Week at a Glance, 27 September – 3 October
Tuesday, September 28th, Eve of St. Michael & All Angels
7:00pm Holy Communion
Sunday, October 3rd, Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
The Seventeenth Sunday After Trinity
The collect for today, the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
LORD, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Ephesians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. Luke 14:1-11
Artwork: Bartolomeo Cavarozzi (attrib.), Christ Healing the Sick, before 1625. Oil on canvas, Private collection.
Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop and Scholar
The collect for today, the commemoration of Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), Bishop of Winchester, scholar, spiritual writer (source):
O Lord God,
who didst give Lancelot Andrewes many gifts
of thy Holy Spirit,
making him a man of prayer and a pastor of thy people:
perfect in us that which is lacking in thy gifts,
of faith, to increase it,
of hope, to establish it,
of love, to kindle it,
that we may live in the light of thy grace and glory;
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: 1 Timothy 2:1-7a
The Gospel: St. Luke 11:1-4
A prayer of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes:
Thou, O Lord, art the Helper of the helpless,
The Hope of the hopeless,
The Saviour of them who are tossed with the tempests,
The Haven of them who sail; be thou all to all.
The glorious majesty of the Lord our God be upon us,
Prosper thou the work of our hands upon us,
Oh! prosper thou our handiwork
Lord, be thou within us, to strengthen us;
without us to keep us; above us to protect us;
beneath us to uphold us; before us to direct us;
behind us to keep us from straying;
round about us to defend us.
Blessed be Thou, O Lord our Father, for ever and ever. Amen.
Graphic: Tomb of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, Southwark Cathedral, London. Photograph taken by admin, 20 October 2014.
KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 23 September
Did God say?
If creation and the natural order are good, indeed very good, then unde malum, from where does evil come?
Our reading of the opening chapters of Genesis has considered creation as orderly and in principle intelligible. We have asked ourselves about where our humanity fits in with respect to the pageant of creation. Genesis 1 argues that we are at once connected to everything in creation but are also uniquely said to be made in the image of God and are charged to act in the image of God the Creator in terms of our care and concern for creation. This, we suggested, counters the more modern idea of our exploitation, manipulation, and so-called technocratic dominance of nature.
The second Chapter of Genesis read on Tuesday complements the first chapter with respect to the place of our humanity. In a more intimate manner than the thundering and impressive pageant of Genesis 1, our humanity (‘adam) is said to be formed of dust from the ground into which God has breathed his spirit. Nothing could emphasize better the connection of our humanity to the natural world. In short, it humbles us. As we have noted before, the collective term ‘adam plays on the word ‘adhamah referring to the dust. We are dirt, as it were! Dust! But we are the dust into which God has breathed his spirit. Such is the dust of dignity, the dignity of our humanity. And in this account, ‘adam is given a commandment not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To be given a commandment presupposes human rationality. It further confirms what it means to be made in God’s image. All good but, then, whence evil?
The story of the Fall in Genesis 3 provides an account of evil and in an intriguing way, namely, through the contrast of questions. The very first question in the Bible is that of the beguiling serpent, a symbol of human reason in denial and in contradiction with itself. Did God say? But we know what God said. The serpent insinuates another way of thinking, another interpretation, not to understand but to undermine what in fact is known. Thus we disobey and act contrary to what we know. The story reveals the age-old nature of the human condition in the conflict between reason and will, between what we know and what we do. Paul captures this dilemma succinctly and brilliantly: “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Rom. 7.19). It starts here with the questions of Genesis 3.
Saint Matthew the Apostle
The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Matthew, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O ALMIGHTY God, who by thy blessed Son didst call Matthew from the receipt of custom to be an Apostle and Evangelist: Grant us grace to forsake all covetous desires and inordinate love of riches, and to follow the same thy Son Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
The Epistle: 2 Corinthians 4:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 9:9-13
Artwork: Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem and Jan Baptist Weenix, The Calling of St. Matthew, 1657. Oil on panel, Mauritshuis, The Hague.
John Coleridge Patteson, Bishop and Martyr
The collect for today, the commemoration of John Coleridge Patteson (1827-71), Missionary, First Bishop of Melanesia, Martyr (source):
O God of all tribes and peoples and tongues,
who didst call thy servant John Coleridge Patteson
to witness in life and death to the gospel of Christ
amongst the peoples of Melanesia:
grant us to hear thy call to service
and to respond with trust and joy
to Jesus Christ our redeemer,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 4:12-19
The Gospel: St. Mark 8:34-38
John Coleridge Patteson was a curate in Devon when Bishop of New Zealand George A. Selwyn persuaded him to go out to the South Pacific as a missionary. In 1856 he journeyed to Melanesia. He encouraged boys to study at a school Selwyn had founded in New Zealand and later set up a school in Melanesia. He was very proficient in languages and eventually learned twenty-three different languages and dialects spoken in Melanesia and Polynesia.
In 1861 Patteson was consecrated Bishop of Melanesia; he travelled across his diocese constantly, preaching, teaching, baptising, confirming, building churches, and living among the people. On the main island of Mota most of the population were converted.
Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity.
Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity
“God hath visited his people.”
It is an intriguing phrase. The Greek verb translated here as visited also means to look upon or to watch over in the sense of having oversight from which derives the idea of bishops. Here it is about God’s oversight of our humanity.
Today’s readings offer an interesting sense of the dynamic interplay between abiding and visiting that belongs to a larger Scriptural and cultural understanding about the nature of our humanity. Paul prays that “Christ may dwell in [our] hearts by faith”, that we may be “rooted and grounded in love”; in short, in that which abides. In the Gospel Christ comes near the little city of Nain, visiting it, as it were, and yet something abides in and through that encounter. Both readings invite us to consider the nature of lives with one another and with God.
Is God simply a visitor? One who comes and goes, here today and gone tomorrow? A welcoming presence or something more disturbing? Ishtar, the ancient Sumerian goddess of love and war (an interesting combination!), wants Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, to be her boy-toy, her lover. But intimacy with the gods is not always a good thing. Gilgamesh rejects her advances because he knows that she turns all of her lovers into animals. In other words, you lose your humanity! Encounters between humans and the divine can be terrifying. “Our God is a consuming fire,” as Hebrews reminds us, recalling the sense of distance between God and man. “No one can see God and live,” as Exodus puts it.
Owing to the pandemic, there has been considerably less visiting among friends and family. Social distancing is the mantra for our isolation and separation from one another, tainting the forms of public interaction with fear and suspicion, with anxiety and even animosity. Perhaps, though, this may ultimately help us to reclaim the primacy of our lives as essentially social creatures in our care and concern for each other rather than radically autonomous beings whose relation to each other is merely instrumental, using each other for our own ends, trapped in the illusions of our self-completeness. This Sunday speaks to these deeper truths.
Visitors come and go. Yet, in the momentary intersection of their lives and ours, there is an abiding truth. There is the recognition of the common bond of our humanity. There is the opening out of our souls to each other, a sharing of our lives however fleeting, however brief. Visitors come and go but we, too, are visitors.
This leads to the ancient insight about hospitality as a moral obligation. The stranger, the foreigner, the alien is to be welcomed into our midst and treated with courtesy and grace. The sojourner, the visitor, is the one who has come near to us. He is, in fact, our neighbour. The stranger is owed what we owe our neighbour. The Old Testament makes this abundantly clear. “When a stranger sojourns with you in the land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God,” as Leviticus states (Lev. 19.33,34). And it is further emphasized in the parable of the Good Samaritan in the New Testament.
Week at a Glance, 20 – 26 September
Tuesday, September 21st
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Ross King’s The Bookseller of Florence (2021) & Burning The Books (2020) by Richard Ovenden.
Sunday, September 26th, Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
The Sixteenth Sunday After Trinity
The collect for today, the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
O LORD, we beseech thee, let thy continual pity cleanse and defend thy Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without thy succour, preserve it evermore by thy help and goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Ephesians 3:13-21
The Gospel: St. Luke 7:11-17
Artwork: Martino Altomonte, Raising of the Son of the Widow of Nain, 1731. Oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.