All Saints by the Lake, Dorval
August 17, 2025
A picture of a stranger’s cat on the internet.
I was all ready to preach a sermon on today’s Gospel, about how Jesus’ words may sound scary but they encourage us not to be afraid of conflict, because conflict is part of life and it’s important to do the right thing and tell the truth even if it means that sometimes we have to admit we don’t agree about everything.
Then I looked up my sermon from six years ago and discovered that it was, essentially, that sermon. On August 18, 2019, I said:
Living our faith may get us in trouble. It may shatter our peace and break our hearts. But our call is to do precisely that. Not to avoid our conflicts, but to work through them. And thus to pursue the greater goals: of loving and and serving those whom Christ loved and served; of challenging the corrupt and oppressive powers that Jesus challenged; and of building, not a false peace based on niceness, but a genuine community built on truth and love.
We’ve been through a lot together since then here at All Saints’ by the Lake. From the disagreements and hard conversations that go along with being a community of faith, to the stress and anxiety of a global pandemic and political upheaval. We’ve said goodbye to beloved members of this congregation who have decided that they need to attend elsewhere, and mourned the loss that that represents. We’ve figured out how to adapt to circumstances we couldn’t have imagined six years ago.
Wars, floods, fires, plagues: life has been pretty Biblical recently. I certainly feel like I have a lot more sympathy with what some of these folks went through than I did five or ten years ago.
Once again, this week, I extended the reading from Hebrews to include more of the figures that are included in the long list of the faithful in times past. Each of those people faced major challenges, crises, and conflicts. Isaac, Jacob and Esau were part of one of the most legendarily dysfunctional families of all time. Joseph was sold into slavery and imprisoned. Moses was taken from his family and had to face down Pharaoh before leading the people through the wilderness for forty years. Rahab saw her city overtaken by invaders. Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, Samuel, David, all lived in times of huge upheaval and spent much of their lives at war.
“Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword … destitute, persecuted, tormented … Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.”
Reading that, you could be forgiven for feeling like maybe you’re getting played. All this conflict and crisis and suffering, and for what? Some vaguely defined future reward for which even the great heroes of the faith are being made to wait untold eons before they see its fulfillment? Why couldn’t God just make things right now? Why can’t the all-powerful ruler of the universe wave a hand and make all our lives easy and peaceful, prosperous and happy?
I’m certainly not going to claim to have The One Correct Answer to this question, which after all has baffled sages and philosophers for millennia. But I did have one thought while I was on vacation. (Stay with me, here.)
When I’m on vacation and have nothing in particular to do, it happens all too often that I find myself, at 11:30 AM, having slept late, and eaten breakfast but not done the dishes, sitting on the couch in my pajamas, hair and teeth unbrushed, reading a book or looking at pictures of strangers’ cats on the internet.
Now, sometimes this is absolutely the right thing to do! On Easter Monday, for example, when I am genuinely bone-tired and hard-core rest is entirely appropriate. But on a beautiful day in August, when I could be swimming in the neighbourhood pool or going to a museum or finally getting around to doing the decluttering that would make my life easier and more comfortable once I go back to work? It quickly becomes self-indulgent and, while it may feel good in the moment, I will come to the end of the day feeling vaguely queasy, like I skipped my balanced dinner and only ate dessert.
What feels genuinely good is using my mind and body and then resting. Getting on the bus and going to the museum to learn something or just be amazed by human talent and creativity. Walking to the pool, even if it’s brutally hot and I’m dripping with sweat, to be able to splash into the blue water. Talking to my neighbours, digging in a garden, riding my bike, taking a paddleboarding class. Moving, getting dirty, coming in contact with the world.
And then coming home, and showering off the sweat and grime, and cracking open a cold drink, and then collapsing on the couch to read novels and look at pictures of strangers’ cats on the internet. That feels about a million times better than spending all day lying around like a slug when I’ve actually gotten a reasonable amount of sleep and have some energy for once.
It’s not a perfect analogy by any means, but I hope you can see where I’m going here. The challenges and conflicts, the crises and suffering of our present lives – and those of the heroes of faith who went before us – are the ways that we work, move, use our minds and bodies, our talents and abilities, before, at the end of the day, we rest and refresh ourselves. And elsewhere in the letter, the writer of Hebrews actually uses an extended metaphor about our divine reward as “entering into God’s rest.”
As I said last week about the letter to the Hebrews, “The city of God is not for polite spectators. We should arrive there worn out, scuffed and dusty, bearing witness to our labours on behalf of the Kingdom.”
Life is going to be hard. Yes, of course, we should do our best to ensure that it’s not harder than it needs to be, for us and for others. But we’re never going to eliminate struggle and heartbreak entirely. We can let it make us bitter and angry, or we can see it as a spiritual fitness program, developing the muscles of our hearts and souls, working up a sweat, probably getting us a bit dirty, but all directed toward that shining moment at the end of the day when we collapse, freshly clean and pleasantly tired, into God’s loving arms, and are embraced and fed (and get to enjoy whatever is the heavenly equivalent of looking at strangers’ cats on the internet).
The writer of Hebrews even says in so many words that following Jesus is like training for a marathon. “Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Life on this earth is a struggle, and a challenge. There will be conflict. But we can get through it, together, and learn, and grow, following the example of those who have gone before us; and the hard times will not last forever, because the race does have a finish line, the promised rest is real, and God is faithful.
Amen.
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