Prayers and liturgy

The Sixth Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, the Sixth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O God, who hast preparest for them that love thee such good things as pass man’s understanding: Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Romans 6:3-11
The Gospel: St Luke 6:27-36

Sebastiano Ricci, The Sermon on the MountArtwork: Sebastiano Ricci, The Sermon on the Mount, 1725. Oil on canvas, Private collection.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Anne, Mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Anne, Mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary (source):

O GOD, who didst vouchsafe to bestow grace upon blessed Anne, that she might become the mother of the parent of thy Only-begotten Son: Mercifully grant that we who celebrate her festival may be partakers with her of thy heavenly grace; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: 1 Samuel 2:1-8
The Gospel: St. Luke 1:26-33

Jacques Stella, Saint Anne Leading the Virgin to the TempleArtwork: Jacques Stella, Saint Anne Leading the Virgin to the Temple, 1640. Oil on canvas, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. James the Apostle

The collect for today, the Feast of St. James the Apostle, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, O merciful God, that as thine holy Apostle Saint James, leaving his father and all that he had, without delay was obedient unto the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and followed him; so we, forsaking all worldly and carnal affections, may be evermore ready to follow thy holy commandments; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 11:27-12:3a
The Gospel: St. Mark 10:32-40

Jean Fouquet, The Martyrdom of St. James the GreatArtwork: Jean Fouquet, The Martyrdom of St. James the Great, 1452-60. Illumination, Musée Condé, Chantilly.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Mary Magdalene

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, whose blessed Son did sanctify Mary Magdalene, and call her to be a witness to his resurrection: Mercifully grant that by thy grace we may be healed of all our infirmities, and always serve thee in the power of his endless life; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 13:27-31
The Gospel: St John 20:11-18

Lodovico Pogliaghi, Jesus Appears to Mary MagdaleneArtwork: Lodovico Pogliaghi, Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene, 1894-1908. Central Bronze door, Milan Cathedral. Photograph taken by admin, 2 May 2010.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity

“Nevertheless, at thy word, I will let down the net.”

In the face of the nihilisms of our contemporary culture, this is a welcoming word that signals an openness to God and to his will and way for our humanity. It should and is meant to complement the opening line of the Epistle reading, “be ye all of one mind,” but it doesn’t, at least not now in our situation as a church. We aren’t of one mind on many matters of great importance. We are a church divided, and a community and culture of souls divided. This is, sadly, nothing new. I have offered a brief statement of reflection about the current state of disarray, disaffection, and division with respect to the issue of same-sex marriage. The institutional church remains caught in the controversies of identity in our contemporary culture. We live in a divided church but prayerfully and, I hope, charitably with respect to these divisions and with an openness to the rediscovery of the principles that provide a more complete understanding of our humanity.

Today’s Gospel grounds our lives not on self-assertion but upon God’s word. Ambrose, in his commentary on this passage, indicates that in the figure of Peter especially, we have the figure of the Church. Peter is the rock upon which Christ builds the Church but only “at thy word.” It is a powerful idea and concept. There is the constant struggle to understand what it means to act in accord with God’s Word but, at the very least, it acts as a check upon human presumption. Simon Peter expresses very clearly the nature of the human predicament. “We have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing.” This complements wonderfully Mary’s statement to Jesus at the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee that “they” – we – “have no wine.” The awareness of our limitations, of our mortality, of our insufficiency, of our confusion, is a profound truth about our humanity. In our current distresses, it suggests at the very least uncertainties about ourselves and about the claims of the autonomous self. To put it in another way, what these Gospel stories indicate is that God knows us better than we know ourselves, on the one hand, and that God seeks for us to know what he seeks for us, on the other hand. “We see in a glass darkly,” not least of all about ourselves. “Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known,” as Paul says, known in Christ. Hence the significance of the nature of God’s engagement with our humanity in Jesus Christ. Divine love transforms and perfects our human loves in all our confusions and illusions but only “at thy word.”

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Prayers and liturgy

The Fifth Sunday After Trinity

The collect for today, The Fifth Sunday after Trinity, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, O Lord, we beseech thee, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by thy governance, that thy Church may joyfully serve thee in all godly quietness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. Peter 3:8-15a
The Gospel: St. Luke 5:1-11

Edward Armitage, Christ Calling the ApostlesArtwork: Edward Armitage, Christ Calling the Apostles, 1869. Oil on canvas, Sheffield Galleries and Museums.

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Prayers and liturgy

Margaret of Antioch, Virgin and Martyr

The collect for a Virgin or Matron, on the Feast of Saint Margaret of Antioch (289-304), Virgin and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O GOD Most High, the creator of all mankind, we bless thy holy Name for the virtue and grace which thou hast given unto holy women in all ages, especially thy servant Margaret of Antioch; and we pray that the example of her faith and purity, and courage unto death, may inspire many souls in this generation to look unto thee, and to follow thy blessed Son Jesus Christ our Saviour; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 9:36-42
The Gospel: St. Luke 10:38-42

Titian, St. Margaret and the DragonArtwork: Titian, St. Margaret and the Dragon, c. 1559. Oil on canvas, Prado, Madrid.

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Anglican issues, Statements and other writings, Theology

“Nothing has changed”: Fr. Curry on the Marriage Issue

‘Nothing has changed’
A statement about same-sex marriages in the light of the decision of the General Synod and Archbishop Ron Cutler’s response

It is incumbent upon me, for what it is worth, to say something about the recent decisions of the Anglican Church of Canada with respect to the question about same-sex marriages. Simply put, nothing has really changed. The Anglican Church of Canada remains caught in the confusions and the contradictions of contemporary culture about the politics of identity. Yet the General Synod, meeting in Vancouver, ultimately voted against equating same-sex marriage with the Christian doctrine of marriage articulated most clearly in the Book of Common Prayer. The result of a long and drawn out process of discussion, this was the result, whether or not one agrees with it, or, for that matter, whether or not one agrees with the assumption that national and diocesan churches have anyauthority to determine on such matters of doctrine, in this case, moral doctrine.

Councils “may err and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God,” as our Articles remind us (Art. XXI), and so Councils will err though sometimes, too, they may be right. There is also the question about which councils and upon what issues. Archbishop Ron Cutler of the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island notes that this issue can be revisited within the institutional structures of the Anglican Church of Canada. Everything, it seems, is endlessly ‘provisional’ especially when one is in pursuit of a predetermined end which only then becomes, mirabile dictu,definitive. Thus, despite the decision of the General Synod, he has declared that Diocesan local option takes precedence against it. Same-sex marriages will be allowed where desired in the Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. At the same time, we are told, no parish or priest will be forced to marry same-sex couples. Nor can they be. And so the division continues and endlessly so.

We live with the confusions and complexities of our age about identity, about what it means to be a self. What matters are the assumptions underlying such decisions. Marriage, according to the Archbishop, and in this he simply reflects the assumptions of the culture, is fundamentally about ‘committed relationships’. If that is so, then there can be no discussion, no debate. And while commitment is an important concept, the question is, commitment to what? After all, one can be in a ‘committed relationship’ with any number of things, including oneself, and to any number of social constructs of whatever sort. While we would all want to agree about the importance of commitment, the classical understanding of Christian marriage is not simply or even primarily about commitment beyond a commitment to the character and nature of marriage; in short, to what it is. We cannot be of one mind if we cannot say what something is; in this case what marriage is. At issue are the principles which govern our understanding about the meaning of our humanity as found within the doctrines of creation and redemption in which marriage is located as oneof the ways of living out the Christian faith.

Nothing has changed inasmuch as the institutional church remains caught in the controversies of identity in our contemporary culture. And nothing has changed with respect to my own contributions to the debate theologically. “The sad tragedy of the Anglican Churches” continues to be “the inability … to distinguish between two different things: marriage and the blessings of friends.” I continue to be committed to upholding the principles of Christian Faith doctrinally and morally as they have been received by the Anglican Churches insofar as they lay claim to be and are an integral part of the Catholic and Universal church regardless of the statements of Synods and Bishops. We live in a divided church but prayerfully and, I hope, charitably with respect to these divisions.

Rev’d David Curry
July 18th, 2019

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Prayers and liturgy

Swithun, Bishop

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Swithun (d. 862), Bishop of Winchester (source):

Almighty God,
by whose grace we celebrate again
the feast of thy servant Swithun:
grant that, as he governed with gentleness
the people committed to his care,
so we, rejoicing in our inheritance in Christ,
may ever seek to build up thy Church in unity and love;
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.

With the Epistle and Gospel for a Bishop or Archbishop, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

The Epistle: 1 Timothy 6:11-16
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:37-43

Artwork: Saint Swithun window, Winchester Cathedral, Winchester, England.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity

“Forgive and ye shall be forgiven”

Forgiveness. It is the hardest and yet one of the freest things, perhaps even one of the simplest things in our lives. It undoubtedly belongs to that most free of all things: the power of God’s praise which overcomes human pride and presumption. Forgiveness  is the power of God’s love moving in human loves. There can be no love that is not constantly love-in-renewal and there can be no renewal-in-love without forgiveness. Divine forgiveness empowers human forgiveness. Yet how hard it is for us to let go of ourselves and of the illusions of our self-image and our assumptions about others.

What makes forgiveness so hard? Quite simply, it is our hypocrisy. This is the point of the Gospel. Hypocrisy is not just our saying one thing and our doing another, not just our doing one thing and thinking another; it is about a profound presumption, an illusion about who we think we are.

We are divided within ourselves against ourselves, against one another, and against God. We are in the ‘far country’ of our self-estrangement, in ‘the region of unlikeness,’ to use Augustine’s image, separated from the truth of ourselves in God. There is our blindness and there is our judgmentalism splendidly illustrated in the Gospel. “Can the blind lead the blind? Shall they not both fall into the ditch?” That powerful image leads to the next: “Cast out first the beam that is in thine own eye, then shall thou see clearly the mote that is in thy brother’s eye.” This is the prescription for our presumption, our prejudice, meaning pre-judgment, our claim to know what we do not know. It is not just our ignorance, but our arrogance that is the problem. It is a willful blindness, a kind of refusal to see what, in fact, we have been given to see and know, for instance, in the witness of the Scriptures. But then, again, we frequently refuse to act upon what we do see and know. It is not just our knowing that is the problem. There is our capacity for willful destruction, the will to nothingness, as it were. We close our eyes to the truth before us, at once hypercritical of the minor faults of others (the mote or speck of dust) while utterly blind to the major faults and failings in ourselves (the beam or log). We do not know ourselves or others very well.

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