All Saints’, Dorval
October 19, 2025
Tableau from the Beulah Land felt board “Jerusalem” story, which I told before preaching this sermon
They told the story to their children, and to their children’s children; they wrote it in a book, and kept it safe, and they read it again and again.
Here we are, telling the story, as the people of God have done for the last three and a half thousand years, and it never stops being worthy of being told.
For my whole life and career, following the example of my mother, I have worked to tell this story as one story, not the random collection of disjointed moral lessons as which it is often presented, but one story of the people’s recurring faithlessness, God’s recurring faithfulness, and the promise that will ultimately be fulfilled. And it is a story that resonates in a new way right now, with the most fragile imaginable peace holding in the Holy Land, and the world reckoning with the bloody legacy of the tragedy that occurs when this story is mapped onto contemporary power politics.
There is certainly no shortage of mad kings, oppressed people, wicked priests, unjust judges, and false prophets in 2025. Yet we are called to be faithful, just as our siblings in faith have been faithful for many generations, usually in far worse conditions than we find ourselves.
And yet, it’s hard on the soul, to be alive in such times, especially when we are far better informed about every horrible thing happening around the world. I have met with folks really struggling with the dissonance of living a basically happy and comfortable life in Canada while the rest of the world seems to be melting down around us. Shouldn’t we be figuring out how to be heroes? How to save the world, like the Chosen One in a young adult novel?
But real life consists much more of just putting one foot in front of the other and doing the next small, unglamorous, right thing.
A few months ago I posted this online:
I’ve been thinking lately about the ordinary people under the Nazis. There were a lot of people in Germany and the occupied territories who didn’t actively resist, who didn’t risk their lives, who put their heads down and got on with life and tried to ignore what they knew was happening elsewhere, but who didn’t become wholesale Nazis either (for any reason). There were still pastors who preached the Sermon on the Mount, and teachers who taught children to share and take their turns, and parents who brought their children up to be human beings and not good little members of the Hitler Youth. If there hadn’t been, the reconstruction of Germany postwar, and the very extensive and real reckoning with its crimes that did in fact take place, wouldn’t have been possible. Just maintaining human decency in times like these is something. Even if you don’t risk your life, even if you’re not in The Resistance. It’s essential.
This is certainly resonating with today’s Gospel. The persistent widow refuses to believe that one corrupt and lazy judge will prevent her from getting justice. She insists on adhering to the old values, even if they seem to be getting her nowhere. She refuses to concede that the time for justice is over, and finally, out of sheer dogged persistence, she is vindicated.
“When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” asks Jesus. Will there still be people telling this old, old story, and having the stubborn naïveté to believe it makes a difference? Pastors preaching, and teachers teaching, and parents guiding their children to be good humans and not people who laugh nastily at the idea that we should care for, and about, each other?
They told the story to their children, and to their children’s children; they wrote it in a book, and kept it safe, and they read it again and again.
Two weeks ago, at Diocesan Synod, the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Most Reverend Shane Parker, was with us and was able to speak briefly to the assembled delegates before he had to catch a plane to his next engagement.
Archbishop Shane is beloved by the diocese of Ottawa, from which he came; they didn’t want to give him up when he reluctantly agreed to let his name stand as Primate because he has a particular, very necessary set of gifts and competencies to meet the current moment in the church, when we are on the brink of transformative structural change. I voted for him at General Synod, I have tremendous respect for him, and I’m very glad he is in the position he’s in for the next three years.
However, there’s one thing that Shane has been saying that has been raising some hackles, and he said it again at Synod. He says that he no longer uses the language of “growth,” to describe his hopes for the Church, but rather the language of “thriving”.
Based on the response, he may in fact have found the exact form of reverse psychology that could finally motivate Anglicans to engage in evangelism. Several people (even after ++Shane had left!) came to the microphone with comments that include variations on, “oh, you think we can’t grow?! We’ll show you!!”
And the thing is, I don’t think that growth requires the hottest new program or a fancy multi-step plan. It just requires being willing to tell the story. It requires being faithful. It requires not giving up on the hope of true community, on the goal of caring for each other, and it means being willing to invite those we know into our congregations, where we learn, day in and day out, how to be a people who cry for justice and cannot be stopped or silenced, and where we teach children to share, to be kind, and to find wonder.
As the writer says to Timothy in the Epistle reading: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke, and encourage with the utmost patience in teaching.
These are deeply unfavourable times, friends. But they are also times of enormous opportunity. They are times that call us back to our deepest, most basic commitments: that God is good; that justice is possible; that all people are beloved; that there is enough if we all share; that love wins. And they call us to invite others to join us in those commitments, in the face of bigotry and brutality that seeks to destroy all that is true and beautiful in human life.
They told the story to their children, and to their children’s children; they wrote it in a book, and kept it safe, and they read it again and again.
Keep telling the story. It has saved generations before us, and it will save us now.
Amen.
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