion with God is wonderfully and, perhaps, terrifyingly set before us on The First Sunday after Trinity.

We either live out of what we have been given to behold – “a door opened in heaven,” as we heard last week – or we are, quite literally, it seems, in Hell. To live out of the love of God as Trinity governs how we look at one another and treat one another. As today’s epistle reading from 1 John and the Gospel parable from Luke make clear, heaven and hell are right here in how we hear and see; in short, in how we think God and how we regard one another. “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” To love God means loving our brother also.

The parable makes it clear that this ethical principle has its basis in the Jewish Scriptures spoken of here as “Moses and the prophets.” What does that mean? Simply that the love of God and the love of neighbour belong to the essential ethical insight of Judaism which is carried over into Christianity. In telling this strong and powerful parable, Jesus convicts both Jew and Christian alike of the way in which we betray God in ignoring one another. Lazarus lies at our feet. Do we simply walk over him or do we care for him? “Our life and death,” one of the desert fathers says, “are with our brother.”

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Sermon for Trinity Sunday

“He therefore that would be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity”

My text comes not directly from the Scriptures but from the Scriptures credally understood, from the Athanasian Creed, to be more precise, itself one of the three catholic creeds of the universal Church. It is rarely used and yet it speaks most wonderfully and profoundly to the central and essential mystery of the Christian Faith as well as to the spiritual nature of the great religions of the world. It is all about the Trinity, about God revealed in the witness of the Scriptures as Trinity, the three-in-one and the one-in-three, God as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The important point is that the Creeds come out of the Scriptures and return us to the Scriptures within a pattern of understanding – an understanding above all else about God. We cannot not think God. In the Christian understanding thinking God means thinking the Trinity.

This is the essential insight of the Christian Faith but it belongs as well to the deeper meaning of all of the great religions of the world. As the great nineteenth century German philosopher, Hegel, observes, the Trinity is adumbrated – shadowed forth – in some way or another in all of the great religions of the world. At issue is how do we think the Trinity?

The Trinity is the fullest possible statement about the spiritual reality of God: God in his self-sufficient majesty and truth. This is a day where we stand on our heads, as it were. We are enveloped in mysteries which we strive to think knowing that we are struggling with what is inescapably beyond our grasp and yet cannot not be thought. Such is worship which is why the lesson on this day is from The Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine. It presents us with a vision of heaven but even more with a vision of worship, the worship of the whole of creation. It is in worship that our humanity achieves its greatest dignity and highest honour. Our souls are made apt for worship. We are made for worship and for worship, in the language of Isaiah which John deliberately recalls here, of the thrice-holy God, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Worship is about thinking God.

Think about that for a moment and realize how much that runs counter to our culture and church. It is not simply about us and about what pleases us as if entertaining ourselves and making us feel good about ourselves was the aim and purpose of the Church. No. It is first and foremost about God and only then the discovery of things about the truth of ourselves in God. Such is the true meaning of worship: God and us in God.

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Sermons

Sermon for Tuesday after Pentecost

“I am come that they might have life,
and that they might have it more abundantly”

The Monday and Tuesday after Pentecost elaborate upon the Pentecostal theme of our new life in the Spirit. It is about life and light, the life and the light of God which redeems and sanctifies our lives. The days of Pentecost remind us of what belongs to our lives in faith: we participate in the life of God opened out to us by the Word and the Spirit of God. We are gathered into the mystery of the Trinity, the communion of the Divine Life.

The Gospel for the Monday after Pentecost reminds us that “God so loved the world” even in the face of the darkness of sin and evil. It reminds us of the triumph, always, of good over evil, of light over darkness. The Gospel for the Tuesday after Pentecost speaks to our entering into that divine life through Jesus. He is, as he says, “the door” through which we enter into this new and abundant life, the life of God. The readings from The Book of The Acts of The Apostles on both days reveal the stages through which we enter into an understanding of the spiritual reality of God, showing us that is about Word and Spirit, both together and in a kind of harmony.

“I am the door,” Jesus says, “the door of the sheep” who hear and know his voice. In the power of the Spirit, Jesus is calling us to himself in his love for the Father. He is come, he says, “that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” the super-abundant life of God poured out upon us through the power of the Spirit. “Come Holy Ghost our souls inspire and enlighten with celestial fire.”

“I am come that they might have life,
and that they might have it more abundantly”

Fr. David Curry
Tuesday after Pentecost
May 26th, 2015

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Sermons

Sermon for Pentecost, 2:00pm service of Atlantic Ministry of the Deaf

“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind”

Sometimes the things that come upon us suddenly are the things that unsettle us most. Such is the Descent of the Holy Ghost. He came down “suddenly” upon the disciples, but was his coming suddenly a coming unexpectedly? That he came suddenly we read; his coming unexpectedly, we do not read. In fact, Jesus tells us to expect the coming of the Holy Ghost, “commanding them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father,” even the descent of the Holy Ghost.

Yet we may wait expectantly and still be caught unawares, for the realization of what we await may far exceed our expectations and so catch us by surprise. We await for what we do not fully understand. The grace of God is always something more; the mystery of God something more yet again. The promise of the Ascension was the coming down of the Holy Ghost for which Jesus prepares us and bids us wait, yet “suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind.”

Certainly, the effects of this coming down would appear to be most unsettling, the manner of their appearing no less so – “a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues like as of fire” lighting upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem, filling them with the Holy Spirit and moving them “to speak with other tongues.” To all appearances, an event most unsettling and more than a little disconcerting.

We all know about the winds that unsettle us – the rushing, mighty winds of rumour and slander, of whisperings and murmurings, of allegations and accusations which seek to belittle and destroy. The winds of hatred and revenge are the winds of death. These are the winds that unsettle us. But our Lord would not have us unsettled and troubled. In the midst of the sea-storms of our hearts and our world, even in the midst of the sea-storms of our churches and our communities, he bids the seas be calm and our hearts be still; “it is I,” he says, “have no fear.”

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Sermon for Pentecost

“He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance”

Pentecost counters and redeems our empirical obsessions, it seems to me, the deeply entrenched idea – and it is actually important to remember that it, too, is an idea – that reality is essentially and only what can be sensed and experienced materially. To the contrary, some of the most important things in life are precisely what cannot be seen and known empirically, that is to say, through sense experience, nor can they be measured in the way one thinks to measure the world of our senses. Marina Warner’s observation about education relates to the natural, “The things that matter most cannot be measured.” The marvel of Pentecost is that it opens us out to an important intellectual and spiritual idea that belongs to religion, particularly the Christian religion, namely, that the things which cannot be seen and experienced are made known through the sensible.

Pentecost marks the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the disciples gathered once again “with one accord in one place,” this time after Christ’s Ascension. Such things as the Ascension and the Descent of the Holy Spirit are empirically meaningless – we can make no sense of such dislocations of time and space; they are simply beyond the empirical. And yet the way in which the Ascension and Pentecost are made known to us is through the sensible and empirical. And perhaps, nowhere more profoundly than in the story of Pentecost as Acts presents it.

“Suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind … and there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire.” Sounds and sights through which something is communicated but only through similies, through metaphor. “As of a rushing mighty wind” which is to say that it is not a rushing mighty wind; “like as of fire” which is a far different than saying that it is fire. And what is the ‘it’, here? The spiritual reality of God the Holy Ghost, the invisible yet effective presence of God with us.

As Jesus makes clear, the Holy Ghost is the Comforter, the strengthener. He who dwells in us is the one whom the Father sends in Jesus’ name. We are dealing with the spiritual mystery of God as Trinity, something which can only be taught to us through revelation. Revelation is simply what God makes known to us about himself and about ourselves, too. Pentecost uses the images of wind and fire to signal the spiritual power and truth of God and our lives with God through the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. It can’t be quantified; it has to be experienced not sensibly but intellectually and to be sure emotionally, too; it is about hearts and minds. It, too, is ultimately about teaching.

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King's-Edgehill School Sermons

Reflections for King’s-Edgehill School Cadet Church Parade, 2015

KES Cadet Church Parade – Friday, May 22nd, 2015
Reflections on “Home”

Prologue: Where is home? Our homes are from all over the world. Yet our home is here, too.

Section 1

Home is Australia, Barbados, and Bahamas; Home is Bermuda, China, and Germany; Home is Ghana, Japan, and Kazakhstan;

Home is Korea, Luxembourg, and Mali; Home is Mexico, Russia, and Saint Kitts and Nevis; Home is Saudi Arabia, Senegal, and Spain;

Home is Taiwan; Home is Uganda; Home is United States; Home is Canada.

Section 2 (Dialogue)

You forgot Antarctica.

Antarctica? Who is from Antarctica?

Well, Jack O’Flaherty is always drawing penguins. He must be from Antarctica!

No. He’s from Newfoundland.

Then why doesn’t he draw seals? They’re cuter.

Section 3

Home is great cities, small towns, and villages; Great cities of the world like Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Taipei, Shanghai, Barcelona, Dubai, Kampala, Mexico City, Moscow, Toronto, Montreal, and Windsor – not!

Home is other cities, great and small, like Accra, Almaty, Dakar, Bamako, Cancun, Krefeld, Shenzhen, Nassau, Jinan, St. John’s, Nanjing, Cornerbrook, Mississauga, Campeche, Burlington, Monterrey, Duncan, Hamilton, Mainz, Halifax, and Windsor – not!

Home is any number of small towns like Landau in Germany; Basseterre in St. Kitts; Smithers in British Columbia; Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Kippens, and Labrador City in Newfoundland; and in Nova Scotia, towns like Lunenburg, Kentville, Berwick, Wolfville, Antigonish, New Glasgow, Hantsport, Pictou, Mahone Bay, Truro, Parrsboro, and Windsor – yes!

Home is a myriad of villages and communities like Wohltorf and Friedelsheim, Germany; Far Hills, New Jersey; Upper Kingsclear and Charters Settlement, New Brunswick; Miscouche and Cardigan, Prince Edward Island.

Home is a host of scattered villages and communities in Nova Scotia: Aylesford, Bible Hill, Heatherton, Kingston, Springfield, Upper Tantallon, Granville Ferry, Eastern Passage, Merigomish, Brooklyn, Chester, Conquerall Mills, Londonderry, Centreville, New Minas, Fall River, Hammonds Plains, Hubbards, New Ross, Newport, Port Williams, Falmouth, Mount Uniacke, and, last but not least, Hants Border.

And for some, home is Mabou by way of Saudi Arabia, and Lower Sackville by way of Dubai.

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Sermon for Sunday after Ascension Day, 10:30am Holy Baptism and Communion

“These things have I spoken unto you”

There is something quite wonderful and special about this Sunday juxtaposed between the going up of the Son to the Father in the Ascension of Christ and the coming down of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Ascension marks the fortieth day of Easter and signals the culmination of the Resurrection, its fuller meaning, if you will. Pentecost is the fiftieth day after Easter and marks the birthday of the Christian Church.

The special joy of Easter and Eastertide reaches a kind of crescendo in the Ascension. All of the scripture passages, old and new, are full of a sense of joy and wonder. Why? Because the Ascension marks what the Fathers astutely call, “the exaltation of our humanity.” Through Christ’s death and resurrection we have a place, a home with God. It is signalled profoundly and beautifully in the Son’s homecoming to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to the redemption of the world and our humanity. All the themes of Eastertide find their fullest meaning in the Ascension of Christ.

“I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus says, “that where I am there ye may be also.” The Ascension celebrates the return of the Son to the Father in which return our humanity realizes its end in God, on the one hand, and has its participation in the life of the Trinity through prayer now, on the other hand. The Ascension reveals the true movement of our liturgy. It is the liturgy of the sursum corda, the liturgy of the lifting up of our humanity to God and into God. “Lift up your hearts. We lift them up unto the Lord.”

The Ascension is the necessary counter to the spirit of accommodationism so dominant in our church and culture, the idea that the Christian Gospel must accommodate itself to the fads and fancies of each and every passing age. To engage our world in all of its confusions is not the same thing as catering to every passing fad and fancy. The Ascension signals the real meaning of the engagement between God and Man. “We ascend in the ascension of our hearts” as Augustine so memorably puts it. We ascend in prayer and praise, in Word and Sacrament. We are gathered into the divine life. It is the very opposite of supposing that the divine life is collapsed into our world and day; such an idea would be a perversion of the Incarnation.

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Sermon for Sunday after Ascension Day, 8:00am Holy Communion

“These things have I spoken unto you”

There is something quite wonderful and special about this Sunday juxtaposed between the going up of the Son to the Father in the Ascension of Christ and the coming down of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The Ascension marks the fortieth day of Easter and signals the culmination of the Resurrection, its fuller meaning, if you will. Pentecost is the fiftieth day after Easter and marks the birthday of the Christian Church.

The special joy of Easter and Eastertide reaches a kind of crescendo in the Ascension. All of the scripture passages, old and new, are full of a sense of joy and wonder. Why? Because the Ascension marks what the Fathers astutely call, “the exaltation of our humanity.” Through Christ’s death and resurrection we have a place, a home with God. It is signalled profoundly and beautifully in the Son’s homecoming to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to the redemption of the world and our humanity. All the themes of Eastertide find their fullest meaning in the Ascension of Christ.

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