All Saints by the Lake, Dorval
February 12, 2023
Rembrandt, Moses with the Ten Commandments, 1659 (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin)
Boy, are we getting a lot of commandments this week. Deuteronomy shows God presenting the commandments to the people as they prepare to enter the promised land, demanding that they choose whether to follow them and receive a blessing, or reject them and perish. The Psalm addresses God from the perspective of the one striving to keep the commandments, saying, “You laid down your commandments, that we should fully keep them. … Then I should not be put to shame, when I regard all your commandments.” And Jesus ups the ante, telling his audience, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, … but I say to you that …” thus setting even higher standards, asking his listeners to commit to observing not only the outward letter of the law, but the inward spirit. It’s all a bit daunting.
There are two temptations when it comes to passages like this: one is to take them too literally, and buckle under the strain of trying to keep every commandment perfectly; and the other is not to take them seriously at all, and shrug off the whole legacy and covenant of the commandments because Christians no longer circumcise or keep kosher. Jesus, after all, warned us in last week’s reading, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”
We will fail to live up to the standard Jesus sets in the Gospel; that’s just inevitable. But that doesn’t mean abandoning it as a standard; it simply means reflecting, repenting, asking forgiveness, and trying again. And it means looking to passages like this as an example of what the world would be like if the Kingdom of God were to come fully among us. What would it feel like to live in a world where everyone approached their life with this level of reconciliation, self-knowledge, discernment, and integrity?
What I don’t think it would mean is that we would all behave exactly the same. We can follow the commandments and still be our unique selves – in fact, us being our unique selves is what gives God the greatest joy. Put another way: there is not one way to follow the commandments – there are many ways, all of them valid.
And this is true not just of us as individuals, but of our congregations.
All Saints’ by the Lake has been working very hard, almost since I arrived here four and a half years ago, to discern what our particular calling is. We know that we are called to follow Jesus, to worship and pray to God, to serve others and to manifest God’s love in our community. All that goes without saying; it is the most basic element of the commandments as Jesus boils them down to their essentials, “love God and love your neighbour.”
But in order to focus our energy, to maximize our excitement and effectiveness as we reach out and engage with the community around us, we want to discover our particular vocation as a congregation.
With joy and strong consensus, we adopted the tagline, “Reconciling, Affirming, Rejoicing,” in the first half of 2019. In the second half of that year, we developed a strategic plan, which was approved at the Annual Vestry in 2020. And we all know what happened a few weeks later.
Since emerging, slowly and unevenly and incompletely, from the pandemic, we’ve revived this process. We want to know what particular way of fulfilling the commandment God calls us to. We want to know what will excite us and inspire us. And, on a more mundane and practical level, we want to know what our top priorities are for using our space, before we start planning major renovations.
We’re trying to figure out the balance between actively brainstorming, and waiting on the Spirit to show us the way. Things have started to bubble up, but we’re still very much in a time of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Are we called to be the church that centres children, building on our successful Messy Church and expanding beyond that programme to reach out to, and support, young children and families in our neighbourhoods in multiple ways?
Are we called to be the church that centres Indigenous people, harking back to the time when St. Paul’s, Lachine, had thriving relationships with that community, figuring out how to work with Ullivik and the Native Women’s Centre, and embracing reconciliation as an even more core commitment?
Are we called to be the church that centres LGBTQ+ people, learning more about who they are, how they see themselves, and how we can become a truly safe space; and being part of the growing global movement to counter the hatred that they so often experience from religious institutions?
Are we called to be the church that centres the earth and the environment, reviving the raised beds for gardening beside the building, adding a bicycle blessing in May to the pet blessing in October, and exploring other ways that our faith calls us to care for creation?
Any of these are possibilities. Any of them are good. Any of them are a valid way of following the commandments.
A parish our size can’t do all of them thoroughly and well, just like one person can’t be an astronaut, a ballerina, and prime minister all at the same time. That’s nothing against us – God doesn’t call us to do everything.
What are our gifts? What are our joys? What lights us up and makes our eyes sparkle with excitement? That is the best path for following the commandments.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Psalm 119 is how joyful and excited it is about God’s law. The Psalmist does not see the law as demanding and burdensome. She sees it as sweet, “sweeter than honey to my mouth.” The very first two verses, which we read today, are “Happy are they whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord! Happy are they who observe his decrees and seek him with all their hearts!”
The people of All Saints by the Lake are happy when we come together to worship; to strengthen the bonds of fellowship between us; and to engage in our mission of reconciling, affirming and rejoicing. Newcomers often remark to me about the welcome and warmth they have felt in this place. We’ve made a pretty good start on loving God and loving our neighbours.
But God calls us also to find the one particular way in which we can be most useful in doing God’s work in this community and most joyful in carrying it out.
We’re not there yet. At the Annual Vestry Meeting, you’ll hear more about the ongoing process to get us there. But if there’s one thing our readings this morning teach us, it’s that when we find our very own best way of following God’s commandments, it will offer us joy and abundant life.
Amen.
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