Dress to Confess
Dear People, Neighbours, and Friends of St. Thomas’s,
On the evening of the eighteenth I was a guest of Massey College and the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada at a special service of Compline in St. Catherine’s Chapel, followed by dinner. Since 2017 it has been a Chapel Royal, and it also bears an Anishinaabek name: Gi-Chi-Twaa Gimaa Nini Mississauga Anishinaabek AName Amik, “The King’s Anishinaabek Sacred Place.” The office of Compline was sung by the Gentlemen-in-Ordinary of the Choir of the Chapel Royal at St. James’s Palace. The service leaflet reminded us that a “Chapel Royal” originally meant the clergy and musicians who travelled with the Sovereign. On Friday the King stayed home and sent the chaplain and the singers, but his provincial Lieutenant Governor was there to represent him, so you might say he was officially present.
The visiting choir director from the palace was Tim Horton, a name that in this country is associated not with a Chapel Royal but with a donuts-and-coffee joint. Tim Horton gamely told us that the coincidence is always good for a laugh in Canada. To borrow Timmy’s lingo, the order that this Tim Horton served up that Friday night was a double-double: Byrd’s O Lord, look down from Heaven and Gibbons’s The Record of John. Both composers were themselves Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, so we heard the house band perform its own material four centuries later.
The evening’s theme was the treaty relationship between the Crown and Indigenous nations. Massey’s chapel is associated with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, in whose treaty territory St. Thomas’s also stands. My thanks to John Fraser, who organized the evening with his customary flair, and to the Principal and community of Massey College for their hospitality and for bringing together so many people dedicated to nurturing our treaty relationships. And as usual, John did so in his understated but impressive way.
Heaven knows there were plenty of impressive people gathered on this special occasion. At dinner the Chief of the Mississaugas of the Credit was seated at the next table over. At my table, I was seated between the immediate past Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, the Hon. Elizabeth Dowdeswell, and the Provost of Trinity College, my friend Nick Terpstra, with our current Lieutenant Governor, the Hon. Edith Dumont, on Nick’s right. That was more vice-regal company than I had ever expected to enjoy in my entire life. Her Honour told me she is fond of Evensong at St. Thomas’s, recalling the service she attended here two years ago when Canon Paul Wright, the Sub-Dean of the Chapels Royal (sitting on Her Honour’s right hand at our table), preached at a special Michaelmas Evensong that doubled as a commemoration of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
I was minding my own business when John Fraser voluntold me that I would be saying the grace before the meal. Few things concentrate the mind like praying aloud before two Lieutenant Governors, the Chief, a Provost, and the Sub-Dean of the Chapels Royal, at a college whose motto is Sapere aude, “dare to know.” I kept it short and stuck to reading the College Prayer, which, though Quaker in origin, I attempted to recite with Anglican solemnity, miraculously managing not to stumble over any of its noble words. That said, I know better than to try to impress people with prayer. God wouldn’t be impressed, so why would anyone else?
In the days since, I have kept thinking about that Gibbons anthem. The priests and Levites come to John the Baptist and ask him, “Who art thou?” And the text says that “he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ.” Before John could point anyone toward the Lamb of God, he had to give an honest account of himself, including what he was not. John wasn’t out to impress anyone. That seems to me a good place for any reconciliation to begin. It begins with humility (which is a very different thing from humiliation), and with a truthful answer to “Who art thou?” rather than any self-important posturing.
Which brings me to the week ahead. This Sunday we mark the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Then on Tuesday, on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, the National Indigenous Archbishop, Chris Harper, will preside from the throne and preach at our 6:30 p.m. High Mass. For him this is something of a homecoming, since he served for two years as a seminarian here and was made a deacon at our altar in 2005. He will speak at the supper following the service, and I hope you will come. Bring a question, and if you have a friend who is sceptical about all this, bring them too. We aren’t out to change anyone’s mind but to build honest relationships, heart speaking to heart.
Along these lines, I commend to you Gwenda Jensen’s article from last week’s Thurible on the Social Justice Committee’s work, now on our website. It is thoughtful and nuanced. It explicitly calls for an end to virtue-signalling and competitive righteousness, and it asks for room for different views within respectful listening. That room only exists if people step through its doors. However you think and feel about truth and reconciliation, whether you are keen, wary, puzzled, or quietly unconvinced, the committee needs to hear it from you directly. Otherwise, how this parish lives out its commitments will be shaped entirely by those who do speak up. My job, in part, is to nurture an environment where people know they will be heard. Gwenda is proposing a series of face-to-face “Conversations about Reconciliation” this autumn, and she and the other committee members would be glad to hear from you.
What I hope for us is honest encounter with one another, offered in humility and Christian charity: respectful, frank, and even, if we can manage it, vulnerable. That is harder than wearing an orange shirt to church. Do wear one on Sunday if you are so inclined, but the shirt is the easy part. The harder part is making space in the room for someone who sees things differently, and listening long enough to understand them, and perhaps to be understood in return. On Tuesday we keep the feast of St. Michael, who contends with the dragon. With one another, we have a much easier job: being with, listening, and loving each other as God in Christ Jesus loves us.
Sapere aude. Dare to know, and dare to be wise. And whether you wear orange or not, don’t dress to impress. Dress to confess: that every child matters, and that there is hope for a brighter future for every child, and every adult, too, including ourselves. See you Sunday, and on Tuesday, God willing. And if you can’t be with us in person, there’s always the livestream!
Yours in Christ’s service,
N.J.A. Humphrey+
VIII Rector
