Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Rogation Sunday
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on Rogation Sunday.
Sermon for Rogation Sunday
“I thirst”
Our Eastertide reflections on the seven last words of Christ in the light of the Resurrection brings us to the fifth word in the Peruvian Jesuit Fr. Alonso Messio Bedoy’s ordering of the words of the Crucified on this the fifth Sunday after Easter commonly called Rogation Sunday. The conjunction is suggestive and intriguing.
It is the most physical of all the words of the Crucified, the one word which has an immediate relation to the body and its needs. Thirst is a property of the body in its finitude. Yet the idea of thirst also functions metaphorically in the Scriptures with respect to our relation to God and to one another and to the overarching themes of creation and redemption. This word complements paradoxically the theme of Rogation about the land and our lives as embodied beings. The Resurrection is cosmic in scope. It is not about a flight from the world or from the body.
This word testifies most strongly to the incarnate reality of Jesus Christ and thus to the dynamic of the interchange between the divine and the human natures in the person of Jesus Christ. Through the physical reality of the body, something profoundly theological and psychological in an older philosophical sense is opened out to us, the counter to the incomplete and partial agendas of the advocacy culture of our day. This thirst which is very much of the body is also very much of the spirit. As such it speaks about ourselves as not only “hearers” but “doers of the word,” about “think[ing] those things that be good” and “perform[ing] the same”. Such ideas have everything to do with our lives in the land where we are placed. And everything to do with the radical meaning of Christ’s overcoming the world. “In the world ye shall have tribulation;” Jesus says, “but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
His thirst on the Cross is far greater than what we can imagine. Why? Because it embraces both the body and the soul in an intensity of suffering, the intensity of the Passion which reveals the greater intensity of divine love. This word gathers into itself a whole host of associations. It speaks to us about what we seek and what God, too, seeks for us. This thirst belongs to what Jesus says in these last verses of chapter sixteen of John’s Gospel. He speaks of the Father’s love for us, and our love of Christ as the one who has “come out from God.” He tells us that “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” No words capture more fully the logic of the Incarnation and the Trinity than these. Everything comes forth from God in creation and returns to God in redemption revealed in the suffering humanity of the Crucified but as grounded in the life of the Trinity.
In this word, “I thirst,” Jesus speaks directly and personally to us both about the radical meaning of his Passion but also about the love of God for our humanity. It clarifies for us a number of scriptural references about water and the land, about our thirst for God and God’s thirst for us. As the Psalmist says, “like as the hart desireth the water-brooks,/ so longeth my soul after thee, O God./ My soul is athirst for God, yea even for the living God” (Ps. 42). God is the ultimate good and truth that we seek as spiritual creatures. Here imagery from the physical world is used to speak about the deepest yearnings of our souls. We are made for God.
Week at a Glance, 14 – 21 May
(The Currys are away for the burial of Marilyn’s mother, Bernice,
Thursday, May 18th to Saturday, May 20th)
Sunday, May 21st, Sunday after Ascension Day
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Upcoming Event:
Sunday, May 28th, Pentecost
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
The Fifth Sunday After Easter
The collect for today, The Fifth Sunday After Easter, commonly called Rogation Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O LORD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: St. James 1:22-27
The Gospel: St. John 16:23-33
Artwork: Fabrizio Boschi, The Last Supper, 1619. Fresco, Ospedale Bonifacio, Florence.
KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 11 May
Thou hypocrite
The readings in Chapel this week focus on an important ethical concern: the problem of hypocrisy which affects us all. The passage from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain contains the famous parable of “the blind learning the blind,” an account of hypocrisy. It means judging others while removing yourself from judgement. As Jesus says, we are quick to point out “the mote” – a mere speck of dust – in someone else’s eye while utterly oblivious of “the beam” – like a two-by-four – in our own eye.
The image of the blind leading the blind is by no means unique to Christianity. Siddhartha Gautama, for instance, uses the same image to criticise the Brahmin or priestly teaching caste of Hinduism. It belongs, in other words, to the emergence of Buddhism.
The passage from Luke is a strong reminder of the necessity of self-criticism and self-reflection as the counter to our judgmentalism and condemnation of others. The parable is told to highlight the need for mercy and compassion as distinct from judgement and condemnation. “Be ye merciful.” That belongs, as we saw last week, to the higher qualities of human character and life; it is God’s mercy at work in us. This draws us closer to one another as friends and equals rather than as enemies. The story from Luke is wonderfully complemented by the beginning of one of “the finest short stories in world literature” (New Annotated Oxford Bible with the Apocrypha, RSV), the story of Susanna and the Elders read in the Grade 11 and 12 Chapel services.
That story, too, is about the hypocrisy of those in leadership. From the outset, we are told that “iniquity came forth from Babylon, from elders who were judges, who were supposed to govern the people.” The whole story, so compactly and powerfully told, belongs to later additions to The Book of Daniel written in Greek sometime in the second or first century BC. It is simply told and yet there is a considerable degree of sophistication and depth to it. The two elders lust after the beautiful Susanna. They seek to seduce her by blackmailing her: give in to our lust or we will say that you were alone with a young man, caught in adultery, as it were. An obvious misuse of power, an abuse and a matter of utter hypocrisy, they are essentially accusing her of what they themselves intend. The famous story of the encounter between Jesus and the woman accused of adultery draws upon this story.
Florence Nightingale, Nurse
The collect for today, the commemoration of Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), Nurse, Social Reformer (source):
Life-giving God, who alone hast power over life and death, over health and sickness: Give power, wisdom, and gentleness to those who follow the example of thy servant Florence Nightingale, that they, bearing with them thy Presence, may not only heal but bless, and shine as lanterns of hope in the darkest hours of pain and fear; through Jesus Christ, the healer of body and soul, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
The Lesson: Isaiah 58:6-11
The Gospel: St. Matthew 25:31-46
Artwork: Arthur George Walker, Florence Nightingale, Crimean War Memorial, 1910. Waterloo Place, London. Photograph taken by admin, 20 August 2004.
Cyril and Methodius, Missionaries
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Cyril (826-69) and Saint Methodius (c. 815-85), Apostles to the Slavs (source):
O Lord of all,
who gavest to thy servants Cyril and Methodius
the gift of tongues to proclaim the gospel to the Slavic people:
we pray that thy whole Church may be one as thou art one,
that all who confess thy name may honour one another,
and that from east and west all may acknowledge one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
and thee, the God and Father of all;
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 Epistle: Ephesians 3:1-7
The Gospel: St. Mark 16:15-20
St. Cyril and St. Methodius were brothers born in Thessalonica who went to Constantinople after being ordained priests. (Cyril was baptised Constantine and did not become known as Cyril until late in his life.) Around AD 863, Emperor Michael II and Patriarch Photius sent the brothers as missionaries to Moravia, where they translated into Slavonic the Gospels, the Psalms, and the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. With his brother’s help, Cyril created an alphabet that later developed into Cyrillic, thus laying the foundation for Slavic literature.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Bishop and Doctor
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Gregory of Nazianzus (329-89), Monk, Bishop, Theologian, Doctor of the Eastern Church (source):
Almighty God, who hast revealed to thy Church thine eternal Being of glorious majesty and perfect love as one God in Trinity of Persons: Give us grace that, like thy bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, we may continue steadfast in the confession of this faith, and constant in our worship of thee, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who livest and reignest for ever and ever.
The Lesson: Wisdom 7:7-14
The Gospel: St. John 8:25-32
Artwork: Francesco Capella, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, c. 1760-70. Oil on canvas, Diocese of Bergamo, Italy.
Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Fourth Sunday after Easter
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Fourth Sunday after Easter.
Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Easter
“My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me”
The fourth word of the crucified is the most intense of all the words of the Passion. It is the cry of dereliction, the sense of utter abandonment in being God-forsaken. Taken from the Passion accounts of Mark and Matthew it shows the real depths of sin and evil without which we can make no sense of the Resurrection. It is, I think, powerfully complemented by the classical Gospel for the Fourth Sunday after Easter which grounds human redemption in the mutually indwelling life and work of the Trinity. Here Jesus teaches us about the coming of “the Comforter” whom he names “the Spirit of truth,” the spirit and bond of the Father and the Son. But he does so by naming the depth and meaning of sin.
How are we to understand this disturbing word? Theologically and psychologically, I think, and by pondering its meaning through the readings for this day.
Christ’s Passion and Resurrection teach us about the radical and essential life of God, something which we come to understand and grow into by the Holy Spirit. In Christ’s comings and goings which belong to his humanity we are opened out to the abiding reality of God, the essential life that is greater than human sin and evil, greater than suffering and death. The Comforter, meaning the paraclete, who is called “another paraclete” or advocate along with Jesus himself, brings to light the radical evil that is overcome in the Passion of the Christ.
That radical evil is shown to us in the fourth word. Christ bears in himself the radical evil of our humanity and the world. We have sadly lost sight of this. We have domesticated sin and evil and reduced it to the sociological and psychological agendas and projects of our day which betray the true meaning of social justice for no other reason than we make it a matter of our doing. The deeper meaning of the Passion and the Resurrection has been co-opted to the managerial and therapeutic culture of our postmodern world and to the particular issues of sexism and racism which belong to the endlessly divisive nature of our culture of victimhood. Instead of redemption in its much more universal and radical sense, we have only guilt and blame; in short, division not unity. It is not that there aren’t real social and political problems. The problem is that we refuse to see these things as essentially theological and spiritual problems and thus reduce them to the politics of self-righteousness and sentiment.
In today’s Gospel Jesus is wonderfully clear about sin and evil, the very things which he takes upon himself on the Cross and especially in this word. It expresses the full meaning of sin which is far deeper and far darker than we can possibly realize on our own power and strength. He experiences the full weight of sin, the fullest expression of the distance and separation, and therefore the contradiction of sin and evil itself. He voices the words of Psalm 22 but this is not mere rhetoric. In his crucifixion we see their deeper meaning which we really only begin to come to understand through the constant teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit.