Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity.
Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity
“Be not anxious about your life”
“Be not anxious,” Jesus tells us three times; the word itself appears six times in in today’s Gospel. Anxious about what? About our life, about “what we shall eat, what we shall drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed.” These are all the things about which our humanity has always worried. Thus these anxieties or “cares,” to be more precise, belong to the long, long story of what it means to be human.
Our anxieties, ancient and modern, are about how we think about ourselves and our world. What Jesus says in this Gospel belongs to that story and offers a fuller view of what it means to be human. If we are anxious about our life, as Jesus says, it is because we have become disconnected from the very source of life itself. Yet this is all part of the biblical story of creation, fall and redemption, of our being restored to the truth and purpose of our humanity as made for God and for one another, made in God’s image. Our anxieties are us in our separation from ourselves, from creation and above all, from God. Our anxieties are us in the disorder and disarray of ourselves.
To be not anxious is to be recalled to ourselves. Why? Because in Christ Jesus we are “a new creation,” as Paul puts it in Galatians. This is wonderfully illustrated for us in the baptisms of Samuel and Mary this morning. They make visible for us in “large letters,” as it were, who we are in Christ. They remind us of our own calling and vocation that is the true antidote to the pressing anxieties of our anxious age. How? By being born again, as John makes clear in the Gospel reading for the Holy Baptism for those of Riper Years, namely those who can answer for themselves in the vows that express the true nature of human agency in responding to God’s grace received.
To be born again is to be born anew, born upward into the things of God; literally, born from above (γεννηθη ανωθεν). That being born anew is the counter to all our anxieties and concerns. Why? Because it is about ourselves in Christ and Christ in us and that makes all the difference. We are given a new way to look at life by being gathered back to the source and end of all life in God. It means death and resurrection; the radical new life in Christ. This is given to us through revelation in the witness of the Scriptures and the life of the apostolic Church. It does not negate or destroy nature and human experience but perfects and restores all that belongs to our humanity.
It belongs to the theological task of the recapitulation or gathering of all things back to God from whom all things come. Baptism is the sign and the thing signified of that gathering of ourselves to God. The Gospel teaches us that this is cosmic in its scope; it concerns the whole created order and our place in it, a strong reminder of our connection to everything in the good order of God’s creation and, above all, to our place in that order. And what is that? It is about how we are loved by God as being uniquely and especially made in his image as rational and spiritual beings.
Month at a Glance, October 2025
Sunday, October 5th, Trinity 16
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Sunday, October 12th, Harvest Thanksgiving/Trinity 17
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Tuesday, October 14th
7:00pm Parish Council Meeting
Sunday, October 19th, Trinity 18
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
Tuesday, October 21st
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: Peter Harrison’s Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age (2024) & Carlo Rovelli’s Anaximander and the Birth of Science (2009/2011 Eng. trans.)
Sunday, October 26th, Trinity 19
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
The Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity
The collect for today, the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
KEEP, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy; and, because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Galatians 6:11-18
The Gospel: St. Matthew 6:24-34
Artwork: Monogrammist A.I., The Rich Man and Death, 1553. Hand-coloured woodcut, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
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.
Audio file of 8:00am Holy Communion service, Feast of St. Matthew/Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
Click here to listen to an audio recording of the 8:00am service of Holy Communion at Christ Church on the Feast of St. Matthew/Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity.
Sermon for the Feast of St. Matthew / Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
“We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves
your servants for Jesus’ sake.”
Once again we have an Apostolic Feast day on a Sunday. In late August it was Bartholomew the Apostle. Today it is Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist as the BCP calendar makes clear. At first glance, it seems so black and white, rather arbitrary. Jesus sees “a man named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom” and says to him, “Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.” Without question, without any hesitation, without any background information, it seems. And yet, both the Gospel and the Epistle provide us with a logic and meaning to the call of Matthew.
The ancient wisdom of the Church sees the saints essentially in the light of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection. This is highlighted for us in the Epistle which underscores the Apostolic ministry in terms of Apostolic doctrine and in the Gospel where the call of Matthew is seen in terms of the mercy that calls sinners to repentance. It is not about calling attention to ourselves but to Christ and in images that recall John’s Prologue about Christ as the Word and Light of God. It all has to do with who Christ is.
“We preach not ourselves,” Paul says, but Christ, in whom “the light of God shines out of darkness” For what purpose? That it may “shine in our hearts,” not simply for ourselves but for our life with one another, in short, “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.” Light is given so that we may be light for others. How do we know any of this? Only through the Gospel which illuminates our understanding of God naturally and supernaturally, by grace, we might say, in the concurrence of things natural and supernatural.
Matthew is called from “the receipt of custom,” in other words, a tax collector, like the publican several Sundays ago viewed in contrast to the Pharisee. Here, too, the Pharisees associate publicans with sinners and use that association to attack Jesus. “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” The conversation brings out the meaning of Matthew’s call to follow Jesus. It is a call to the ministry of repentance, a ministry of mercy received that gives mercy in turn. As such, it is a call to wholeness or better, to holiness which is really about the gathering of all things back to God from whom all things come.
That it seems so black and white might seem to suggest that collecting taxes or business and economics in general is evil. Kathleen Stock, observes that “black and white thinking and a lack of tolerance for ambiguity” is a feature of the social and therapeutic culture of our times. There is “a splitting of the world into good or bad objects, … [and] a failure to distinguish fervent wants from real needs.” She calls it “toddler logic,” meaning “I should get what I desperately want, and never mind whether it might be actually best for me, or what will happen afterwards.” Is that the case with the Feast of Matthew? I think not but in place of ambiguity there is a depth and wisdom that speaks to who and what we really are and need in Christ.
Month at a Glance, September 2025
Sunday, September 21st, St. Matthew / Trinity 14
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
(We welcome Michael Gnemmi as our new organist!)
Tuesday, September 23rd
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club: ‘Reading Genesis’ by Marilynne Robinson (2024) & ‘Sacred Causes’ by Michael Burleigh (2006)
Sunday, September 28th, Trinity 15
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Baptism & Communion
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: Titian, St. Matthew, first half of 16th century. Oil on panel, Santa Maria della Salute, Venice.
The Fourteenth Sunday After Trinity
The collect for today, the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Galatians 5:25-6:5
The Gospel: St. Luke 17:11-19
Artwork: Pieter de Jode I, The Healing of the Leper, c. 1600-34. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.