Today
is All Saints Sunday, but I can't resist talking about Halloween . . . It's
tomorrow, you know, and we as a church are going to do something a bit
different, we’re going to gather on the sidewalk at the far limits of our
property to meet and greet and serve some members of our community. Actually, it'll be technically off our property, on the sidewalk
right-of-way, and that is symbolic, kind of: for millennia, it’s been kind of
like Field of Dreams—when we built
churches, they would come. It was enough
for churches to just throw up their shingles and air for people to show up. Now, for a variety of reasons, that is no
longer the case, and both the Paul Nixon resources and the Presbytery effort,
Transformation 2.0, emphasize the same thing: getting out into the community where
the people are, building
relationships with our neighbors where
they are, rather than expecting them to come to us, to become like us.
And
so, it's symbolically important that our
Halloween ministry is—even if only technically—out into the neighborhood,
because that's where the people are. Of
course, going into the neighborhood and meeting the people—not just people like
us, our age and our income level—is dangerous, because it might actually do
something to us, it might subject us
to change, and nobody likes that, especially
as we get a little older. Not that any
of y’all are getting that way, but I certainly am . . .
Anyway. Enough about Halloween. Let's talk about the day after. All Saints Day. That's what we're celebrating today, ‘cause
it's the closest Sunday to it . . . Our ancestors in the faith, the saints we’re
celebrating today, a lot of them didn't have to do that . . . They had church
services available every day, and in fact, for most Roman Catholics, All Saints
Day is a day of obligation, meaning you must go. Of course, I suppose a lot of folks don't, just like a lot skip other
special times and seasons, as Paul called them.
Even so, in some heavily Catholic countries,
All Saints Day is a national holiday, and that gives it a weight that it
doesn't have when you share it with another special day—if you look at our
Presbyterian planning calendar, you'll notice that Reformation Sunday is celebrated
today as well, which, it seems to me, gives saints a raw deal. After all, for us, saints aren’t just
those who've gone through a lengthy process of canonization, but anyone who has
lived and died in the faith. And where
would we be without them? Where would we
be without all those first- and second-century Christians, who kept the faith
alive when it was illegal to be
followers of The Way? Where would we be
without all of those saints who met in
one another’s homes, no costly buildings for them, no expecting their neighbors
to come to them . . . they spread the
faith by going out to their neighbors, relating to them in glistening networks
of service and faith.
And
where would we be without those faithful, anonymous scribes, who copied hand by
hand by hand the letters of Paul, and the Gospels and Hebrews and Revelation, long
before the advent of movable type? Or the
equally anonymous desert fathers and mothers who maintained and advanced the contemplative
tradition in the face of increasing Romanization and increasingly rigid structures of the church? Or the centuries of anonymous monks, who were
their spiritual children, and who even today point the way to what
caring communities of Christ can be?
Our
brief passage from Hebrews says it all . . . It speaks of the Saints as a great
cloud of witnesses that surround us all, and in the embrace of that mighty
cloud—to use the poetic line from the old hymn—in the embrace of that mighty
cloud of witnesses, we are empowered to run the race that is set before us, the
race of Christ’s disciples, spreading the gospel in thought, word and deed. But the mighty cloud of our passage is not composed
of Christians but Israelite heroes. But
they are our ancestors in the faith, they are our Saints every bit as much as
they were to the author of Hebrews. That writer speaks of Abraham, Jacob and Moses. Rahab, Gideon and Samson. David and Samuel and the prophets. All surrounding those first Christians, all
supporting them and enabling them to run that long and sometimes difficult
race.
And
notice that Hebrews uses the present tense, as in we, are surrounded by a mighty cloud of witnesses, a great cloud of
saints. There is a mystical, spiritual connection
between us, between all who have gone before.
Whether in heaven “up above” as we often picture it or literally around
us as Hebrews has it, we are somehow connected, somehow continuous with those
who have gone before. The Franciscan mystic
and theologian St. Bonaventure pictured our souls—that part of us which is
eternal—coming from God and returning there after death, after we have run that
race. But if God is within us, if Christ
holds us together, if the Holy Spirit dwells within as the scripture portrays,
then our loved ones—though in a spiritual form, a form too subtle to reliably
perceive—our loved ones, along with all our faith ancestors, do surround us, and not only that, we
are infused with them as well.
Can
you picture it? Can you feel it?
Our forebears in the faith, our forebears of this church, related by a common thread, with us in spiritual
essence right now, continuing to support our work in ways that we can only imagine, adding their ineffable aid to what we
do. The people without whom this church would
not have survived ten years, never mind seventy eight, who worked tirelessly at
the many tasks it takes to keep a congregation afloat. These are saints every bit as much as those
first, anonymous Christians, every bit as much as Teresa or Francis or Augustine.
But
wait . . . there’s more! Throughout his
writing, Paul—canonized himself—makes it
clear that the saints, the blessed ones, are all who do Gods work, past and present. Saints that even as we sit here work to feed
hungry people on the mean streets of Cincinnati. Who write great, inspirational hymns of the
faith. All who keep the great gears of
God’s universal gathering turning, who love it's earthly form in spite of its
undeniable frailties. To Paul, we are the saints, all of us, and in the
great passage I read, he describes the relationship we have to God through the
Spirit who, he writes, “intercedes for the saints according to the will of God”
with “sighs too deep for words.”
And
it’s clear that the road might be rocky, the race might be long, but our God is
with us, with all the mighty saints,
those who surround us, whispering and soothing and communing, past, present and future, because if God is with us,
who can be against us? If the Spirit
fills us and dwells within us, how can we ultimately fail? And so as in a few minutes we remember just a
few of the many saints who have enriched our lives, let's expand your
consciousness to take in all the many millennia of ancestors in the faith, all
those of that mighty cloud, in the flesh and
spirit, who continually nourish and sustain us in our own race. Amen.
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