Sermon for Palm Sunday

The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this homily for Palm Sunday (8:00 am service).

“We have become a spectacle to the world”

“We have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men”, St. Paul tells us (1 Cor.4.9). We have become a spectacle, indeed, but what kind of spectacle?

The question is a constant challenge; one which is critically before us in the events of Holy Week, and one which applies especially to the contemporary institutional church. What kind of spectacle, indeed?

(more…)

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The Sunday Next Before Easter

The collect for today, the Sunday Next Before Easter, commonly called Palm Sunday, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Almighty and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility; Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Philippians 2:5-11
The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to St. Matthew
The Gospel: St Matthew 27:1-54

lorenzetti_entry
Artwork: Pietro Lorenzetti, The Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, 1320-1330. Fresco, Vault of the south transept of the Lower Church, San Francesco, Assisi.

c/p: Nova Scotia Scott

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Palm Sunday Service

The Parish of Christ Church
Palm Sunday
8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Special Palm Sunday Service
(with Rt. Rev’d Sue Moxley & Nicole Veinotte, Interpreter for the Deaf)
4:30pm EP at Christ Church

Prelude: Chorale Prelude on “St. Theodulph” – John H. Schaffner (1945-1995)
Blessing of Palms & Palm Gospel                                                   (see liturgy insert)
Hymn # 130 “All Glory, laud and Honour”                                        (“St. Theodulph”)

Procession to Christ Church

Hymn #131 “Ride on! Ride on in Majesty”                                     (“Winchester New”)

Introduction to ‘A Litany of Lenten Scrolls
The Passion According  to St. Matthew

The Litany                                                                                        (BCP, p.30)
1st Scroll and 1st Meditation
The Litany continued
2nd Scroll and 2nd Meditation
The Litany continued
3rd Scroll and 3rd Meditation
The Litany continued
4th Scroll and 4th Meditation
The Litany continued
5th Scroll and 5th Meditation

Conclusion of ‘A Litany of Lenten Scrolls’

Apostles’ Creed                                                                               (BCP, p. 10)
Offertory Hymn # 127                                                                      (“Batty”)
Lord’s Prayer
Collects & Blessing
Recessional Hymn # 108                                                                (“Herzliebster Jesu”)
Postlude: Fughetta in d minor – Josef Rheinberger (1839-1901)

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A Litany of Lenten Scrolls

(To be included in tomorrow’s Palm Sunday service)

A Litany of Lenten Scrolls

Narrator:

We are sustained in the Lenten journey of our lives by the living Word of God. The Sunday School and Confirmation Class and all of us have been challenged to take to heart the Words of Scripture on these Sundays of Lent and for the journey of Holy Week. They have been written on scrolls.

(the Students will then recite the five scrolls of Scriptural verses)

  • Man cannot live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God;
  • Truth, Lord, yet the little dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table;
  • Walk in love, as Christ also has loved us, and has given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God;
  • Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost;
  • The Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

Narrator:

We begin Holy Week with shouts of joy and rejoicing. We shall end Holy Week with the joyous celebration of Christ’s Resurrection from the dead. And in between? Holy Week is the spectacle of our betrayals. Our shouts of ‘hosanna’ turn to the cries of ‘crucify’. Holy Week would immerse us in the Passion of Christ. “We shall look on him whom we have pierced.” We are in this story as the betrayers of Christ and of one another. Only through the accounts of the Passion in their fullness can we come to the greater joys of Easter. It begins with Matthew’s account of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

(Then follows the drama of The Passion according to St. Matthew)

Narrator:

The Passion can only bring us to our knees in the Litany. The Litany is the first part of the Latin liturgy that was translated into English and modified by Archbishop Cranmer, the architect of The Book of Common Prayer. It is, in this sense, the earliest modern liturgy. A comprehensive form of prayer, it teaches us how to pray and what to pray for. Rooted and grounded in the Word of God, the Litany is about our penitential adoration of God.

The Litany follows, interspersed with Meditations upon each of the scriptural passages of the Lenten Scrolls. (more…)

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Saint Ambrose of Milan

Gozzoli, St Ambroise Baptising St AugustineThe collect for today, the Feast of St Ambrose (339-397), Bishop of Milan, Doctor of the Church, Poet (source):

Lord God of hosts,
who didst call Ambrose from the governor’s throne
to be a bishop in thy Church
and a courageous champion of thy faithful people:
mercifully grant that, as he fearlessly rebuked rulers,
so we may with like courage
contend for the faith which we have received;
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.

For the Epistle: Ecclesiasticus 2:7-11, 16-18
The Gospel: St Luke 12:35-37, 42-44

Artwork: Benozzo Gozzoli, Saint Ambrose baptising Saint Augustine, 1464-65. Fresco, Apsidal chapel, Sant’Agostino, San Gimignano.

c/p: Nova Scotia Scott

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Lenten Meditation: Anger

Lenten Meditation on The Seven Deadly Sins
Anger

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God”

And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren.The Passion Sunday Gospel names our topic: indignation or anger.

Pride is certainly the deadliest of the seven deadly sins and is what is deadly in them. Envy is certainly the ugliest of the seven deadly sins and is ugly and unattractive to all. But anger?

Well, anger is certainly the most common of all the seven deadly sins. (more…)

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About Holy Week

We enter into the intensity and the mystery of Christ’s Passion with Palm Sunday. It marks the beginning of Holy Week. In the Passion of Christ our humanity is on display in all of its varied array and disarray, in all of our faults and failings, in all our sins and foolishnesses, in all the betrayals and deceits of our hearts. And yet there is a great good that is shown here as well, a greater good which ultimately speaks to our dignity restored. Holy Week shows the height and the depth, the length and the breadth of God’s love for us. Do we care enough to enter into what we are given to behold?

I encourage you ever so strongly to make the effort. The fullness of the Passion is set before us this week from all four Gospels. This week, in a way, is one continuous liturgy. What kind of Easter can there be without Good Friday, without the fullness of the Passion, which this week presents us?

Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us
an offering and a sacrifice to God.

I remind you of the schedule of services for this week: Wednesday Night, 9:00pm, Tenebrae, meaning shadows or darkness, is a short service of mostly psalm readings which anticipate the Passion; Maundy Thursday marks the beginning of the Triduum Sacrum – the three great holy days –  in which we gather with Christ in the Upper Room and then go with him to Gethsemane (the 1 hour watch); Good Friday takes us to the Cross with Mattins at 7:00am; the 11:00am Ecumenical Service at Windsor United Church and The Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday at 7:00pm; Holy Saturday gathers us first at the grave with Mattins & Ante-Communion at 10:00am and then to watch with a short Vigil at 7:00pm ending with the Lauds of Easter Day leading us to the grand and glorious pageant of the Resurrection on Easter Day beginning with the 7:00am ecumenical sunrise service at Fort Edward, followed by 8:00am & 10:30am Holy Communion services and Evening Prayer at 4:30pm.

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,
therefore let us keep the feast!

Fr. Curry
Christ Church ’09

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All Glory, laud and honour

All Glory, laud and honour

Refrain:

All glory, laud and honour
To Thee, Redeemer, King,
To Whom the lips of children
Made sweet hosannas ring.

Thou art the King of Israel,
Thou David’s royal Son,
Who in the Lord’s Name comest,
The King and Blessèd One.

Refrain:

The company of angels
Are praising Thee on High,
And mortal men and all things
Created make reply.

Refrain:

The people of the Hebrews
With palms before Thee went;
Our prayer and praise and anthems
Before Thee we present.

Refrain:

To Thee, before Thy passion,
They sang their hymns of praise;
To Thee, now high exalted,
Our melody we raise.

Refrain:

Thou didst accept their praises;
Accept the prayers we bring,
Who in all good delightest,
Thou good and gracious King.

Refrain:

This 9th century hymn by St. Theodulph of Orleans has, from its beginnings, been associated with Palm Sunday and thus with Holy Week. An apocryphal legend claims that Theodulph sang it from a prison window as King Louis the Pious was processing on Palm Sunday, and was freed as a result of the King’s pleasure! In any event, the hymn, along with its 17th century tune by Melchior Teschner, first published in Leipzig in 1615, has become a memorable feature of the Palm Sunday liturgy. As J.M. Neale, the 19th century translator of many Latin hymns, noted “another verse was usually sung until the 17th Century, at the quaintness of which we can scarcely avoid a smile“:

Be Thou, O Lord, the Rider,
And we the little ass,
That to God’s holy city
Together we may pass.

We sing this hymn in procession, out of the ‘prison’ of the Hall, as it were, on our way to the Church (minus the verse above, though without disrespect to all and any little asses!) Gloria, laus et honor.

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Sermon for Passion Sunday

The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, preached this sermon for The Fifth Sunday in Lent/Passion Sunday.

“By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place”

Behold, we go up to Jerusalem,” Jesus said at the approach of Lent on Quinquagesima Sunday, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. And he told us exactly what that “going up” means, that “all things concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge him, and put him to death; and on the third day he shall rise again.” In short, he tells us about his Passion and Resurrection. (more…)

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Week at a Glance, 30 March – 5 April 2009

Monday, March 30th
4:45-5:15pm Confirmation Class – King’s-Edgehill School, Rm. 204

Tuesday, March 31st
6:00pm ‘Prayers & Praises’ – Haliburton Place
7:00pm Holy Communion & Lenten Meditation: “Seven Deadly Sins: What and Why?” IV
Thursday, April 2nd
1:30-3:30pm Seniors’ Drop-In

Sunday, April 5th, Palm Sunday

8:00am Holy Communion
10:30am Litany (with Bp. S. Moxley & Interpreter for the Deaf)
Soup & Bread luncheon to follow
4:30pm Evening Prayer or Holy Communion at King’s-Edgehill School

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