Feast of All Saints - Year B 2009

Feast of All Saints – Year B (RCL) 2009
Isaiah 25: 6 – 9; Psalm 24; Revelation 21: 1 – 6a; John 11: 32 – 44
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Sunday, November 1, 2009

THE ALPHA & THE OMEGA; THE BEGINNING AND THE END

Let us pray: Almighty God, who in your great mercy and creative power raised your crucified Christ from the dead, we give thanks for your continued presence with us in this life, your continued word addressed to us in this world, your determination to be with us, no matter who we are or where we are. Compassionate God of the living and the dead we pray for your continued presence with us in whatever life awaits us after this life. In the hope of a future with you, we live in the present, confident that even as you worked wonders in our beginning, you will continue to work wonders for each of us at our end. Amen.

(SUNG) I SING A SONG OF THE SAINTS OF GOD
PATIENT AND BRAVE AND TRUE
WHO TOILED AND FOUGHT AND LIVED AND DIED
FOR THE GOD THEY LOVED AND KNEW

We’re reaching the end my friends. The end of the Church year is a few short weeks away; the end of the calendar year is only two months away. Our readings from this morning’s scripture are from the end of our canon – the book of Revelation the last book of the bible – the Twenty first chapter is that climatic ending that speaks of the end of time when the new Jerusalem descends to earth and God proclaims God’s word “done”. What was begun at our Easter Vigil with the reading of the opening story of Genesis and the creation of this world – is now being brought to perfection as God descends to dwell forever with God’s people. The Church in her wisdom looks at the end of our season of growth and harvest – the end of our long days of light and the beginning of our longer nights and deepening darkness and turns her thoughts to the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins – the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Today is the day we mark the feast of All Saints. This is one of our “major feasts” in that, even if the 1st of November should fall on a Saturday – the observation of the feast would be moved to the following Sunday – giving it the precedence of observation in our principal day of worship at our gathering to share in the Eucharistic gifts of bread and wine become body and blood to feed us as bread for our journey. We pause to remember those who have gone before us – as we remember our promise to be gathered with them in the new heaven and the new earth that the Revelation of John describes for us.

This Revelation theme of the banishment and defeat of death, combined with the witness of this Sunday’s other lessons – the Prophet Isaiah’s vision of that day when God will swallow up death forever and will make a great feast for all the poor in which all will be glad and rejoice in God’s salvation; and the remarkable story of the raising of Lazarus and Jesus’ command to unbind him and let him go free – all speak to a wonderful opportunity to vision death and dying as an affirmation of God as the One who stands at our end; offering us consolation and life – presence and hope!

We are offered in this vision from the writer of the Revelation of John a voice from the throne of God that proclaims “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”; God is seen as not only the genesis or creator of all life – but also as the One still standing at the end of all that is. Our promise then is that we as children of God do not face the deterioration and obliteration, the decay and destruction known in the death of things mortal. Rather we at the end experience God – the beginning creating a new heaven and a new earth as the old have passed away. This is the Good News of our God in the resurrected Jesus – the God who has us is not only the giver of life, the creator of life – but also the giver of life eternal; the gatherer of the great cloud of witnesses we call the communion of saints to share in the glory of our God who has conquered death and destroyed it in resurrection and new birth.

(SUNG) THEY LOVED THEIR GOD – SO DEAR, SO DEAR
AND GOD’S LOVE MADE THEM STRONG.
AND THEY FOLLOWED THE RIGHT, FOR JESUS’ SAKE
THE WHOLE OF THEIR GOOD LIVES LONG!

Many of us in our twenty first century understanding of God’ work in our lives and our world have become increasingly skeptical of a Christology that defines God’s purpose in Jesus as an atonement for the sins of humanity. If God, in all of God’s love and passion for the created was willing to become incarnate and live among us – it makes more sense at least to my understanding that the incarnation was God’s reaching out to us in order to be among us and reach out for us so that we might learn how to be “good” as only God is good; and that we might know through the example of the Holy One of God that life as we know it – is not life as God knows it. Our faith, founded in the faith of those who came before us – focuses not on the death of Jesus, not on the crucifixion – but rather on the empty tomb – on the resurrection and ascension to life as God intends for all whom God loves with a never ending love. Like Jesus calling Lazarus from the tomb, God shall call each of us forth into this new life, calling us by name. Our destiny is God’s eternal remembrance of us, each of us, in our death, so that we might live.

This feast day – this day of recollection of “all the saints” is an opportunity to reflect on the great thinkers and leaders of our world and our Church and honor that greatness. It is a day to remember the William Temple’s and the Mother Theresa’s of our Church; it is a day to remember the Mahatma Gandhi’s and the Lech Wallesa’s of our world – those who worked tirelessly for the betterment of their societies and their Churches. It is also a day to remember the silent saints whose lives lived out in simplicity and sincerity led to deaths that helped to change the very face of our society; folks like Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd who lived ordinary lives and died extraordinary deaths – and whose dying has been instrumental in adding protection against the type of hate and ignorance that led to their tragic end of life and upholds the dignity of every human being who will be protected under the legislation that bears their names from the senseless hate they faced in the last moments of their lives. It is also an opportunity to remember those who we loved and have gone before us to the new Jerusalem. Perhaps none of them has marked the world in a way that will remembered in the annals of our recorded history – yet, nonetheless they are remembered on this day by those whose lives they touched in numerous and unsung ways. Those members of this community that we have lost in the last year; Glenn Hubbard who died unexpectedly and far too young just a year ago, and Jo Southworth whose life and ministry will be memorialized in a service of Christian celebration later this afternoon; join in that communion of saints who watch over us that have yet to earn our place in that new heaven and new earth envisioned by John of Patmos.

(SUNG) THEY LIVED NOT ONLY IN AGES PAST,
THERE ARE HUNDRES OF THOUSANDS STILL,
THE WORLD IS BRIGHT WITH JOYOUS SAINTS WHO
LOVE TO DO JESUS’ WILL.

When we think of All Saints we tend to remember those who are no longer living in the world of our consciousness. However, as the old chestnut of a hymn that I have been using as my sermon song this morning points out – the saints of God live not only in the new Jerusalem; they live in the cities and towns of our own world as well. The saints of God are alive and breathing as well as resting in cemeteries and columbaria. I had quite an unexpected encounter with one just yesterday. I was outside the church sweeping the leaves off of the ramp that lead up to the southwest door and using an old and frayed stiff broom; and a wide spoke rake that we own. I had hopes only of being able to clear a bit of the rain soaked foliage that had accumulated around our sidewalks; and no serious thought of clearing the entire area that surrounds our property on 13th Avenue and the half block of Clay Street. Someone pulled up a fancy big black Toyota Tundra and parked it just at the corner. I remember thinking it odd that they would park there on a Saturday afternoon few cars travel those streets; and fewer still park on the city streets. The owner got out of the truck and asked “how much do you have to do”? I commented that I was just tying to sweep a small path up the ramp and around the front doors. “Let me help”, he said “I’ve got a good sized blower in the back and I’ll rake out the areas around the bushes and trees. What were you planning to do with the leaves, he asked and I said I thought it would be best to just sweep them into the street and hope that the city would clear them away. He started up the leaf blower and handed it to me. He then took off to the far end of our property line on Clay and raked all of the area up to 13th Avenue. I used the blower to clear off all of our sidewalks from the multiple layers of dead foliage that had accumulated on them since the trees first began shedding themselves of their leaves last month. About a half hour later the rain began to come down in buckets and I scurried to finish with the blower so that he, unprotected by any hat or coat could pack up his tools and head home. I offered to compensate him for his time and cost of the gasoline to power the blower but he wouldn’t hear of it and smiled and bid me a wonderful day!

(SUNG) YOU CAN MEET THEM IN SCHOOL, OR IN LANES, OR AT SEA,
IN CHURCH, OR IN TRAINS, OR IN SHOPS, OR AT TEA,
FOR THE SAINTS OF GOD ARE JUST FOLK LIKE ME,
AND I MEAN TO BE ONE TOO.

William Willimon is the Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church and the main writer and editor of Pulpit Resource, a sermon preparation resource that I have found extremely valuable in my ministry. I share with you, in closing, his vision of the gift of God’s grace at “the end”: “One day I shall leave home and shall not return that evening. I shall then be buried; forgotten, returned to the dust from whence I was made, remembered for a while only by those few ho knew me well. I shall fade into the oblivion of the forgotten. Whatever I accomplished shall tarnish and diminish. And ye, on the basis of what I have known of God, I believe that what seemed a conclusion will in reality be a commencement. I fully expect to hear the God who so sought me in life say to me even in my death, ‘Yes, the face is familiar. I remember you. I’ve got a whole new world to show you. Wait until you see this. I have yet to give up on you. Can we talk? You haven’t seen anything yet. We’ve got all the time in the world.’ This, by faith we believe, is our end.”[1]

Amen


[1] Willimon, William H., Pulpit Resource Vol. 37, No. 4 (Year B & C), October, November, December 2009, p. 23