Prayers and liturgy

Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Theodore of Tarsus (602-690), Archbishop of Canterbury (source):

St. Theodore of TarsusAlmighty God, who didst call thy servant Theodore of Tarsus from Rome to the see of Canterbury, and didst give him gifts of grace and wisdom to establish unity where there had been division, and order where there had been chaos: Create in thy Church, we pray thee, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, such godly union and concord that it may proclaim, both by word and example, the Gospel of the Prince of Peace; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The Epistle: 2 Timothy 2:1-5,10
The Gospel: St. Matthew 24:42-47

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 18 September

Where are you?

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God asks Job out of the whirlwind. Where are we is equally an important question in the opening chapters of Genesis. Where do we fit in the order of things? In Genesis One we are there, I have suggested, first in our thinking after God in his creative acts and, then, explicitly in our being made in the image of God. Nothing speaks more completely to the truth of human dignity. The point is that we are connected to everything in the created order and have a special relation to God as made in the image of the one who calls everything into being. Made in the image of God means that we are emphatically not God. To be made in the image of God bestows a certain dignity that should shape our relationships with everything else in the created order, including one another.

Genesis Two provides another account. Rather than locating our humanity within the grand pageant of creation as an orderly affair, the focus turns, in a more intimate and unabashedly anthropomorphic way, to our humanity itself. But it must come as a bit of a surprise since it seems to offer a complete contrast. We go, it seems, from dignity to dust. “Remember, O man, that thou art dust.” It marks an important spiritual act of remembrance.  But from dignity to dust!? How are we to think this?

These two chapters of Genesis have existed side by side for more than two millennia. Rather than seeing them in contrast or even in contradiction with one another, we can see them as complementary. To be reminded that man is formed from the dust of the ground – the word adam comes from adamah meaning the ground – not only humbles us but grounds us, connecting us with everything that belongs to the material and physical world. We are the dust into which God has breathed his spirit. Such is the dignified dust of our common humanity. This serves as a check perhaps upon our hubris and arrogance and the misuse of our God-given domination of the world which can really only properly mean our acting in the image of the Dominus, the Lord, who calls creation into being and sustains and cares for it. We are in his image as the dust into which God breathes his spirit.

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Prayers and liturgy

Ninian, Missionary and Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Ninian (c. 360 – c. 432), Bishop of Galloway, Apostle to the Picts (source):

Almighty and everlasting God,
who didst call thy servant Ninian to preach the gospel
to the people of northern Britain:
raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land,
heralds and evangelists of thy kingdom,
that thy Church may make known the immeasurable riches
of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Isaiah 49:1-6
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:16-20

Saint Margaret’s Chapel, Saint Ninian windowNinian was the first apostle of Christianity in Scotland. Born in Cumbria to Christian parents, he went to Rome for his education. After being ordained a priest and then a bishop, Ninian was commissioned by Pope Siricus to return to Britain to preach the Christian faith.

Tradition holds that Ninian’s mission to Scotland began in 397, when he landed at Whithorn on Solway Firth. The stone church he built there was known as Candida Casa (“White House”). Recent archaeological excavations in that area have found white masonry from what could be an ancient church.

Saint Ninian’s ministry was centred in the Whithorn and Galloway areas of Scotland, but he is also remembered for bringing the gospel to the “southern Picts”—people living in the areas now known as Perth, Fife, Stirling, Dundee, and Forfar.

As early as the 7th century, Christians were making pilgrimages to St. Ninian’s shrine. By the 12th century, a large cathedral had been built at Whithorn, but it fell into ruins after the Reformation. Yet today, pilgrims still travel there to visit St Ninian’s Cave, where the saint would go when he needed to pray in solitude.

During his 2010 visit to the United Kingdom, Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Scotland on Saint Ninian’s Day.

Saint Ninian’s Cathedral, Antigonish, Nova Scotia (“New Scotland”), is the Episcopal Seat for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Antigonish. This prayer is posted at the Cathedral website:

Lord our God, You brought to Scotland the faith of the apostles through the teaching of St. Ninian. Grant that we, who have received from him the light of your truth, may remain strong in faith. We ask this through our Lord, Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.

Artwork: Saint Ninian, stained glass, Saint Margaret’s Chapel, Edinburgh Castle. Photograph taken by admin, 24 July 2004.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity

And who is my neighbour?

In 2014, Grace Gelder, a middle-aged English photographer, married herself. In 2015, performance artist Tracey Emin, best known for her art exhibit “messy bed”, married a rock, a stone in her garden in France; the perfect husband in terms of stability, quiet, comfort and calm. To be sure, it’s not going anywhere. There are those who have ‘married’ bridges, the Eiffel tower (and subsequently divorced), a Ferris wheel named Bruce, a warehouse, and other objects, inanimate and otherwise. Such is the nature of our commitments to various things, I suppose. Yet, rather than immediately and completely dismissing such things as narcissistic nonsense, the philosopher and cultural critic, Slavoj Zizek, suggests that we should consider the moment of truth in such things. To marry oneself suggests that one is not simply identical with oneself and raises the further question, ‘which self are you marrying?’

Your happy self? Your grumpy, catty self? Your anxious, nervous self? Who are you? What is your self? By extension, the same applies to these other ‘marriages’ which are about forms of attachment which reveal aspects of ourselves as well. But even more, they reveal a profound contradiction in our contemporary world. We are autonomous selves and yet utterly unclear and uncertain about ourselves. How can we love anything or anyone given such radical uncertainty about ourselves?

One might at this point opt for the classical Buddhist approach and simply deny that there is any you at all. There is no self. This is indeed a remarkable concept in relation to getting utterly free of all and every form of attraction, of desire, of possession. You are an illusion and so is the world. But the kind of boutique Western Buddhism popular in the west, is neither western nor buddhist. For, on the one hand, it affirms what Buddhism most emphatically denies, namely, the self, and, on the other hand, denies what western culture in general firmly embraces, namely, that there is a world which is in some sense knowable; in short, there is God. I am not sure that these are real options, since classical Buddhism negates the question, while faux western buddhism persists in the same confusions. What then shall we do? Well, we might consider thinking more deeply the familiar and yet unfamiliar parable of the so-called Good Samaritan in today’s Gospel. We know it but overlook its profounder meaning.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 16 – 22 September

Tuesday, September 17th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Brownies – Parish Hall
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club – Coronation Room: The Kingdom of the Blind (2018), by Louise Penny, and Invisible Cities (1972, Eng. Trans. 1974), by Italo Calvino

Thursday, September 19th, Eve of Ember Friday
3:15pm Service – Windsor Elms
6:30-8:00pm Sparks – Parish Hall
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, September 20th, Ember Friday
11:00am Holy Communion – Dykeland Lodge
6:00-7:30pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Sunday, September 22nd, Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion
7:00pm Holy Communion – KES

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Prayers and liturgy

The Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity

Léon Bonnat, The Good SamaritanThe collect for today, the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY and merciful God, of whose only gift it cometh that thy faithful people do unto thee true and laudable service: Grant, we beseech thee, that we may so faithfully serve thee in this life, that we fail not finally to attain thy heavenly promises; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 5:16-24
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:25-37

Artwork: Léon Bonnat, The Good Samaritan, 19th century. Oil on canvas, Musée Bonnat, Bayonne, France.

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Prayers and liturgy

Holy Cross Day

The collect for today, Holy Cross Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O BLESSED Saviour, who by thy cross and passion hast given life unto the world: Grant that we thy servants may be given grace to take up the cross and follow thee through life and death; whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit we worship and glorify, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

With the Epistle and Gospel of Passion Sunday:
The Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15
The Gospel: St. Matthew 20:20-28

Circle of Raphael, The Vision of the CrossArtwork: Circle of Raphael, The Vision of the Cross, 1520-24. Fresco, Apostolic Palace, Raphael’s Rooms, Vatican.

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Prayers and liturgy

Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Cyprian (c. 200-258), Bishop of Carthage, Martyr (source):

Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Saint Cyprian of CarthageO holy God,
who didst bring Cyprian to faith in Christ
and didst make him a bishop in the Church,
crowning his witness with a martyr’s death:
grant that, following his example,
we may love the Church and her doctrine,
find thy forgiveness within her fellowship,
and so come to share the heavenly banquet
which thou hast prepared for us;
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 St. Peter 5:1-4,10-11
The Gospel: St. John 10:11-16

Artwork: Saint Cyprian of Carthage, 6th-century mosaic, Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, Italy.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 11 September

And God saw that it was good

The first Chapel services last week began with the hymn, “I feel the winds of God today,” sung to a lovely English traditional melody called Kingsfold. I don’t know about the “winds of God,” but I think many of us certainly felt the winds of Hurricane Dorian! Wind and rain, falling branches and uprooted trees, one of which glanced off Alexandra Hall, the Headmaster’s House, power lines down, no internet. Catastrophic. Yet, unlike the Bahamas, there has been no loss of life, just lots of damage. We are keeping the people of the Bahamas in our prayers, especially in this difficult time of grief, and for all relief and restoration efforts. The experience of the storm raises the question, how is this good? The question relates to the opening chapter of Genesis and to what we heard in verses 6 – 23.

There is a great deal of contemporary concern about safety, about safe places and about feeling safe. But does the culture of safety-ism imply that the world, then, is a dangerous and threatening place? That evil lies outside in the ‘natural’ world? The culture of safety-ism suggests that we, too, are fearful and anxious. Yet one of the great “untruths” of contemporary culture, as Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue in The Coddling of the American Mind, is the idea that you are fragile. The truth is that you are actually quite resilient. Which is why we need to remind ourselves yet again of the great wisdom of Genesis 1 with its recurring refrain, “and God saw that it was good.” Something profound is being said about the world as created and something profound is being said about us.

We can appreciate the wisdom of Genesis 1 by way of comparison to something like the creation stories of the ancient Sumerians in Mesopotamia. The Genesis story is told in contra-distinction to such accounts which see creation as a struggle between chaos and order. For the ancient Sumerians, who had achieved a great number of practical technological innovations, not unlike our modern world, there was a fearful uncertainty about reality as if chaos might just be greater than order. Chaos just might rise up and overthrow everything. Despite their technological advances, they lived in a state of fearful uncertainty, one of the images of which is Humbaba, the force of the forest who, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, is said to be “the evil in the land” and who, as “a battering ram,” is viewed as a threat to the city. The fearful uncertainty is not just the fear of the unknown but the greater fear of the unknowable, what is literally unable to be known and grasped intellectually. Evil or danger lies outside the city. The world is a fearful, dangerous and deadly place.

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Prayers and liturgy

Edmund J. Peck, Missionary

The collect for today, the commemoration of Edmund J. Peck (1850-1924), Priest, Missionary to the Inuit, Translator (source):

Edmund J. PeckGod of our salvation, whose servant Edmund James Peck made the testimony of the Spirit his own and gladly proclaimed the riches of Christ among the Inuit people, give the joy of your gospel to us also, that we may exalt you in the congregation of all peoples and praise you in the abundance of your mercies; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 5:6-12
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:16-20

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