All Saints’, Dorval
September 12, 2021
Why are we here?
It’s been almost exactly a year and a half since the hammer of lockdown first fell. In all that time, we have not sung together as a congregation, or shared in the bread and wine around the altar. We have done an extraordinary job of sticking together, staying connected, and supporting each other through this bizarre time, and of course the pandemic and its effects are far from over. But no matter what happens in the weeks and months to come, today is a day of celebration.
So why are we here? Why does this gathering, in this building, with these people, doing these frankly rather peculiar things, mean so much?
Jesus’ question to his disciples in today’s Gospel gets at something along the same lines: “Who do people say that I am?” Why are all these crowds following Jesus? What are they getting from his words and actions? Why are they here, and not somewhere else? What does he offer that nobody else does?
And then Jesus fine-tunes the question: yes, this is what the crowds think. But who do you – my closest and most committed followers – say that I am?
Peter gets the question right – you are the Messiah! – but spectacularly flubs the aftermath. The crowds following Jesus are excited about his stirring words and his remarkable healings, but when Jesus starts to try to explain where it all will end, Peter panics. He wants the glamour and glory without the effort, risk, and pain. And this is when Jesus responds with the famous warning about taking up the cross, and then states the paradox: “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”
This is one of those statements of Jesus that makes profound sense on an experiential level but if you try to analyze it, you mostly just end up tying yourself in knots.
And so we come here instead, week by week, to encounter God, even if we are confused about what it all means or why it is so important.
In the letter from James this week, we get another paradox: a spectacular display of rhetorical fireworks emphasizing … the danger of spectacular displays of rhetorical fireworks. James bends all his linguistic virtuosity to the task of warning his readers against linguistic virtuosity. It’s enough to make anyone take a vow of silence.
And yet, as humans, we have no alternative to words if we want to try to understand each other. And words have been our lifeline for the past year and a half, as we have been mostly unable to gather in person, or to share and live our faith in the physical ways to which we are accustomed. If the tongue is a fire, it is one that can keep the light of human connection alive, as well as one that can be dangerous and destructive.
But today, however incompletely, we take the first steps back toward the fullness of our life in community. People will come forward to receive the bread – no wine yet – thereby eating the flesh of the Son of Man. We are singing together – “praying twice” as St. Augustine put it – bringing back the texture and the emotion to the bare words of the liturgy, able to hear each other and blend our voices together, even through the masks.
The word of God has sustained us through this time, as we have taken up this heavy and unexpected pandemic cross together, and learned how to bear it. But if we truly want to know who Jesus is, the word is not enough. There must be community, and there must be bread for the journey. When Jesus says things like “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it,” if we try to figure it out using just the words, we will end up beating our heads against the paradoxical wall. You can’t figure out a paradox on its own terms; you need to live it.
There has been much about our lives that has been lost since March of 2020, and that loss is real. The ways in which we have gained our lives may not be immediately apparent. But our faithfulness to God and to each other, our sacrifices of time and energy and comfort to keep each other safe and connected: these are real too.
If you are longing for the Bread of Life and do not yet feel safe being here in person, please do not hesitate to reach out and I will bring you the sacrament with all necessary precautions. But let us rejoice together that, however imperfectly, the Body of Christ is once again incarnated here, in the flesh, gathered around the Table.
Why are we here? Who is Jesus? What does it mean to lose one’s life, and to save it?
Those are questions for a lifetime, not for one sermon, and there are as many answers as there are people to ask the question. But here are my answers for today:
We are here because we know that we can find something here that is found nowhere else. Acknowledgement of our pain and of our need for meaning. People who will struggle with our questions and walk the journey with us. And the hope and promise that death is not the end of the story.
Who is Jesus? He is the One in whom we are all one, the Messiah, the one who invites us into the mystery and gives us what we need to make the journey, who feeds us with God’s own self and has conquered death on our behalf.
And what does it mean to lose one’s life, and to save it? It means that God calls us to give up our futile efforts at control, and invites us to find the joy of God’s presence in whatever comes our way. It means that taking up our cross, inexplicably, brings deep fulfillment. And it means that we find our meaning and our freedom not in getting exactly what we think we want, but in becoming who God created us to be.
For a year and a half we have had to do those things without being here, without the weekly measure of sustenance that cuts through the words and the paradox and simply feeds us. Without community made real in flesh. We are not all together again yet. There is still loss and grief. But we know that to lose our lives is to save them. We know that Jesus is the One who won the victory over death. And we trust in him, and in his body, given for us.
Amen.
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