September 12, 2021 – 16th Sunday after Pentecost

“Emerging from the pandemic, not looking back, but looking forward in the world in which we live and the Church in which we proclaim the Gospel, to truly make it a home for all.”

Let us pray.  Holy and gracious God, we give you thanks for the gift of your presence in this time and place and within each one of us gathered here and in our many homes. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

For several years now in the Anglican Church of Canada, the five weeks of September and early October have been recognized and set aside as the Season of Creation.  It’s not technically a liturgical season but it is a time of special observance and it’s designed to call a special awareness to our world as God’s creation, and our role as stewards of God’s creation.  And this is not just something for the Anglican Church of Canada, but rather, there are Christian denominations all around the world that observe this time.  And the theme this year for the Season of Creation is: “A home for all?  Renewing the oikos of God.”  Well the word ‘oikos’ is a Greek word, and it means ‘home’ or ‘household’.  So the oikos of God is like the home or household of God.  And the theme is trying to get us to view the world, with all of creation, as God’s house or household, and to make us more conscious, and more conscientious, about looking after God’s house and household.

The call is to be a source of renewal of God’s house so it is truly a home for all, and not just some.  In the Collect Prayer, which of course was written very independently in the season of creation, we still have a resonance with that theme.  Here’s what we prayed, “Help us so to proclaim the good news of your love that all who hear it may turn to you.”  So in other words, the emphasis is on how we proclaim the Gospel of God’s love – by our actions and by our words – so that it reaches all people, and they are moved to respond to God’s love.

So I want to focus this morning on our call to proclaim the good news of God’s love in this way – renewing God’s house to become a home for all.  And I want us to focus on that theme in two parallel ways.  The first is the one to do with the Season of Creation – God’s house, God’s household, as our world – as God’s creation that we are called to ensure and uphold and take care of.  But the second track I want to take this on is concerning our church of All Saints – where we are called to be renewed as a ‘home for all.’  Right now, of course, it’s very fitting to see God’s house as our world, with the consciousness of our climate crisis, and the ravaging effects it is having around the globe – especially as we emerge from this Covid pandemic when, for a brief few months, we had the experience – a taste – of reduced emissions and clearer skies.  So we had a glimpse of what this could be.  It’s also a fitting time, though, for our church of All Saints – recognizing itself as God’s house and to be a house for all, when we’re emerging from an 18-month disruption in our established ways – in being able to do things “the way they’ve always been done here”, the way that we’re comfortable with.

So let’s look first of all at God’s house as our world – becoming conscious of our activity, or inactivity, and how that impacts people, not just locally but in other parts of the world.  It has been scientifically well-established that the climate crisis and the resulting greenhouse gases have a far greater impact on people in poorer countries, on indigenous nations, and so we’re challenged to change our consumerist ways.  Now initially some of those challenges may seem quite minor, and they don’t have a huge impact on us.  I’m thinking, for instance, of the decision lately in the last year to ban single-use plastics – like the disposable plastic bags that you get at the grocery store.  Now for me, that’s just a minor inconvenience.  I have to remember to take some kind of bag with me when I go to the store, or come out with an arm load of groceries.  And I have maybe a slight bit more of an issue.  I’ve counted on those plastic bags as a supply to put inside our waste-paper baskets in our house.  So I have to come up with a different way of dealing with that.  But what if we’re challenged to change our shopping habits in a fairly profound kind of way.  Sometimes our insistence, in the western world, on being able to buy certain fruits and vegetables year-round, plays havoc with the economies of small-country producers, in tropical climates, because it narrows their food production so they focus on those export goods.  And it brings about rapidly rising inflation in their local countries and their economies in a way that they cannot afford it.

Now let’s look at All Saints congregation as God’s house, and also being called to renewal; so we are more effectively a household of God for all people.  Now we, in this time of disruption – we have developed live-streaming for our 11 o’clock Sunday worship to include more people – to recognize them as belonging to this house of God, even if they can’t be physically present.  And maybe that’s caused a little bit of inconvenience.  Perhaps you’ve had to sit somewhere differently than you might normally in the pew.  Perhaps the preacher’s had to adapt, a little bit, his of her preaching style.  But it’s not really been a big deal.   But what if we are challenged to change the way we worship to more actively include – say – young children in our worship?  What if we discover that the style of our worship that we’re used to, is not very accessible to newcomers with little Anglican or even Christian experience?  Or what if we discover that the present leadership structures of our church don’t really allow young parents with young children to participate?  Even in the few contacts I’ve had in the recent month or two, it’s been shown to me that those young parents would struggle with being able to attend regular two-hour evening Vestry and Corporation meetings.  And I suspect that all of us are only too conscious of the reality that the development of new and younger leadership is essential to All Saints being renewed as “a house of God for all.” 

Now initially, I suspect that we’re willing to take on God’s call to become “a household for others.” And I think we’re probably something like Peter in today’s Gospel reading.  Jesus challenges his first disciples to “come clean” on who they’re proclaiming Jesus to be – which is the very core of the Gospel, of course.  Peter’s not shy.  He steps up and says, “You are the Messiah – the Christ.”  And he is right with this “house of God for all people” agenda.  Then, Jesus outlines more deeply what the meaning of “the Messiah” is and, by association, what it will mean for the Messiah’s disciples.  It is clearly not the “house” that Peter saw the call playing out in.  And immediately he takes Jesus aside and starts throwing up roadblocks to Jesus’ path toward being the “house of God for all”, because it is not what Peter has been used to, or expected.

And I don’t think that you or I are any different.  When we’re responding to the call to so proclaim the good news of God’s love in such a way that all are included in the invitation, we’re okay with it as long as it conforms to what we’re used to, and have come to expect.  But if it causes us to let go of some of our beloved practices, and expand our vision of our church; or it causes us to accept some initial discomfort to ensure the inclusion of others in the gospel of God’s love, we want to fight him – to push back – just as Peter did in today’s Gospel reading.

We’re at a very critical time in the life of the world and its health and well-being as a home for all.  And we’re at a very critical time in the life of All Saints church, and its health and well-being as a home, not just for us who have grown comfortable with how it has been in our experience, but truly as an expression of God’s home for all.

As we attempt to resume some sense of normal church life, we need to resist the temptation to have everything be “just as it was before”, like Peter’s well-honed understanding of what a Messiah should be, and instead to seek together the kind of community the gospel of God’s love is calling us to become – now and into the future – to more fully be God’s home for all.

Amen.