All will be well

A sermon for the congregation of St. Stephen, Summerland Anglican Church
Sunday, November 17^th 2024
The Very Rev. Ken Gray

During the 1970s while a student at the University of Calgary my friend, Rod,  was a men’s residence supervisor. In those days, bomb threats were common on Canadian university campuses. One day Rod received a call advising of such a threat with instructions to evacuate the building. Door by door, floor by floor, he ran up and down stairs knocking on doors and issuing a single message. “There’s a bomb scare; you need to vacate the building.” Most students, many not known to be early risers, threw off bedcovers, grabbed a jacket—no mobile phones in those days—and exited the building. At one particular door however Rod he received a different response: “What time is it going off?” In every crowd, there’s always one . . .

I thought of Rod as I read today’s Gospel, where Jesus and his disciples behold with awe the splendid Jerusalem temple: “Do you see these great buildings?” He says: “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” As his words sink in, Peter, James, John, and Andrew ask the obvious question: “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” In other words: “what time is it going off?”

It’s a good question, a very human question, one I would certainly ask. It’s a very timely question for us now as many of us shake our heads wondering what will emerge south of the border as those who think America has been a great nation seek to make it great again. Day after day, a bizarre succession of executive leaders are named. We hoped that the present administration—replete with its own flaws for sure—could withstand the social and political extremes now falling into place. Alas, no; the American people (at least those who voted) have spoken, and in just a few weeks’ time, the nation, and to a significant extent, the world could look very different, more competitive, less kind, unjust.

While different in circumstance and historical detail, the force and impact of such a change is exactly what Jesus foretells as he and his disciples stand before Herod’s Temple. They stand before the Second Temple, the reconstructed Temple in Jerusalem, in use between c. 516 BCE until its destruction in 70 CE. It was the chief place of worship, ritual sacrifice and communal gathering for Jews in Jesus’ day.

It is hard to imagine such a powerful and galvanizing religious space today. For modern-day Catholics, Vatican City comes close; for Anglicans Canterbury Cathedral has dominated our thoughts and prayers since its restoration following the reformation, no less so given the recent resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Temple for the Jews of Jesus’ day was indescribably influential as the place where through animal sacrifice, humanity and God met and were “made one” through practice of the Deuteronomic rites and behavioral codes. We meet here today, not in a temple but in a parish church. Our sacrifice is not of animals; we practice, week after week, a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Paul reminds us that we have no need for a temple: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? (1 Cor 6:19)

Jesus goes on to explain that the physical Temple will come tumbling down, an unimaginable suggestion to his hearers, a claim close to blasphemous as that also suggested the dismantling of an entire system of salvific practices. For Jesus, the Temple, and all it stood for, has a specific life span, a beginning and an end. And there’s more; for Jesus, endings don’t stop with the Temple itself.

“When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

I cannot claim to appreciate the birth pangs as mothers come close to the birth of their child. I have bystander-memories as Kathie carried both our children to their respective births. It was a happy, though very painful time for her. Both births followed complicated pregnancies. As human birth includes both complexity and pain, likewise Jesus suggests, powerfully, that beginnings, transitions, and endings are part of God’s way of being with us, right here, and right now.

At last Saturday’s regional gathering of Anglicans from Summerland down to Osoyoos I noted how most of our conversation concerned how we might continue doing what we have always done, though in new ways. It was a good meeting, though we remain stuck as to the shape and thrust of our actual future.

With the US election still in mind I wondered quietly how we might be effected here in the South Okanagan. We are proximate to the US border, a pending destination for undocumented immigrant workers in the US and frankly for anyone who finds themselves on the wrong side of Trumpian power. How might we in our region respond to an influx of social and climate refugees, who find that their time in the US has also come to an end? As catastrophe looms for so many, Jesus reminds us that the birth pangs are just beginning. Discomfort is part of the process of birthing the new age.  

As the late Herb O’Driscoll would say, “let’s go on a journey” to the cell of Julian of Norwich (c. 1343 – after 1416). Julian was an English mystic of the Middle Ages. Her writings, now known as Revelations of Divine Love, are the earliest surviving English-language works attributed to a woman. Julian was not a theologian; she did not try to explain anything to us. She simply framed God’s voice as revelations, themselves received when she lay near death. Despite her city’s devastation by plague, she shared words of hope; “All will be well; all manner of thing will be well.”

Amongst his many songs, Bishop Gordon Light wrote a lovely piece touching many of today’s Gospel themes:

Like a child in the womb
resisting the onslaught of life,
We struggle to hold to what we now see;
Our prayers are but groans,
and we fear there’s a terrible price,
But it’s our new creation coming to be.
For the refrain he includes Julian’s words:

ALL WILL BE WELL, ALL WILL BE WELL 
AND ALL MANNER OF THING SHALL BE WELL.
ALL WILL BE WELL, ALL WILL BE WELL
AND ALL MANNER OF THING SHALL BE WELL.

May this be our own refrain this week and afterwards. As the stones we once thought secure and permanent collapse around us, may Julian’s words, and her testimony, encourage and strengthen our faith and our witness.