[With apologies to Bishop Anna, a technical "difficulty" means that this sermon appears to have been delivered by Rev. Colleen.  Instead, on May 5, 2024, St. Matthias was delighted to welcome Bishop Anna as presider and preacher. She generously shared her draft with us.]

Good people of St. Matthias.  It is a privilege to serve as your bishop and to be with you this morning.

First of all, thank you, for your patience and faithfulness.  As I said to parish council the other night, you are a good parish.  You are doing good work being the body of Christ in this community.  You care for and look after one another, you are well shepherded by Colleen, your ministry to the wider community through the preschool, Rogers Court, and all the rentals, the labyrinth, is no small thing.

And you have been patient and faithful through the unsettling process of your bishop telling you that we might sell your building and then, no, we aren’t, at least for now.

I don’t know what the future holds but I can say that at this point at least two more years.  We have committed not to even entertain offers until at least February and if anything came that was appealing it would be ages before this property got rezoned and permitted etc.  It may be that at some point we need to let go of or redevelop this property, but that is not happening anytime soon.

We are in liminal times.  The way of being church that we invited in the 1960s has come to an end.  Christine taught a course about this in Lent called “where have all the young people gone”.  We literally built churches with halls just as the young people were making their way for the door. . .  Fast forward to today when we have more churches than people who want to fill them.

To help us think about that I’d like to draw on the work of Teilhard de Chardin who was one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century.

Born in 1881, he served as a stretcher bearer in the first world war and watched in horror when the second world war broke out.  He was a paleontologist, geologist, philosopher and Jesuit priest.    

With all that knowledge, all that experience, his question was, is the Christian narrative big enough to embrace everything we now understand about the world, especially what we now understand about evolution?    

In 1937, The New York Times described him as a Jesuit who believed that man descended from monkeys.

He talked about how Christianity is like a tree that has been planted in too small a pot.    You know what I mean, the roots are all wrapped around one another, it can’t go on this way and be healthy.  It must be replanted, either in a bigger pot, or he suggested, better yet, in the earth itself.

This is a rich and helpful metaphor, especially in this part of the world.  This part of the world where we are blessed to live alongside some very very big trees.    Trees that are hundreds of feet tall and hundreds of years old.  Trees for which the idea of a pot is laughable.  No pot could ever contain the trees of our rainforests,  our Douglas firs, pines and hemlocks.   

My husband James and I have recently welcomed a third teenager, apart from our own two, we’ve welcomed the child of a friend, a 16 year old from Tokyo who was in need of a change.    She’s been with us a couple months and if you ask her what she thinks of living in Victoria, the first thing she says is that she loves the trees.   How big they are, how many of them there are.

For you can’t live in this part of the world and not be awestruck by the majesty of Creation.

In 2022 Paul Bramadat in  Religion at the Edge:  Nature, Spirituality and Secularity in the Pacific Northwest identifies that this part of the world is characterized by what he terms reverential naturalism.      For me, I think it boils down to the fact that everyone who lives in this part of the world cannot but be enchanted by the  trees, the coastlines, of the waves and the wind, the ferns, the oaks, the whales, herons, kingfishers and sea lions.    The canticle we started our day with this morning, “glorify the lord of mountains and hill, o springs of water, seas, streams, o whales and all that move in the waters”,  makes sense to us, resonates with us.  

The beauty and majesty of this part of God’s creation is so great, the revelation that is creation is so wonderfully accessible to us here, that it’s no wonder some people are so enthralled with the first book of revelation, with creation itself.

So to go back to Teilhard de Chardin’s metaphor of the church being like a tree that has grown too big for its pot that needs to be replanted, either in a bigger pot or, better yet, in the earth itself.  My closing question for us is what would happen if we here in this diocese of islands and inlets lived as if God has already made that happen.    As if God has already gone on ahead of us, as he the risen Christ does at Easter, and planted the tree that is the church in the earth itself?

What if we were honest about the fact that the church as institution is not a great gardener.    We are putting a lot of effort into keeping the church in the pot.   We lament that we don’t have any young people in the pot anymore, that the pot is cracked and needs a new roof and heat pump, that the cracks are showing.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, maybe God has already transplanted the tree, not into a bigger pot, but into the earth itself.

The first and great commandment is that we must turn outward, to love of God and love of neighbour.  It’s not, thank God, all about us, our own comfort and desires, but about a world in which all people, all of creation thrives.  And that world is possible, but it requires each of us to discipline ourselves, to seek the good of others before our own good, to be enchanted with the whole of creation and to let go of being so obsessed with consumerism and self-satisfaction.

I don’t need to tell you that the world is facing some pretty huge problems and it is going to take all of us, working together, to tackle them.    We are not doing enough for the children in Gaza, Ukraine, the South Sudan.  We are not doing enough for the young people, especially the indigenous young people, in our own country.   There are more indigenous children in ‘care’ today than at the height of residential schools.    

I think that what God is telling us, as the diocese of islands and inlets, the most secular diocese in North America is that we don’t need to worry about the pot.    We need to grow where we are planted and I think we are, like it or not, we are being transplanted.  We are being taken out of our comfortable little pot, our comfortable pew, and planted in the earth itself.     Not everything about the secular society is good but not everything about it is bad.   I think the good news in this part of the world is that the so-called secular society around us is enchanted with the earth itself.   

And this, this gives us an opportunity for dialogue, and for service.  For faithfulness.  

The diocese of inlands and inlets has roots in so many places across this beautiful diocese of towering forests and mist laden coastlines.    

But we need to get out of our pot, out of our bounded identities, our comfortable and familiar ways and dare to be planted, dare to be planted in earth itself.     Our God-infused island home.

What we know. What we don’t know.  What God might be calling us to. . .

 

 

 

 

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