Sermon for Sunday, July 6th 2025

The New Creation is Everything! Proper 14, July 6, 2025
Eileen Scully

A little over a week ago, the priests, deacons, and laity in the General Synod elected a new primate, Archbishop Shane Parker. And on days on either side of that long, hot day of ballots, hymn singing, prayer, and more ballots, the clergy, bishops, and laity of General Synod made decisions on about twenty resolutions, ranging from new lectionary texts to advocacy for justice and peace in the Philippines, to support for migrant workers in Canada.

For me, my colleagues and the committees and other groups we serve, the cycle of these General Synod gatherings, as they happen only every three years, shapes a cycle of work. And so like a fresh school year, or a delightful summertime stretching out before us, or a new theatre production season opening, some things feel rather fresh and new.

It’s a good time to remember that the new creation that is in our midst, as St. Paul reminds us, is everything. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision mean a thing, but the new creation is everything! Our old ways of identifying in such ways that define us in opposition to each other are over with and mean nothing; in fact, they can be destructive of God’s desires for us. No, the new creation is everything.

Not that a new triennium in General Synod, or the election of a new primate is the heralding of the new creation: Jesus has done that already; it is merely to us once again to remind ourselves as we experience a new something, that God’s newness, God’s work of bringing in this new creation is already going on.

Now the passage of resolutions – in an annual parish meeting or in a synod – may sound an easy thing: people vote, and someone or some machine tallies the votes and we have a resolution. But the discernment that goes into these processes can be very very hard, and that is certainly the case in a General Synod. What is it to discern according to the Spirit, rather than to decide according to the flesh? How do we uphold the needs of the whole church, coast to coast to coast; how do we make financial decisions for the good of the whole in financially tough times, taking into account that for a substantial part of that whole, as we were reminded again and again in the North, a bag of flour can cost over $100, and many dioceses are absolutely dependent upon grants pooled from the richer dioceses such as our own, when our own are concerned about financial pressures just to pay the insurance and building costs?

In a context of parliamentary-style debate and voting, can we truly say we’ve discerned the mind of Christ when 10% of the gathered body consistently have voted against almost every resolution? What are the 10% saying? Are they walking away? Are we walking away from them? It’s difficult to discern meaning here, but I do know that the health of the Body of Christ is not measured by numbers of resolutions passed by strong majorities, but rather by the quality of care that we live in relation to one another, especially in relation to the most vulnerable in our midst. There was evidence of good mutual care at Synod; there was also evidence of remaining disputes and disagreements that are, to be honest, very hard to bridge. Guess what? The church isn’t perfect. Ah, but when we can be honest about that reality and about our need for God to work in us more than we can ask or imagine, we can be glorious in our humility.

St. Paul reminds us that beneath all of our decisions rests a foundation: Are we to live according to the flesh or are we to live according to the spirit? If those things that distinguish us from each other – our race, age, gender, physical abilities – become dividing lines, they serve destructive powers. These givens of our identities should be able to be celebrated as gifts of a God who sowed the original seeds of the glorious diversity of creation watered by the Holy Spirit and grown into maturity by the Word. Instead, they become lines drawn for battle. The anger-fueled word battles we hear noisily around us; and the resentment-fueled silent battles that settle into place when we simply stop talking with each other across those perceived lines. Add in disparities in economic and social power and we are a people far too easily divided. It is too too easy to fall into what I will not hesitate to call the ‘ways of the flesh’.

But we are to align ourselves with God’s new creation, which is coming into being. Our lives are lived in that Spirit, in God’s Spirit of the New Creation. Our work is, as St. Paul instructs, very simple: do not weary of doing what is right, working for the good of all, and especially for the family of faith. This is our life; this is our work.

Naaman had work to do. He was a military commander under the king of Aram-Damascus, a neighbouring kingdom to Israel. The two kingdoms were at war, which rather clearly defined Naaman’s job parameters: and as in all wars, girls and women were strategic targets. A young girl of Israel is kidnapped and brought into Naaman’s household as a slave. Naaman’s need for physical healing of a skin disease was obvious. But the healing that he eventually receives, after battling with his own incredulity and cynicism, is, I suspect, more than physical.

It is pure speculation to wonder whether the stresses and constant traumas of his dayjob may have been an underlying cause of his skin condition. What is clear is that the path to his physical healing has him having to break all sorts of boundaries of ‘the flesh’ that make him and his people enemies of the Israelites, including of the young girl and of the Prophet of Israel, who reach across the divide to heal him. Suffering in the flesh, Naaman submits his will to an enemy in hope of healing, healing that is given to his skin; healing that I trust is also given to his war-trained soul. I cannot help but wonder what happened in his soul.

In verses that we don’t hear this morning, the story continues Naaman goes back to the Prophet who has healed him, confesses the God of Israel as the one True God, and tries to offer a thanksgiving gift to the Prophet, but the Prophet refuses the payment. Whether Naaman considered this a gift or a transactional payment for services rendered, we don’t know fully, but there are two things that stand out for me in this: one, that the healing that was given was a free gift from God operating through the Prophet; and that something in Naaman’s heart had melted and let loose a response of praise and gratitude. Perhaps he has even begun to sow in the Spirit.

We too are called to sow in the Spirit; not to weary of doing what is right, and working for the good of all, especially in the family of faith. This is the beginning of our life in the new creation: caring for all, alleviating suffering, and announcing that this new creation is, in fact, everything!