November 16, 2025 – The 23rd Sunday after Pentecost

Good Morning! My name is Ben Girgis, and I am the parish intern here at All Saints. I was tasked in giving the sermon this morning, but Father Rob asked me to share about myself. He called it a “Spiritual Biography”, which makes me uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable because I do not like speaking about myself where I just share with people and I feel like my spiritual biography is less about me and more about the community who has shaped my life. So, I’ve titled this sermon, “Luke’s dread and Isaiah’s hope for a very specific group of Protestant Egyptian Christians who made their way to Markham, Ontario.”

Our Gospel this morning is a tough one to hear, not because it challenges us in our response to how we treat others, but because it speaks about things we do not experience as Christians in Canada. We are not persecuted in this country, we have benefited from Christendom and Colonization, and when we hear these passages we pass over them or we treat it as a Spiritual matter. To me, when I read these passages, I do not personally connect with it, because like you, I have not experienced persecution for my faith, but being a Christian Egyptian, my family has experienced death because we follow Christ. We do not scream it from the mountain tops, but in our daily lives, we appreciate the faith which we have received from St. Mark and our forefathers because it is the thing that holds us together. When someone says my last name, I hear a decision that my great grandfather, Giddo Rofail made in 1927. I hear his father’s first name and the man he was named after; who wrote poetry, told our history, and shared the news for the village of Sharunah. As Christ says in the gospel of Luke, “By our endurance we will gain our souls.” We endured the grave because Christ endured death first. In our community, death brings us together. We celebrate life, because death is not our end. We weep over our loss, but in our funerals, laughter fills the air. This is my community; my cousins, many who are not related to me, came from uncles and aunties who sought community in a new world. They were in exile, in a country that offered hope and unknowing; leaving a country that rose up against themselves in revolution.

This hope in which the wolf and sheep lay together became Canada, a hope I lived in. My grandparents came because they were offered a life that would be great for their children and as they settled, more of their community came. When Giddo Rofail came to Canada in 1970, he started a church for Arabic speakers coming to Canada in Knox Presbyterian in downtown Toronto. Persecution of faith became a feverish nightmare that lingered in our distant history. We built houses and churches and dwelled in them, singing songs of praise and thanksgiving to the God of our forefathers that now dwells with us. As the 4th generation comes up, we have had time to see how God has worked in our church, in our homes, and in our present, but our history and our future have become blurry because of hope. It is blurry because we live in times of uncertainty, with political tension, loss of identity, but what would the past generations say? Will they see their dream of assimilation? Will they see their grandchildren able to marry who they love? Will they see their grandchildren safe? I think so, see we no longer live under persecution, we haven’t ever in our lives, most of our parents haven’t. We have joined with the people of Canada, my parents were able to marry though they are different ethnicities. Our community has become multicultural and our view of success has changed. My cousins have been able to go to university and explore a life more than just being a pharmacist or engineer. My cousin Monica is running a production company and was featured in GQ Middle-East, her sister Ingy is working on her design degree in California and is an amazing artist. Our weddings have become more than just for survival, they have become a joyous celebration of freedom. We dance and sing because God has heard us and rejoiced with us. This is the hope in which we see in the Prophet Isaiah:

“I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it or the cry of distress. And, no more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime,”

My Teta Ida lived to 101 and my Tante Phoebe just celebrated her 99th birthday. Our young are born healthy and are deeply loved and known. My experience of community is to be known and loved. As an adult, who hasn’t lived in Toronto in almost 10 years, and hasn’t attended the Egyptian church in over 20 years, I am still deeply known by my community. They do not see a bearded man with tattoos, but see me as I am, Benjamin Amir Helmy Rofail Girgis Kaalini Girgis El Sha’er El Sharony. The boy with big ears and small eyes. The one in whom they held and baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We work with our hands to bless our community, we do not know hunger or thirst because there is enough for us all. We give to our community, we serve as engineers, pharmacists, and doctors, as teaches, artists, producers, and poets. My God, my God, we pray for our community, because of what He has done. For we, “Give thanks to the LORD; call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted.”

Our testimonies are simply the things that God has done and is doing. Our community has grown because of God and what more can we do but give thanks.

This is who I am. I am my community, we are our community. My story is not just a person from Toronto who has a sister and parents, who is married to Kaitlyn and is working on his masters, but rather is a continuation of the story of the ones who came before me. The story of Israel who is going into exile in Isaiah is a continuation of the ones who came out of Egypt. The story of All Saints is the continuation of the ones who spoke to Bishop Machray. Our stories are interconnected, we are shaped, loved and heartbroken in our communities. As John Donne says, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a lump of dirt be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a headland were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” Isaiah’s hope is not that people get their own land and hide behind their autonomous fenced properties, but that we all share with one another, we live together, we die together because we are one body. Hope is not an individual hope, but a communal hope. Death is not an individual death, but a communal death. For Christ does not just die for the individual but for the whole world. Amen.