All Saints by the Lake, Dorval
September 11, 2022
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II with Archbishop of Canterbury the Most Rev’d Justin Welby
Who are the lost ones?
Are they the tax collectors and sinners, the ones coming near to listen to Jesus because he was the only one who didn’t tell them they were beyond redemption?
Or are they the Pharisees and the scribes, grumbling and complaining about that welcome, and being told these parables in response? (Is there even such a thing as a “righteous person who needs no repentance”?)
Are the lost sheep the children of residential school survivors, marked by generational trauma and substance use, struggling to survive and cope in a world that ignores their pain?
Or are they the police, scarred and hardened by violence and cruelty that has become routine, pulling their guns on young Black men and failing to seek justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women?
Are the lost coins the transgender teenagers kicked out by family and church? Or the families and churches that kicked them out?
Who are the lost ones?
The family that brings their baby to church to be baptized and then disappears for months, years, possibly forever?
Or the lifelong church member who glares at the family when the baby cries in church?
And is the lost one the working class Irish person in London facing skyrocketing energy bills and a government that seems content to let them freeze this winter, and saying nasty things about the Queen’s death on social media?
Or is it the woman who, when she took the throne at the age of twenty-six, simply accepted that her lot in life was to subordinate her own and her family’s needs and desires to the duty that she believed was given to her by God, no matter what anyone else thought or said?
Our service this morning stretches the limits of our ability to hold paradoxes in tension. We begin with the acknowledgement that we gather on stolen and occupied land, and we will end – after the dismissal – by singing “God Save the King.” (And it’s OK if you don’t want to join in.) We will pray for the repose of Queen Elizabeth’s soul and give thanks for her life of faith and duty – and then we’ll sing a hymn that includes the line, “When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, and hear their death-knells ringing; when friends rejoice, both far and near, how can I keep from singing?”
On one level, this is simply part of the inherent weirdness of being Anglican, of being part of a Communion descended from an established state church that was founded originally not out of any theological conviction or reforming zeal, but out of an English monarch’s need to solve his pressing dynastic and personal problems.
But over the last half millennium, that same church, founded in practical necessity and theological compromise, has nevertheless evolved a robust tradition of social concern and intellectual inquiry. Like the English crown, our tradition is complex, morally compromised, and there are those who think it would be better if it simply ceased to exist. But Anglicanism continues, and it continues to have a particular genius for holding in tension ideas that would seem to be opposites. And it does so because that genius for holding opposite ideas simultaneously is in fact essential not only to Anglicanism, but to Christianity.
Our tradition will be the one on display at Queen Elizabeth’s state funeral a week from tomorrow. And our tradition is also the one growing by leaps and bounds among formerly colonized peoples in Africa and elsewhere around the globe. Our tradition was complicit in the horror of the residential schools, and our tradition is also evolving in new and exciting ways among the indigenous peoples of this land, who now constitute and lead their own autonomous church. All of these things are true.
Just as it is true that all of the people I described a moment ago could qualify, for any number of imaginable reasons, as “lost sheep”.
Humans so desperately want things to be black and white. We want some things to be good and some things to be bad – and we want to be able to tell the difference quicky and easily; and even more problematically, we want some people to be good and some people to be bad.
But we are all, from the beggar to the literal queen, beloved children of God. We are all fallen sinners. And we are all, ultimately, the sum of our choices, throughout our lives.
Each of us, in our lives, has done something opposed to the will of God – something that constitutes “wandering off” into the wilderness, whether it be the grasping, promiscuous sin of the tax collectors and prostitutes, or the hard-hearted, self-righteous sin of their critics; whether it be an individual sin like adultery or plagiarism, or whether it be participation in the kind of systemic sin that we really cannot avoid without dropping out of society entirely.
But God does not rest until each of us has been found, embraced, and brought back. (Don’t forget that the next part of this chapter, after today’s passage, is the parable of the Good Samaritan.)
Today is our Welcome Back Barbecue and, as the Sunday after Labour Day, the unofficial end of summer and beginning of the “program year.” As we come back together to rejoice in each other’s company and fellowship after the last two difficult years, let us also remember that part of our calling, as a community of faith, is to live these paradoxes.
We are called to welcome all people while also constantly, as the letter to the Hebrews says, “provoking each other to love and good deeds.” We are called to pray for the late Queen and the new King as human beings and fellow Anglicans, while not excusing the ways in which their wealth and power go against God’s dream for the only true kingdom, which is God’s. And we are called to go looking for the lost sheep and the lost coin, both when they look like we expect them to, and when they don’t.
So as we continue through this service and you notice the ways that the words we say and sing unsettle you or even frankly contradict each other, don’t shy away. Lean into the paradox. Think about how every last one of us is a lost sheep in need of redemption. Pray for those who suffer – and pray for those who inflict the suffering, that their hearts may be changed, that oppressive systems may be overthrown and that justice may be done on earth.
In the baptismal liturgy, we pray for each newly reborn child of God: “Give them an inquiring and discerning heart; the courage to will and to persevere; a spirit to know and to love you; and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.” People are complicated. Life is complicated. Faith is complicated. Church is – or should be – a place where we reckon honestly with all of it. May we bring to the task our inquiring and discerning hearts, as we both search for the lost sheep, and allow ourselves to be sought out and brought home.
Amen.
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