KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 26 May

Go and do thou likewise

The setting of the story of the Good Samaritan read in the last Chapels for Grades 11 and 12 this week is intriguing and significant for thinking and doing. It speaks to the challenges and conflicts of our confused and fragmented world. How to act? According to what set of protocols? Whose rules and why? What is it that is right to do? Why does that vary so much from jurisdiction to jurisdiction?

The setting of the parable is one of conflict and self-serving justification. “A certain lawyer” undertakes to tempt Jesus, to put him to the test in order to catch him out. He does so by raising the question about “what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” In other words, what is the good? Jesus asks in return a most important question. “What is written in the law? How readest thou?” Ethics is not just about rules. It is about the understanding of what binds us to one another and in what way. Jesus’ question draws out of the lawyer a marvelous summary of the essential ethical teaching that informs the Judeo-Christian and Islamic understanding and which has its strong counterparts in other religions and philosophies, what C.S. Lewis in the Abolition of Man called “the Tao,” referencing ancient Chinese philosophy. Here it joins together the love of God with the whole of our being in Deuteronomy with the love of neighbour in Leviticus.

Jesus applauds the lawyer’s answer as being right; “this do and thou shalt live.” But he, “willing to justify himself” asks “And who is my neighbour?” That is the setting for the powerful and moving parable of the Good Samaritan, as it has come to be known, which draws upon a host of passages from the Hebrew Scriptures about the stranger, the foreigner, the proverbial other as neighbour. The love of God and the love of neighbour, meaning one another, are inseparable. To do the one is to do the other and vice versa. Here is the ethic of care and compassion concentrated in a picture for us to read and in reading to follow.

But how? Only by that love moving in us, a love which is greater than our human loves which are incomplete and imperfect. In the Christian understanding, the love of God and the love of man meet in Jesus Christ, true God and true man, the mediator of the new covenant of love. The Resurrection has been all about the essential life of God revealed through both the Passion and the Resurrection. Here we see the dynamic of divine life at work in us when we allow what we read to move in us.

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Prayers and liturgy

The Ascension Day

Paolo Veronese, Ascension of ChristThe collect for today, The Ascension Day, being the fortieth day after Easter, sometimes called Holy Thursday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continuously dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 1:1-11
The Gospel: St. Mark 16:14-20

Artwork: Paolo Veronese, Ascension of Christ, c. 1585. Oil on canvas, Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome.

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Prayers and liturgy

Aldhelm, Bishop and Scholar

The collect for a Bishop or Archbishop, on the Feast of Saint Aldhelm (c. 639-709), Abbot of Malmesbury, Bishop of Sherborne, Poet, Scholar, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Sherborne Abbey, St. AldhelmO GOD, our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Aldhelmb 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 Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

Aldhelm became the first Bishop of Sherborne in AD 705. Before then he had been Abbot of Malmesbury for some thirty years. He was born in about AD 639 and died in 709 in Doulting, Somerset. Saint Aldhelm is buried at Malmesbury. His name translated from the old English means “Old Helmet”. For more information, click here.

Photograph: St. Aldhelm, Sherborne Abbey, Dorset, U.K.
© Copyright Sarah Smith and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

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Prayers and liturgy

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.

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Sermons

Sermon for Rogation Sunday

“In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer,
I have overcome the world”

Rogation Sunday concentrates wonderfully for us the radical meaning of Christ’s Resurrection. It signals our freedom not from the world but in the world through our being grounded in the mutual love of the Father and the Son. “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father,” Jesus says, capturing in a phrase the essential life of God himself, the life which overcomes all sin and evil, all that opposes the truth of God. Far from being a gnostic flight from the world as if it were evil, it signals the redemption of the world. The Resurrection gives us a way to face the difficult things of our troubled world, a world of tribulations and oppressions, of sufferings and sorrows, a world of fears and hatreds, of divisions and animosities.

These are words, as the disciples seem to begin to grasp, albeit yet in a glass darkly, spoken “plainly” and “no parable”. Jesus in response makes it equally clear that there are and there always will be tribulations in the world. “You shall be scattered every man to his own,” and in reference to his passion, you “shall leave me alone.” Such is the meaning of our betrayals of God; the meaning of our sin is seen in his desolation on the Cross in the terrifying aloneness of his suffering. “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me.” Nothing captures more fully the meaning of sin, the sense of abandonment because of our having forsaken God. “And yet,” as Jesus says, “I am not alone,” the little conjunction, “yet” highlights his being with the Father and the Father with him. Such is the dynamic of God’s goodness and truth which is by definition greater than the follies of sin and evil. The Resurrection never lets us forget the Passion.

The words of the Cross begin and end with the address of the Son to the Father: “Father, forgive them”; “Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit.” Everything is gathered back to the Father in love. This is the radical meaning of his going forth and return to the Father. This is the victory of love over hatred and fear, over sin and evil. The Resurrection brings out the radical meaning of creation and our lives in the world, a world which is more than tribulation and oppression because it is God’s world. Thus, James bids us “be doers of the word, and not hearers only” because that is the radical truth of our knowing even as we are known in Christ. The Resurrection opens out to us “the perfect law of liberty,” which is our freedom in Christ, a freedom from sin and death. That freedom is grace, the grace that allows us to face the world and ourselves without fear. It gives us the courage to act and engage the world of nature and human affairs.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 23 – 29 May

Tuesday, May 24th
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Anthony Grafton’s Worlds Made by Words: Scholarship and Community in the Modern West (2009) & Serendipities: Language and Lunacy (1998) by Umberto Eco.

Thursday, May 26th, Ascension Day
7:00pm Holy Communion

Sunday, May 29th, Sunday after Ascension Day
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

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Prayers and liturgy

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

Ilya Repin, Even if all fall away, I will notArtwork: Ilya Repin, Even if all fall away, I will not, 1896. Oil on canvas, Ivanovo Arts Museum, Russia.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections, King's-Edgehill School Sermons

Reflections for King’s-Edgehill School Cadet Church Parade, 2022

KES Cadet Church Parade – Friday, May 13th, 2022
It happened one Friday afternoon

‘It happened one Friday afternoon.’
‘You mean Friday the thirteenth?’
‘No, no. Not that.’
‘Oh, you mean our marching through the town and into the Church this afternoon?’ ‘Well, in a way, I suppose, but only because of what happened one Friday afternoon long ago.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Just look at the center window above the altar.’
‘What do you see?’
‘The picture of Christ crucified?’
‘Exactly. That is what happened one Friday afternoon and why we are doing what we are doing this Friday afternoon.’

It happened one Friday afternoon. The image of Christ crucified is the dominant icon or image here at Christ Church. The dominant icon or image at the School Chapel is Christ the Good Shepherd. They go together and complement each other. They belong to the intimate connection between the Passion and the Resurrection.

Christ Church has played a large role in the life and history of the School. It has been three years since we have been able to have the Church Parade and to be here in this sacred space. This service and space remind us of the history and life of the School and its connections to the community of Windsor, to the military, and to the Church. It means having to think about dark and difficult things such as war and conquest, about suffering and sorrow that are part of our disordered world both past and present. We can only do so because of what happened one Friday afternoon.

For years upon years, since the late 19th century and throughout most of the twentieth century, students from King’s Collegiate School and from Edgehill Church School for Girls marched down to Christ Church on Sundays for service. In rows of two by two, they entered and sat on opposite sides of the Church. No doubt, like Bassanio and Portia in Shakespeare’s play, The Merchant of Venice, they looked across the aisle to one another signaling with their eyes “fair speechless messages” of love (or mischief!). There were no devices and so no texting. A different age.

To this day a box hangs at the back of the Church near the entrance specifically designated to hold prayer books and hymn books for the use of the Schools. It recalls the connection between the School and the Church in the community of Windsor.

It happened one Friday afternoon. To understand the image of Christ crucified means appreciating the different ways in which the crucifixion has been depicted in art and devotion over the centuries.

The earliest image is that of Christus Rex, Christ the King. Christ is depicted as a king, robed in royal robes and crowned with a crown of gold. It is a powerful symbol of the triumph of life over death.

But later the emphasis turned from the victory to the agony, the agony of suffering. Christ was depicted in terms of his suffering humanity. The focus is on the body, on the sufferings. Christ identifies with the forms of human suffering, sometimes in very grotesque ways, especially after the black death in the 14th century which had such a devastating effect on European culture and life.

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Prayers and liturgy

Dunstan, Archbishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Dunstan (909-988), Archbishop of Canterbury, Restorer of Monastic Life (source):

Cloisters Collection, Roundel with Saint Dunstan of CanterburyAlmighty God,
who didst raise up Dunstan
to be a true shepherd of the flock,
a restorer of monastic life
and a faithful counsellor to kings:
grant, we beseech thee, to all pastors
the like gifts of thy Holy Spirit
that they may be true servants of Christ and of all his people;
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: Ecclesiasticus 44:1-7
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:42-47

Artwork: Roundel with Saint Dunstan of Canterbury, 1501-20. Colorless glass, vitreous paint and silver stain, The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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Prayers and liturgy

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.

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