All Saints’, Dorval
June 9, 2024
Illustration by Pauline Baynes, 1956
[A note regarding the day’s Gospel reading: if you’re alarmed by the idea of an unforgiveable “sin against the Holy Spirit,” here’s my sermon from three years ago dealing with that text.]
So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.
For Anglicans of a certain flavour, this phrase of St. Paul’s – “an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure” – is forever inseparable from the sermon with that title preached by C. S. Lewis at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, eighty-three years ago yesterday. I wish I could just stand up here and read it to you, but the whole thing is more than 5300 words long, and you would rightfully mutiny before I was done. I commend it to you, however – the text is available in full in many places on the internet, and in collections of Lewis’ works that can be found in public libraries.
The sermon is essentially an explanation of why the Christian should desire to attain the glory of God in the first place, a concept that Lewis later depicted artistically, with thrilling and heartbreaking effectiveness, in The Last Battle, the concluding volume of the Narnia Chronicles, an illustration from which serves as the image on today’s sermon slide. If you’ve read the books, you know that that is Reepicheep, the heroic Talking Mouse, coming down from the gates of Aslan’s Country to welcome the main characters who have just literally died and gone to heaven – who have taken on that new weight of glory, as the whole of the beloved world of Narnia has come to an end and is being made new.
I told this same story yesterday at Messy Church, because every year in June we wrap up before the summer break with the end of the story, the “happily ever after” without which none of the rest of it makes any sense. I gathered the older kids to look at some of the actual scripture passages from which the story script derived, and we were just reading the beginning of the 21st chapter of Revelation when the fire alarm went off, due to the combination of weather and renovation that had forced us to prepare dinner by firing up the barbecues under the overhang in front of the main door.
And that, if anything, is a living example of what Paul wrote in the first place. Let’s go back to the reading from last week, which comes just before what we heard this week:
But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.
OK, so it might be a little melodramatic to compare a thunderstorm and a fire alarm to being chained up, jailed and executed by the Romans. But “perplexed, but not driven to despair” feels like a pretty accurate description of my life, and life in the church in 2024, a lot of the time.
Because Christians do not believe that there is nothing beyond this life, as atheists do. Nor do we believe that we are called to let go of everything, to detach, to become perfectly pure and enlightened and separated from the concerns of the flesh, the emotions, the mundane. Nor do we believe that we live this life and then get to start over and do it all again, whether trying to do better or being punished for our errors this time around. Instead, we see, quite clearly, the weakness, imperfection, anxiety, drudgery, and absurdity of human existence; and we heartily believe in an eternal and divine reality awaiting us beyond this mortal life, a reality that persists in irrupting into our ordinary days and offering us glimpses of transcendence.
Let me tell you about this week. I spent a lot of time on four things: prepping worship slides, because Laura and I are frantically working ahead so that both of us can take time off this summer; various complicated pastoral care situations, which are not my stories to share; Messy Church, as aforementioned; and attending Diocesan Synod, which this year was a conference synod covering two and a half days (though I had to miss part of Friday because after sixteen years ordained, I still can’t bilocate).
And as I thought about Paul’s words and my experiences, I realized that in every case, I could discern both the slight momentary affliction and the eternal weight of glory represented by these – both routine and essential – tasks.
Prepping worship slides? It’s repetitive, nitpicky, and four years after starting to use it regularly, I still routinely swear at PowerPoint. And yet through this task one can glimpse the joy of worship, the ways God moves among us when we assemble to hear the Word and gather around the Table.
Pastoral care? Perhaps no other form of priestly work brings one into as close contact with the world’s pain and brokenness. And yet through this task one can glimpse God moving in human lives, creating connections between souls, and bringing the peace that passes understanding, even in the midst of suffering.
Messy Church? Even when there are no thunderstorms or fire alarms, it’s often barely controlled chaos. And yet there are babies to cuddle and stories to tell and kids to have weird and random conversations with and adults who show up and cook and clean up, and there is no better place to glimpse the unfolding Kingdom of God.
Diocesan Synod? Business meetings are not my thing at the best of times, and business meetings in a post-Christendom church are not for the faint of heart. There were issues with the sound system, discussions of ongoing budget deficits, and annoying people taking up too much time at the microphone. And yet through this task one can glimpse the reality of the Church Universal: of people made in the image of God, struggling, however imperfectly, to build something together that reflects the love we have found in Christ Jesus, and find ways to share that love across the world.
Slight momentary afflictions, more than balanced by an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.
What examples can you think of? I think this pattern can be found in anything worth doing. Think of the bank manager wading through reams of numbers, knowing that the mental exhaustion is worth it for the knowledge that people’s hard-earned savings are being well and ethically administered. Think of the computer engineer doing the drudgery of building a database to be used administer essential vaccines. Think of the nurse or teacher, overworked, underpaid, exhausted by physical and emotional labour, but presented every day with the chance to witness growth and learning, healing and hope.
None of this is to say that we shouldn’t do what we can to make working conditions, and life in general, less soul-destroying where possible. We don’t embrace suffering for its own sake.
But we acknowledge the inevitable irritations – and sometimes the profound tragedies – of living in a fallen world, and yet we are “afflicted in every way, but not crushed; … struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”
So that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our bodies. As Lewis wrote at the very end of “The Weight of Glory,” “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.” Each of us, made in the image of God, will outlast this earth, the cosmos, all the rest of God’s creation; we will be made new when the heaven and earth are made new, and carry that weight of glory with us into eternity. We will be welcomed into Aslan’s country by those dear to us who have gone before us, and in the words with which I concluded Friday’s story:
God will invite everyone, rich and poor, to the marriage feast of God’s only Son, and they will all live happily ever after.
Amen.
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