‘The trivial round, the common task, will furnish all we ought to ask’

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;/Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,” TS Eliot, Burnt Norton … a still point on the beach near the harbour at Rush, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday 26 June 2011

The First Sunday after Trinity

9.30 a.m.: Morning Prayer, Kenure Church, Rush, Co Dublin.

Genesis 22: 1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6: 12-23; Matthew 10: 40-42.

May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

In the Church Calendar, this time of the year, from Trinity Sunday until the beginning of Advent, is sometimes called ‘Ordinary Time’ and the Sundays from today are counted in an ordinary way with numbers … ‘The First Sunday after Trinity’ and so on.

It is as though we are saying we have been busy for the past few months … Epiphany, Candlemas, Lent, Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Day, Ascension Day, Pentecost … now let us have some Ordinary Time.

But this is not what Ordinary Time means. It is not as if we are suffering from some kind of Spiritual Exhaustion, or need to sit back and take part in plain, ordinary every-Sunday type of Church.

Ordinary Time is the longest time in the Church year, with few significant events along the way. It has a kind of ordinariness that other seasons lack. There are no narrative highpoints, no showy colours or costumes, not even a signature hymn or two. We enter, as the poet TS Eliot says in Burnt Norton, “at the still point”:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is…

For Eliot, it is in the movement of time that brief moments of eternity are caught. The revelation of God in Christ is at the intersection between eternity and time. Life can be very ordinary – time is ordinary – when life and time keep going on and on, round and round. But life and time, in their ordinary ways, are worth celebrating, time after time, in everyday ordinary life.

The poem After Trinity by John Meade Falkner (1858-1932) seems to convey something that is very Anglican about this time of the year, this Ordinary Time, when Sunday follows Sunday, through the beauty of creation and following the course of the natural year:

We have done with dogma and divinity,
Easter and Whitsun past,
The long, long Sundays after Trinity
Are with us at last;
The passionless Sundays after Trinity,
Neither feast-day nor fast.

Christmas comes with plenty,
Lent spreads out its pall,
But these are five and twenty,
The longest Sundays of all;
The placid Sundays after Trinity,
Wheat-harvest, fruit-harvest, Fall.

Ordinary Time lasts these “five and twenty Sundays” or so, until the beginning of Advent. But as Meade Falkner reminds us, some extra-ordinary things happen in this season of “placid Sundays” – the long days of summer, the harvest of wheat and fruit, summer holidays and the longest day of the year. For children, it is summer holiday time – time at the beach, time to travel, time to explore, and in all of those times, time to mature and time to grow.

Ordinary Time allows the Church to celebrate the ordinariness of life as summer moves into autumn and as we anticipate autumn moving into winter.

John Keble (1792-1866) captures some of the beauties of this season in our opening hymn, New every morning (Irish Church Hymnal, No 59):

The trivial round, the common task,
will furnish all we ought to ask,
room to deny ourselves, a road
to bring us daily nearer God.

Do you find yourself being brought nearer to God day-by-day, in a new way each morning, in the ordinary, trivial things of daily life?

These weeks are also a traditional time for ordaining new deacons and new priests, a time also known as Petertide. This afternoon, four priests are being ordained in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

The Very Revd Gonville ffrench-Beytagh (right), who was persecuted as Dean of Johannesburg under the apartheid regime, once offered the definition of a priest as the person who represents God to humanity and humanity to God.

Of course, this happens in the Eucharist and in the proclamation of the Word. But he also advised priests to “present God to people by listening to them and accepting them as God listens and accepts” them, as God listens and accepts us (see our Gospel reading, Matthew 10: 40-42).

They were wise words from the priest who had a profound influence on my life. Forty years ago this summer, at the age of 19, unplanned and unexpectedly, I walked into a small church, the chapel at Saint John’s Hospital in Lichfield, and – for the first time in my life – I felt filled with the love and light of God.

Saint John’s, Lichfield ... walking into the light and love and life of God (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

That same evening, I sat into in the choir stalls at Choral Evensong in Lichfield Cathedral. There, one of the residentiary canons asked me whether I had started going to church because I was thinking of ordination – 40 years ago, when I was just a 19-year-old.

It was the summer of 1971, and I was struck by reports of the treason trial of Gonville ffrench-Beytagh. His hospitality in his cathedral for persecuted black protesters, who were being sacrificed cruelly on the altar of apartheid, left me with a lasting example of Christian discipleship, sacrifice, self-giving, ministry and priesthood (see our Old Testament reading, Genesis 22: 1-14).

That feeling of the light and love of Christ remains with me as an ever-present, self-defining, constant. It is a feeling that I imagine the Apostle Paul must have had as he was writing this morning’s epistle reading (Romans 6: 12-23). Thirty years later, at the age of 49, I was ordained priest in Christ Church Cathedral at the Petertide ordinations on 24 June 2001, having been ordained deacon a year earlier

I am no late vocation ... I was simply slow and late in responding to that call. And there is particular pleasure in celebrating that anniversary this morning at the Eucharist in Holmpatrick Parish Church.

Pray for the four priests being ordained this afternoon. Pray for those who continue in priestly ministry to present God through Christ to us, and us through Christ to God. And pray that we may all have the grace and the power to assure people of the love of God and to show them the love of humanity.

And so, may all we think, say and do, be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This sermon was preached at Morning Prayer in Kenure Church, Rush, Co Dublin, on Sunday 26 June 2011.

Collect:

God,
the strength of all those who put their trust in you:
Mercifully accept our prayers
and, because through the weakness of our mortal nature
we can do no good thing without you, grant us the help of your grace,
that in the keeping of your commandments
we may please you, both in will and deed;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

After Trinity, John Meade Falkner (1858-1932):

We have done with dogma and divinity,
Easter and Whitsun past,
The long, long Sundays after Trinity
Are with us at last;
The passionless Sundays after Trinity,
Neither feast-day nor fast.

Christmas comes with plenty,
Lent spreads out its pall,
But these are five and twenty,
The longest Sundays of all;
The placid Sundays after Trinity,
Wheat-harvest, fruit-harvest, Fall.

Spring with its burst is over,
Summer has had its day,
The scented grasses and clover
Are cut, and dried into hay;
The singing-birds are silent,
And the swallows flown away.

Post pugnam pausa fiet;
Lord, we have made our choice;
In the stillness of autumn quiet,
We have heard the still, small voice.
We have sung Oh where shall Wisdom?
Thick paper, folio, Boyce.

Let it not all be sadness,
Not omnia vanitas,
Stir up a little gladness
To lighten the Tibi cras;
Send us that little summer,
That comes with Martinmas.

When still the cloudlet dapples
The windless cobalt blue,
And the scent of gathered apples
Fills all the store-rooms through,
The gossamer silvers the bramble,
The lawns are gemmed with dew.

An end of tombstone Latinity,
Stir up sober mirth,
Twenty-fifth after Trinity,
Kneel with the listening earth,
Behind the Advent trumpets
They are singing Emmanuel’s birth.