KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 26 October

Law is liberation

How wonderful that we go from the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis to the giving of the Law in Exodus in the form of the Ten Commandments! In the story of the Fall and in the story of Cain and Abel, God calls us to account, to an awareness of our separation from what belongs to the truth of our being and knowing. It is the beginning of an ethical understanding which has its fullest expression in the Law as the moral and ethical code for our humanity. It has its counterpart in the ethical teaching of Confucianism and Daoism, of Hinduism and Buddhism, of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, what C.S. Lewis termed the Tao, the ethical way of life for our humanity.

The principles that define the worth and dignity of our humanity in relation to God and to one another are set before us. The Book of Leviticus will give us explicitly the commandment “to love your neighbour as yourself,” the neighbour who is also the sojourner, the stranger in your midst! Yet already in the Ten Commandments we have explicit directives about the nature of our obligations and duties towards one another. The love of God and the love of neighbour are inseparable.

There is all the difference in the world between Law or legislation and Rules or regulation. Rules and regulation bind and limit our thoughts and actions; in a way they imprison us. Law liberates and frees us towards God and one another. This is clearly shown in the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses. It begins with Revelation: God reveals himself to Moses in the burning bush – another great and powerful story that contrasts God, the Uncreated, with the things of the created order. The bush burns but is not consumed. God speaks out of the burning bush and identifies himself to Moses as “I Am Who I Am,” the principle of reality. This leads to the exodus journey of Israel out of bondage in Egypt into the wilderness where the challenge is about learning what it means to be the people of God. The high point of the exodus is the giving of the Law to Israel. They are to be the people of the Law who are freed to God.

The Law is given precisely in the context of liberation. It begins with God’s words: “I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” “I am the Lord thy God” is a circumlocution for “I Am Who I Am.”

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Prayers and liturgy

Alfred, King

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Alfred the Great (849-899), King of the West Saxons, Scholar (source):

O God our maker and redeemer,
we beseech thee of thy great mercy
and by the power of thy holy cross
to guide us by thy will and to shield us from our foes,
that, following the example of thy servant Alfred,
we may inwardly love thee above all things;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Wisdom 6:1-3,9-12,24-25
The Gospel: St. Luke 6:43-49

Robert Lindsey Clarke, Alfred the GreatArtwork: Robert Lindsey Clarke, Alfred the Great, 1913. High Street Crossroads, Pewsey, Wiltshire, England.

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Prayers and liturgy

Cedd, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for a Bishop or Archbishop, on the Feast of St. Cedd (c. 620-664), Abbot of Lastingham, Bishop of the East Saxons, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

St. Cedd, BishopO GOD, our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Cedd to be a Bishop in thy Church and to feed thy flock: We beseech thee to send down upon all thy Bishops, the Pastors of thy Church, the abundant gift of thy Holy Spirit, that they, being endued with power from on high, and ever walking in the footsteps of thy holy Apostles, may minister before thee in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the same Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 17:22-31
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:1-16

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Prayers and liturgy

Crispin and Crispinian, Martyrs

The collect for a Martyr, on the Feast of Saint Crispin and Saint Crispinian, Martyrs (d. c. 285), from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Ghislain Vroyelinck, Beheading of Saints Crispin and CrispinianO GOD, who didst bestow upon thy Saints such marvellous virtue, that they were able to stand fast, and have the victory against the world, the flesh, and the devil: Grant that we, who now commemorate thy Martyrs Crispin and Crispinian, may ever rejoice in their fellowship, and also be enabled by thy grace to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold upon eternal life; through our Lord Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:12-19
The Gospel: St. Matthew 16:24-27

Crispin and Crispinian are believed to have been brothers and Roman noblemen martyred for their faith during the persecution of Emperor Maximian.

Artwork: Ghislain Vroyelinck, Beheading of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, 1613. Groeninge Museum, Bruges, Belgium.

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Prayers and liturgy

Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity.

(Or click here to listen to mp3 version of audio recording.)

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Sermons

Sermon for the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity

“Friend, how camest thou in hither, not having a wedding-garment?”

God’s questions call us to account, to a sense of intentionality and agency without which we are lost in indeterminacy and indifference. “Be ye not unwise” Paul bids us, “but understanding what the will of the Lord is.” That will of the Lord is about the quality of our life in Christ, he in us and we in him. It is sanctification, the grace which moves in us. It requires our full hearted attention to the transcendence of God, to the givenness of the created order, and to the realities of our common life in the body of Christ. Something is required of us. This is the meaning of the wedding-garment.

“See then that ye walk circumspectly,” Paul says, paying attention to all that is around us, “redeeming the time,” a lovely phrase which is about our life as ordered to God, our God-awareness, as it were, even in the awareness that “the days are evil.” We know this only too well. How to live a good life is not about possessions and pleasures. It is about life in Christ, a life of prayer and praise, of a kind of joy in the midst of the disturbing and dark times in which we live. The constant thrust of the Christian faith is that we are not fundamentally defined by the circumstances and events of our world and day, however much the days are evil. That is simply the context for our lives in faith which is about our constant attention to God in and through our lives with one another. Being alive to God in Christ is our calling and our challenge.

This means, as Paul suggests, being “filled with the Spirit,” another lovely phrase which is explained in terms of the qualities of prayer and praise alive in us through the liturgy: “speaking to yourselves in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs; singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This is a wonderful and vibrant statement of living faith which contrasts with contemporary claims about personal faith and/or personal identities which are radically incomplete and indeterminate, solipsistic and narcissistic. They are really all about oneself in a kind of idolatry of the self. “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God,” on the other hand, speaks to our lives together in the Faith which is corporately confessed and lived in the body of Christ.

Quite simply something is required of us. This is illustrated in the powerful Gospel parable which Jesus tells: the kingdom of heaven is likened to the marriage feast of a certain king for his son to which we are bidden, or invited. But what is our response? First, those who were bidden, “would not come.” They refuse or ignore the invitation. The invitation is issued yet again for “all things are ready; come unto the marriage”. Some “made light of it and went their ways,” turning to their own immediate interests of property and merchandise; others took the servants of the king “and entreated them spitefully, and slew them;” a reference to the prophets sent by God to call us to repentance. The consequence is their destruction.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 23 – 29 October

Tuesday, October 24th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer (2003); and Thirteen Ways to Smell a Tree, David George Haskell (2021).

Sunday, October 29, Trinity 21
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

Upcoming Events:

Saturday, November 18th
4:00-6:00pm Annual Ham Supper – Parish Hall

Also please take note of the annual Missions to Seafarer’s Campaign for 2023. Deadline for donations at Christ Church Windsor is the last Sunday in November (Nov. 26, 2023).

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Prayers and liturgy

The Twentieth Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that thou wouldest have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 5:15-21
The Gospel: St. Matthew 22:1-14

Pieter Aertsen, The Parable of the Marriage FeastArtwork: Pieter Aertsen, The Parable of the Marriage Feast, 1550-54. Oil on panel, Cummer Museum, Jacksonville, Florida.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 19 October

What have you done?

It was the last question of God in the story of the Fall in Genesis 3, one of four questions that awaken us to self-consciousness and so too to our accountability as rational and spiritual creatures. The self-same question appears in Genesis 4 in the equally significant story of Cain and Abel. With this story we step into the violent and disturbing world of human sin and evil, a world of murder and destruction. We step into human history.

Genesis in one sense is the story of sibling rivalry, of brothers against brothers and, perhaps, of the possibilities of their reconciliation. Cain and Abel inaugurate the long tradition of fratricide and thus the sordid tale of humanity’s constant inhumanity towards one another. It won’t do to reduce this story to a conflict between shepherds and farmers, a kind of shallow sociologism. The story builds exactly upon the story of the Fall, even to the point of the repetition of questions. But it offers the beginnings of a philosophical and psychological account of human pride and envy that leads to murder and exile, and to the animosities and hatreds that are so much a part of our fallenness.

It begins with Cain being angry. At what? At Abel. Why? Because his gift was accepted rather than Cain’s. In other words, he is upset at the good fortune of another. This will later be named as envy: our inability to be happy at the good of another. There is nothing more destructive of human life in community than envy. We resent the good of another not just because we want that good for ourselves but also because we don’t want it for them. It is division and animosity over the good of another which we choose to see as an evil that harms us.

God’s first set of questions to Cain highlight the contradiction. “Why are you angry? Why has your countenance fallen?” We sometimes wear our hearts on our faces. “If you do well will you not be accepted?” This question is about our commitment to what is good and right and true. To reject it leaves us open to exactly what follows: the giving in to sin which seeks to master you rather than you being responsible to truth and honesty.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Luke the Evangelist

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, who calledst Luke the Physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, to be an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul: May it please thee that, by the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed; through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Timothy 4:5-13
The Gospel: St. Luke 24:44-52

Guido Reni, Saint Luke, 1621Luke was a physician, a disciple of St. Paul and his companion on some of his missionary journeys, and the author of both the third gospel and Acts.

It is believed that St. Luke was born a Greek and a Gentile. According to the early Church historian Eusebius, Luke was born at Antioch in Syria. In Colossians 4:10-14, St. Paul speaks of those friends who are with him. He first mentions all those “of the circumcision”–in other words, Jews–and he does not include Luke in this group. Luke’s gospel shows special sensitivity to evangelising Gentiles. It is only in his gospel that we hear the Parable of the Good Samaritan, that we hear Jesus praising the faith of Gentiles such as the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian, and that we hear the story of the one grateful leper who is a Samaritan.

St. Luke first appears in Acts, chapter 16, at Troas, where he meets St. Paul around the year 51, and crossed over with him to Europe as an Evangelist, landing at Neapolis and going on to Philippi, “concluding that God had called us to preach the Gospel to them” (note especially the transition into first person plural at verse 10). Thus, he was apparently already an Evangelist. He was present at the conversion of Lydia and her companions and lodged in her house. He, together with St. Paul and his companions, was recognised by the divining spirit: “She followed Paul and us, crying out, ‘These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to you the way of salvation’”.

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