St. George's Sermons
Place du Canada, Montreal
The Rev. Canon Brett Cane, August 11, 2002
12th
Sunday after Pentecost; 10:30 am Sung Eucharist; farewell service
as rector of St. George’s
“…the Whole Will of God”
Isaiah 40: 6-11;
Romans 10: 5-15; Matthew 14: 22-33
Opening
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, you have given your church the
task of building up your kingdom here on earth; remind us now, by your Holy
Spirit, of the crucial elements involved in
that great mission that we might carry out the whole will of God, who is
our Father in heaven. Amen.
Introduction
Forty-five
years ago I arrived with my family from England across the street at Windsor
Station by boat train from Quebec City.
I was not then even a follower of Jesus and little did I know that twenty-eight
years later I would end up as rector of the church that meets in the first
building I would see in Montreal. My
seventeen and a half years with you as your pastor is a tribute to the amazing
grace of the God who delights in accomplishing the unexpected. As today we celebrate the grace of God which
he has worked in and through me at St. George’s, I also include my wider ministry
in our city and province during the past thirty years and more, represented by
many of you present here today.
In
the twentieth chapter of the book of Acts, we read the apostle Paul’s moving
farewell speech to the elders of the Ephesian church. In it, he declares that he has “not hesitated to preach anything
that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to
house. I have declared to both Jews and
Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord
Jesus….I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God” (Acts 20:
20-21, 27). In my final sermon to you
all as rector, I want to highlight some of the elements of the “whole will of
God” I have attempted to live out and convey to you these past two decades I
have been here at St. George’s and in the over three decades of my ministry
here in Montreal and Quebec. I have
chosen to arrange these elements in three categories: Jews and Greeks, Truth
and Love, and Jesus as Lord.
Jews and Greeks
Paul
spoke about declaring the message to both “Jews and Greeks.” Today, we could translate this to say
“people in the church and those outside it.”
Having myself come to faith in Christ outside the church through a
little Bible study at St. Lambert Elementary School I have always had a passion
to reach those who are not within the church.
That includes the majority of people in this world at the moment, and
throughout my ministry, I have tried to communicate the absolute importance of
mission to those outside. In the past
few weeks I have spoken of the need to change our attitude from maintenance to
mission. It is so easy for those of us
“on the inside” to forget the needs of those who are not, to take our
privileges in Christ for granted, and to hide behind a general misconception
that “all will be saved in the end.” I
can tell you, that unless Christians had reached out to me beyond the walls of
the church, I would not be a believer today and would not have received the
grace of God’s salvation in Christ for eternity. As the passage we heard from Romans 10 asserts, “How can they
believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10: 14). I have tried to live out and convey to you a burning desire for
mission and to see it accomplished.
At
the same time, I have not forgotten those within the church. I have been one of you for forty-three years
and I know myself well enough that we Christians are in constant need of
renewal and refreshing in the Spirit. I
am a passionate Anglican and believe that, within classical Anglicanism, the
Biblical gospel is effectively enshrined and lived. As such, my life-long goal is nothing short of the complete
renewal of the Anglican Church of Canada!
This begins at the parish level and goes right on to General Synod. I believe I follow in Archbishop Cranmer’s
footsteps as a “cautious reformer” and have rejoiced to see our parish and
diocese regain its vision as a biblical church with a passion for God. One of our senior clergy once said that our
diocese in the fifties and sixties was “very dry” – I rejoice that it has been
refreshed and renewed by the living waters of the Spirit in these past thirty
years. In our parish, many have moved
into deeper prayer and a renewed passion for God. We have been touched by the Spirit in various ways and rejoiced
at his healing power amongst us. I have
tried to live out and convey to you a yearning for renewal and the experience
of the Spirit’s power.
A
final implication of the theme of “Jew and Greek” that I have tried to instil
has been the universality and inclusiveness of the kingdom of God. Romans 10:12 tells us that “there is no
difference between Jew and Gentile.” It
is so easy for any one group in the church to see itself as the most important
group (usually your own) and to ignore the needs or perspectives of
others. We are a congregation of more
than one race and socio-economic background and culture. In addition, in this day of alienation of aloneness, people of all backgrounds
are yearning to belong. Jesus calls us
into his family as brothers and sisters.
We are stuck with one another form all eternity, so we had better get
used to living together now! I have
tried to live out and convey to you a sense of family amongst all groups in our
parish – a sense of belonging that has not implied first-class and second-class
church members.
Truth and Love
Once
people have been included and brought in, what is it that we have to convey to
them? What is the standard for renewal
in the faith for those already within?
St. George’s tradition and that of the other ministries with which I
have been involved has been a biblical tradition. In Romans 10, Paul speaks about preaching the message (verses
14-15) and the “beauty of the [even the smelly!] feet of those who bring good
news!” We are a preaching church because we have something to say. That something is rooted in and formed by
the Scriptures. We do this because this
was Jesus’ pattern. His thought and mission
were steeped in the Scriptures and so must ours be. Jesus came “teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news
of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness” (Matthew 9: 35). There is a content to the faith and that
content is supremely biblical. I have
tried to live out and convey to you a biblical faith and to affirm that our
final authority in belief and conduct is the Scriptures.
As
a corollary to this, I have passionately tried to convey the importance of
“speaking the truth in love” as Paul says in Ephesians 4:15. As a conservative, my danger is to emphasize
truth at the expense of love. One of
the key lessons of my ministry here happened when I reacted in a very aloof
manner to a young man who had come into the church to pray and seek counsel
having just discovered that he had contracted AIDS. After falling into a terrible state of despair, he was later
ministered to very effectively by a conservative Baptist church who had learned
to exercise love while holding onto truth.
By the grace of God, I was given the privilege of receiving forgiveness
from the young man before he died. Many
people are theological liberals today because of the lack of love they saw in their
original conservative setting. As I
have often pointed out, truth without love becomes legalism. This has been heard, I believe. What is harder, because of our cultural climate,
is to hear that love without truth is sentimentality. The very love we hope to offer, if not grounded in the truth of
God’s word, becomes toxic and works the exact opposite of what we hope to
accomplish. Jesus combined both truth
and love when he said to the woman caught in adultery “Neither do I condemn
you, go and sin no more!” (John 8:11).
I have tried to live out and convey to you Jesus’ own pattern of holding
together truth and love.
Jesus as Lord
This
brings us to the final category of “the whole will of God” I want to share with
you – Jesus as Lord. We know what the
truth and love of God is by looking at Jesus.
When the disciples saw Jesus walking on water and calming the wind and
the waves, they exclaimed, “Truly you are the Son of God” (Matthew 14:33). At the heart of the Christian faith is that
God has made himself known as a human being – Jesus Christ. It is supremely through Jesus that we know
that God is love. It is in Christ on
the cross that we have seen that God is, at his heart, self-giving love. It is in the death and resurrection of Jesus
that we have the barrier of sin between us and God removed and the way opened
up back to him. He alone is the “way,
the truth, and the life,” through which no one comes to the father (John
14:6). I have tried to live out and
convey to you that “Jesus Christ and him crucified” is the heart of our faith
and the lens through which our lives for eternity must be seen.
What
is more, this truth and life must be entered into personally. We know what the truth and love of God is by
experiencing a personal relationship with him through Jesus. This sort of language is more acceptable
today than it once was, but it is still difficult for Anglicans to speak of
“Jesus” preferring the more generic “God.”
It all seems too intimate for those of us with a British heritage. But Paul says that we must “confess with
your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord.’” (Romans 10:9).
Jesus himself speaks of “knowing God and knowing himself” (John
17:3). John speaks of “receiving Jesus”
(John 1:11,12), and Paul of being “baptized into Christ’s death and united with
him in his resurrection” (Romans 6: 4-5).
I have tried to live out and convey to you that the Christian faith is
not primarily some theological enterprise or religious organization, but a
living, dynamic and personal encounter with the living God through Jesus
Christ.
And
where is it that we express this dynamic encounter most powerfully? In worship as the body of Christ
together. On the Sea of Galilee, the response
of the disciples to the person of Jesus was to worship him (Matthew 14:33). In our 1999 study of the Book of Revelation,
I caught a fresh of vision of God through the unfolding of the great drama of
salvation and the scenes of worship contained there. We, from all peoples and nations, are the bride of Christ,
“beautifully dressed for her husband” (Revelation 21: 2). We encircle the throne and cry, “Worthy is
the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honour and glory and praise!"
With every creature in heaven and on earth, we sing "To him who
sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power,
for ever and ever!" (Revelation 5: 12, 13). We experience a foretaste of this intimacy with God and the glory
to come in our weekly worship here on earth.
But our worship also brings us together with one another. As we express our dependence upon God in
worship, we admit our vulnerability and so open up the possibility of
submitting to one another and experiencing the reconciliation that Christ has
given us. I have tried to live out and
convey to you that Spirit-filled worship, well-carried out in whatever form, is
at the heart of the Christian life and where we supremely encounter our common life
with God through Christ.
Conclusion
A
passion for mission, a yearning for renewal, a sense of belonging, the supremacy
of the Scriptures, holding together truth and love, a personal encounter with
Jesus Christ and him crucified, and the response of worship: these are some of
the elements of the “whole will of God” I have attempted to live out and convey
to you. For my failures and negligences
in carrying out this task, I ask your forgiveness; for my successes and
achievements I thank God and rejoice with you as together we have built up the
kingdom of God in this parish, in this city, and in this province.
I
can end with nothing more appropriate than further words of St. Paul in his farewell
speech to the Ephesians: “I commit you to God and to the word of his grace,
which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all who are
sanctified.”
Closing Prayer:
Almighty God, you
have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until the find their rest
in you. May we find peace in your service,
and in the world to come, see you face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and
forever. Amen.[1]
.