Prayers and liturgy

Harvest Thanksgiving

The collects for today, Harvest Thanksgiving Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who crownest the year with thy goodness, and hast given unto us the fruits of the earth in their season: Give us grateful hearts, that we may unfeignedly thank thee for all thy loving-kindness, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O LORD, we pray thee, sow the seed of thy word in our hearts, and send down upon us the showers of thy grace, that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit, and at the great day of harvest may be gathered by the holy angels into the heavenly garner; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Lesson Isaiah 55:1-12
The Gospel: St. John 6:27-35

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Sermons

Sermon for Harvest Thanksgiving

So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth:
it shall not return to me empty

The custom in our maritime communities has been to keep Harvest Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Day weekend. It is a gathering together of different thanksgivings. The idea of thanksgiving for the harvest is ancient and universal, especially in rural and agricultural communities. The idea of national thanksgiving is more recent and focuses on the political and the social. We would do well to recall the inner spirit of both so I want to try to say something about the spiritual significance of Harvest Thanksgiving in the face of our current anxieties and concerns.

I have always been moved by Harvest Thanksgiving as it has traditionally been celebrated in our maritime communities, especially in our rural farmlands. There is something quite wonderful about gathering the fruits of field and orchard into the churches, something at once aesthetically pleasing and spiritually symbolic. At Christ Church for years sheaves of corn-stalks marked the pews. I always had the sense of preaching in a corn-field! Not a bad biblical image and precedent!

Harvest Thanksgiving has always a sensual and aesthetic quality to it; things seen, and touched, smelled and tasted. But therein lies the danger, the danger of reducing Harvest Thanksgiving to self-indulgence and conspicuous consumption, to a sensual feast of the belly at the expense of the mind and the soul More stuffed than the turkey. Who are we thanking and for what if it is simply about the sensual pleasures of appetite? In our rural and agricultural communities, there is always the danger of losing sight of the more profound meaning of Harvest Thanksgiving. It is not about thanking ourselves for what we have been able to achieve and accomplish. It is not about what we think we deserve, or worse, about what we think we are entitled.

This year the annual Pumpkin Regatta in Windsor will be a much diminished affair because the number of giant pumpkins is much so greatly reduced, owing to the cold spring, the dry summer, and the effects of Hurricane Dorian, which also blasted the cornfields. The world knows but ignores the humanitarian disaster of the continuing famine in Yemen. The current discourse on global climate change is increasingly paralyzing and dispiriting but contributes to the way in which events on the global stage, in which we are all implicated, play out locally, what some have called ‘glocalization.’ All these things challenge us to think more deeply about the radical meaning of thanksgiving. At the very least they remind us that the harvest cannot be taken for granted.

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Events, Month at a Glance

Week at a Glance, 14 – 20 October

Tuesday, October 15th
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
6:30-8:00pm Girl Guides – Parish Hall
7:00pm Christ Church Book Club – Coronation Room, Parish Hall
New Dark Age: Technology & the End of the Future (2018), by James Bridle, and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (2018), by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.

Thursday, October 17th,, Eve of St. Luke
3:15pm Service at Windsor Elms
7:00pm Holy Communion

Friday, October 18th
6:00-9:00pm Pathfinders & Rangers – Parish Hall

Saturday, October 19th
9:00-11:00am Bell Tower Clean-up

Sunday, October 20th, Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Holy Communion

“It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord,/
and to sing praises unto thy Name, O thou Most High” (Psalm 92.1)
Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a special and wonderful celebration. It speaks to a deep-seated spiritual sensibility in our souls even in the confusions, uncertainties, and denials of all things religious and spiritual in our contemporary culture. Thanksgiving is fundamentally and essentially spiritual.

Thanksgiving embraces at once Harvest Thanksgiving and National Thanksgiving, our thanks for the bounty of the harvest (whether or not there has been one!) and for the rational and spiritual freedoms that we enjoy (however much we ignore them and however much they are in question and disarray) in our nation and country. Those ‘thanksgivings’ are raised into the great thanksgiving, the Eucharist of the Son to the Father, re-enacted, recalled, and re-presented in “our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” in the service of the Holy Eucharist. We are fed with the bread of life, which is Jesus himself who has come down from heaven to give life to the world. That life is about our participation in the Son’s Thanksgiving to the Father, the Great Thanksgiving.

The giving of thanks to God, the giving of thanks for what we have, and the giving of thanks with one another and sharing with one another speaks to the highest freedom and dignity of our humanity. We give articulate praise to God for the harvest, for the nation, for our communities, and for one another, but, above all, for God himself. “Blessed be God that he is God only and divinely like himself” as John Donne prays. We are in George Herbert’s rich phrase, “the secretaries of thy praise”. Thanksgiving is a metanoia, our thinking after the things of God in creation, a return to the principle of being and knowing.

Fr. David Curry

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Prayers and liturgy

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

Visoki Decani Monastery, Christ Healing Man with DropsyArtwork: Christ Healing Man with Dropsy, c. 1350. Fresco, Visoki Decani Monastery, Kosovo.

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Philip of Caesarea, Apostolic Man

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Philip of Caesarea, Deacon, Apostolic Man (source):

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy servant Philip the Deacon, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the peoples of Samaria and Ethiopia. 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 our Saviour Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 8:26-40
The Gospel: St. Matthew 28:18-20

Jan Both, Baptism of the EunuchArtwork: Jan Both, Baptism of the Eunuch, 1639-41. Oil on canvas, Prado, Madrid.

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Prayers and liturgy

Paulinus, Missionary and Archbishop

Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Saint PaulinusThe collect for today, the Feast of St. Paulinus (c. 584-644), Monk, first Archbishop of York, Missionary (source):

Almighty and everlasting God, we thank thee for thy servant Paulinus, whom thou didst call to preach the Gospel to the people of northern England. Raise up, we beseech thee, in this and every land evangelists and heralds of thy kingdom, that thy Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and 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

The St. Paulinus stained glass was made by the firm of C.E. Kempe of London and installed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1913. Photograph taken by admin, 7 September 2009.

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KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 9 October

Thanksgiving in Thanksgiving

“There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger,” Jesus says in the classical Gospel thanksgiving story of the ten lepers who were healed of whom only one returned to give thanks. The story speaks to one of our current dilemmas: thanksgiving without thanksgiving.

We all like a good meal, to be sure. No one likes a bad meal but is thanksgiving simply an occasion for huge meal, for hedonistic self-indulgence and conspicuous consumption? Is it about celebrating our consumer selves? Something of the more radical nature of thanksgiving is shown in this Gospel story as highlighted by Jesus. More than a healing miracle, it is about the miracle of thanksgiving which is our participation in God’s grace, the true and only basis of gratitude. The root of gratitude is grace – what comes from God to us and in a myriad of ways.

True thanksgiving counters our complacency and our sense of entitlement. The harvest cannot be taken for granted; it cannot be said that we deserve a feast or that it is a right. There are times of famine and pestilence, times of drought and storm. Think only of the catastrophic humanitarian disaster that continues with the famine in Yemen. Here in Windsor, the annual Pumpkin Regatta will be a much diminished affair simply because there are far, far fewer pumpkins owing to the cold spring, the dryness of the summer, and, of course, Hurricane Dorian. Such things challenge our complacency and remind us that we can only work with God’s creation and that we do not have control of nature. They serve as a check upon our rather instrumental and utilitarian relation to the natural world and to one another.

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Prayers and liturgy

Robert Grosseteste, Bishop and Scholar

The collect for today, the commemoration of Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253), Bishop of Lincoln, Scholar (source):

Robert GrossetesteO God our heavenly Father, who didst raise up thy faithful servant Robert Grosseteste to be a bishop and pastor in thy Church and to feed thy flock: Give to all pastors abundant gifts of thy Holy Spirit, that they may minister in thy household as true servants of Christ and stewards of thy divine mysteries; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

The Lesson: Acts 20:28-32
The Gospel: St. Luke 16:10-15

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Prayers and liturgy

St. Denys, Bishop and Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Denys (d. c. 258), Bishop of Paris, Patron Saint of France, Martyr (source):

Jean Bourdichon, Saint DenisO GOD, who as on this day didst endow thy blessed Martyr and Bishop Saint Denys with strength to suffer stedfastly for thy sake, and didst join unto him Rusticus and Eleutherius for the preaching of thy glory to the Gentiles: grant us, we beseech thee, so to follow their good example; that for the love of thee we may despise all worldly prosperity, and be afraid of no manner of worldly adversity. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Lesson: Acts 17:22-34
The Gospel: St. Luke 12:1-9

Artwork: Jean Bourdichon, Saint Denis, c. 1475-1500. Illumination on parchment (Illuminated manuscript of the Horae ad usum Parisiensem (Book of hours for Parisians), or “Book of Hours of Charles VIII” King of France), Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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Sermons

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (Octave of Michaelmas)

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.

Compassion. Such a rich and powerful word, and, however much it has been hi-jacked by the therapy culture and greatly reduced in its meaning and  truth, it still retains a hold on our hearts and minds. Its deeper meaning is here for us to reclaim without which it becomes the kindness that kills.

Today’s Gospel shows us that compassion belongs to the spiritual pattern of death and resurrection. This Gospel story, along with the passage from Ephesians, makes it clear that compassion is nothing less than Christ in us. It is about our being “strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” It is nothing less than our “being rooted and grounded in love,” knowing nothing less than “the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” This is deep love.

The word compassion in Greek refers to the innermost being of a person, to the core of our being as it were, “the inner man,” the inner you. Luke uses the construction of ‘he saw, he had compassion’ three times: first, here in the story of the Widow of Nain; secondly, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan; and, thirdly, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Both the Parable of the Good Samaritan and the Parable of the Prodigal Son in his return to the Father are really about the movement of Christ’s love in us. But here we have an event where the Lord sees and has compassion. Matthew and Mark use it too in relation to Jesus “seeing the crowds and having compassion on them” because “they are like sheep without a shepherd.” The compassion of Christ, too, is used about Jesus seeing the crowd in the wilderness without food. Seeing them and having compassion on them leads to feeding them. The deeper theological sensibility is about our inward relation to God in Christ and through that to our care for one another. Without the first, our relation to God in Christ, I fear the second risks becoming the cover for the agendas of expediency and convenience; the kindness that kills, quite literally in terms of the so-called right to die via the complicity and agency of the medical profession, for example.

We may all want to die someday. There is nothing wrong in wanting to die especially in the Christian understanding of things. But it is quite another thing to cause one’s death or to be the agent of another’s death. These are some of the ethical dilemmas which arise in our technocratic culture where we have the means and power to do many things but lack the ethical wisdom to know when and where not to exercise such power. The larger question is about the good which is rooted and grounded in God and in his goodness.

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