All Saints’ Sunday
November 2, 2014
Revelation 7:9-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Matthew
23:1-12
I have to tell you, All Saints’ Day
is one of my favorite church holy days.
And I was thinking about why that is.
It doesn’t have all the excitement and build-up like Christmas. It’s not the culmination of a week full of
special services like Easter. In fact,
it has nothing at all to do with a major event in Jesus’ life. Nor does it mark the beginning or end of a
church season, like Epiphany or Pentecost or Christ the King Sunday, which
comes up in a few weeks. No, All Saints’
Day just falls during Ordinary Time, the first Sunday in November, when the
only thing that’s changing is the weather outside. And that may be part of why I love it:
because it falls at the end of my favorite month, during my favorite season of
the year, fall. The air is nice and
brisk, the leaves have turned color, and outside is just beautiful! Another reason, I think, is that one of my
favorite hymns as a kid was our middle hymn today, “I Sing a Song of the Saints
of God.”[1] Both the tune and the words appeal to a kid,
as we sing about meeting saints in all kinds of normal, ordinary places, like
at school or in the store. And “a
shepherdess on the green” can be a saint, too!
In the original version, written by an Englishwoman, it says you can
even meet saints at tea! What wonderful
concrete images for children to grab hold of!
Finally, though, I think I like the idea of remembering all the saints
who have gone before, the comfort in knowing that others have done this
Christian journey before us. (Incidentally,
that was also one of my main motivations in learning to drive stick shift as a
teenager: that lots of people had learned how to do it before me, so I could,
too!) There’s something reassuring in
knowing that we’re not alone. We’re not
the only church struggling. We’re not
the only ones trying to figure out how to live faithfully and what that looks
like for us in this place at this time. Many,
many others are doing that, both in 2014 and in the two thousand years of
church history that came before us. Remembering
those who have gone before, “the great cloud of witnesses,”[2] is healthy for us, for a
variety of reasons.
First,
it is a healthy way to grieve. There is a new movie out called “The Book of
Life.” I have not seen it yet, but I
read a review about it that really stuck with me. The movie is loosely based on Mexico’s holiday,
Day of the Dead, which is celebrated over the course of three days, from Halloween,
October 31st, through today, November 2nd. It’s an animated movie and one of the main
characters is voiced by the Mexican actor, Diego Luna. Diego Luna lost his mother when he was only
two years old, but he says that celebrating the Day of the Dead every year
saved him from many years of therapy.[3] The holiday let him focus on remembering his
mother rather than agonize over his loss.
The Day of the Dead is a formal version of what many of us do around the
birthday or death day of a loved one who has passed. We cook their favorite food. We watch their favorite movies. We tell stories about them. It is good for us to talk about and remember
those who have gone before us. It helps
us deal with our grief.
Recently,
a friend shared with me a story about her mother. The Christmas before her mom died, her mom
was over at her house for the holidays.
Now, my friend had tried over the years to make her mom’s sweet potato
casserole, and despite having her mother’s recipe, she could never get it to taste
like her momma’s. That last Christmas
they had together her mother told her the secret: she had always used
evaporated milk instead of regular milk and doubled the eggs. She’d just never written down the changes in
the recipe! This kind of saint would be
the opposite of the teachers of the law and Pharisees that Jesus warns against
in today’s Gospel reading, who “do everything so that people will see them.”[4] Saints, however, aren’t worried about
appearances and who sees them do good things.
They take to heart what Jesus taught back in Matthew 6 about doing your
good works quietly and discreetly, without making a big deal about it. Perhaps
you are remembering a saint like that today, one who worked in the background
without seeking recognition, one who doubled the eggs without telling
anyone.
Remembering those who have gone
before also encourages us in our
Christian journey. As I mentioned
before, it’s a reminder that others have tread this path before us. Others have struggled and wrestled with
God. Others have cried out, “How long, O
Lord?” Others have shared their faith with
us. There is a line in our closing hymn
that “A world without saints forgets how to praise.”[5] Without remembering those who have gone
before, we forget how to praise God.
Their example to us is important.
When I was thinking of this line, I thought it said, “A world without
saints forgets how to pray.” But no, we don’t forget how to pray, there’s certainly enough going on
that causes us to pray and lift up
our concerns to God. But without the
saints, we might forget to how to praise;
we might not lift up our joys to God as well.
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of psalms in the book of Psalms:
psalms of lament and psalms of praise.
Both are important, because life is not all happy times nor is it all
sadness and grief. As Psalm 30 says,
“weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”[6] If you are still weeping for your loved one
who has gone before us, I pray that you know God’s presence in your grief and that
soon you will be able to remember them with a smile.
Now,
on All Saints’ Day we read aloud the names of those who have passed because in
the Methodist Church, the word ‘saints’ actually refers to all Christians. You and I
are saints, too. The senior pastor I
served with at my previous church would greet the church Sunday morning by
saying, “Good morning, Saints of Orange!”
You are a saint before you die, if you’re a Christian, because, to quote
my favorite hymn again, “The world is bright with joyous saints who love to do
Jesus’ will.”[7] I’m assuming you’re here this morning because
you love to do Jesus’ will, that you want “to live the kind of life that
pleases God,” to quote what we read in 2 Thessalonians this morning.[8] Another way to look at it is that we’re
living into what we will become. You may
not feel like a saint today, but being called a saint may inspire you to become
more like one, becoming more like your title.
It’s like dressing up on a day you don’t feel very well; dressing nicer
can actually make you feel a little better.
Or take the reason why I started called Isabel “beautiful” when she was
a baby. When she was an infant and woke
up at 2 a.m. crying so hard that her face was all scrunched up and red, she did
not look like a cute little baby. To
remind my sleep-deprived self that she was, I started calling her “beautiful.”
If you call something by a name, even if it’s not that right now but what you
hope it becomes, it may well gradually turn into it. So, good morning, saints of Cowenton/Piney
Grove!
Finally, remembering those who have gone
before gives us a glimpse of the future. Sounds odd, I know. We have a glimpse of the future by living
into our roles as saints. And we have this
vision from the book of Revelation of a crowd of people so big that no one
could count it. The people gathered are
from every race, tribe, nation, and language and they are worshiping God together. People from different backgrounds worshiping together. It’s a vision of God’s kingdom, those who
have gone before us, all of them, worshiping
together. No matter where they
lived, what language they spoke, where they were employed, they are now all
together in God’s kingdom. Owners and
workers. Rich and poor. Southerners and Yankees. English-speakers, Spanish-speakers, and
Chinese speakers. Each one worshiping
God in their own language, in their own style, and yet all at the same time! Doesn’t
that sound kind of exciting? It reminds
me of Pentecost, the birthday of the church, when each person heard the Gospel
proclaimed in their own language at the
same time. It sounds messy and
chaotic, but I have no doubt it is music to God’s ears. I’ve seen it done a few times in church,
too. A prayer where everyone prays out
loud at the same time; it’s noisy, and you almost have to tune other people out
and just focus on your own prayer to God, but it’s pretty cool, too, to be one
of many voices lifting their prayers up to God at the same time. I’ve also been part of bilingual worship,
both where there were headsets used for those who didn’t speak the main
language of the service and where worship alternated back and forth between two
languages. It can be a little confusing,
but the point is that everyone is worshiping together. And worship isn’t about what you get out of
it, anyway; it’s about God and God likes it when his people come together. This vision in Revelation is a glimpse of
God’s kingdom come, and those who have gone before us are already there.
And
so today we remember them and honor their witness. We read their names out loud. We tell stories about how they doubled the
eggs in a recipe and never wrote it down.
It helps us grieve their passing.
We know that they did the best they could to live faithfully and their
witness encourages us in our walk with Christ.
And the great cloud of witnesses, all those who have gone before,
gathered before the throne and before the Lamb, give us a glimpse of God’s
kingdom coming. All worshiping God
together, resting from their labors, and having finished the race set before
them. Seeing that we are surrounded by
such a great cloud of witnesses, let us praise God for their lives and take
heart that we can also “live the kind of life that pleases God.”
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