All Saints Sunday

John 11:32-44

Last Sunday we celebrated the affirmation of baptism for three of our youth. As part of that milestone, we ask them to choose a verse that’s meaningful to them, and we only exclude one verse. It’s the one that shows up in our gospel today: “Jesus began to weep.” In at least two other Bible translations it’s even more succinct, saying simply, “Jesus wept”.

It almost becomes a joke with the students because we hope they’ll remember the verse they chose, and choosing a verse that’s only a couple of words long isn’t much of a challenge.

But I’m rethinking those instructions this morning.

Today, as we celebrate All Saints Day, and we remember people who have died, in our congregation, among our family and friends, and in the wider world, I would guess that more than a few of us are weeping. And I think it is reassuring for us to know that Jesus also wept.

Jesus is fully human and because of that, he experienced the full range of emotions that we have – love for his friends, joy and thanksgiving for the gifts God shares with us, exhaustion from a weary world, anger at injustice, and as we hear in today’s gospel, deep sorrow and grief at the death of a dear friend.

And he is fully divine. Jesus is Emmanuel - God with us - throughout our lives, and bears witness to our tears. God accompanies us in the dark valleys of pain, loss and grief.

But that’s not all. Just as we do, Jesus experienced the helplessness and the heartache of not being able to stop death.

Lazarus died, and the man’s sisters and friends buried him in a tomb. It certainly felt like the worst thing had happened.

Reflecting on the gospel text, I wonder whether each of us can name grave moments we have experienced.

When have we felt like life was over?

When have we felt buried by life’s circumstances?

The wonder of the sign Jesus performs here in John’s Gospel is that, in Frederick Buechner’s words,

The worst isn't the last thing about the world. It's the next to the last thing. The last thing is the best.[i]

The last thing is the resurrection promise that we have new life in Christ.

In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul writes, “The sting of death is sin [and the things that separate us from God]” (15:56) and in the story of the restoration of Lazarus, God triumphs over death. It is a miracle or sign that points to God’s power over the death that threatens us all.

As Lutheran pastor Delmer Chilton says, “Jesus had to go into the tomb so we could come out…. we emerge from the decay and the rot”, new creations, restored to life by God’s love for us.[ii]

That doesn’t mean that the bad stuff doesn’t stink.

It doesn’t mean that death doesn’t sting.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t shed tears.

But it does promise us as our Scriptures say, that God will wipe away our tears (Rev. 21:4) and soothe our spirits. God will be the Comforter we are promised later in John’s gospel. (John 14:16,26)

The author of Revelation assures the community that not only does God live among us, but God is making all things new. (Revelation 21:3-5)

Of course, there’s no promise about God’s timing for all of this. We know from Scripture, and from experience, that it won’t be our timing, but the promise stands.

So, in the meantime, what do we do?

We could blame others, like Mary did when she told Jesus, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:32)

We could be resigned to our circumstances, like Martha, when she said, “already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.” (John 11:39)

A better way is to follow Jesus who saw what had happened and talks to God about it. He believes in God’s power to disrupt death, and he calls out, remembering God’s faithfulness and asking God to do what only God can do.

And Lazarus is revived and restored to his family and community.

May we always follow Jesus and have confidence in God’s promises for us and the world God created, believing that death is not the last thing.

Amen.

[i] Frederick Buechner, The Beast.

[ii] “All Saints Sunday, Year B”. The Rev. Delmer Chilton. Lectionary Lab Live Podcast.

All Saints Sunday

Luke 6:20-31

On All Saints Sunday we remember the saints who have gone before us even as we include ourselves within the community of the saints, a blessed community, bound together, through time, and over and against death.

Just last week Anne Marie and I were talking with the confirmation students about saints. We took a field trip from the youth room to the narthex – the space just beyond the glass doors of the sanctuary – and talked about the saints whose symbols are on shields that hang there. We talked about apostles – people sent into the world with the Good News – and about disciples – people called to follow Jesus.

“The community of the saints is not an "ideal" community consisting of perfect and sinless men and women, where there is no need of further repentance.”[i] If you go and examine those shields, you’ll count twelve of them because even Judas – who betrayed Jesus – is included among the saints.

Learning that God loves us, redeems us and makes us holy or sanctifies us even in our imperfections is a gift of our faith.

We aren’t saints because we are perfect and blameless; we are saints because, in God’s sight, we are wonderfully created, beloved children of God, and even when we are petulant and selfish,

God offers us forgiveness.

We aren’t saints because we can overcome grief or be stoic survivors of trauma; we are saints because God and God’s son Jesus are above every power, victorious over grief and suffering, and victorious over the brokenness of sin.

We aren’t saints because our hearts grew three sizes and now, we can forgive the people who have hurt us; we are saints because God’s mercy is new every morning. We are sinful, and every day, we turn away from God and inward on ourselves, refusing to confess our dependence on Him. But God never refuses his grace and God never gives up on us.

That is Good News. God is steadfast and abounding in love and mercy for you and for me.

With the confirmation students, we also talked about the people in our lives who have helped teach us about Jesus. Often it is a parent or grandparent, but sometimes it’s a neighbor or a family friend.

I tell the story of my college roommate Lori inviting me to go to campus ministry.

I think our children remember Ms. Nancy, a woman whom I worked with who also taught our one room Sunday School in a tiny congregation in Harpers Ferry.

So on this All Saints Sunday, I wonder who are the saints you have met in your life?

We gather as living saints today because others have poured out God’s love in their care for us.

And we gather as the community of saints because together we remember God’s promises for us.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul reminds the people there – people who are facing trouble and persecution – that they have already set their hope on Christ (v 12).

This hope empowers us to imagine the future that God is preparing, to see with not only our eyes but with what one pastor calls, “the eyes of our hearts”.

The hope we have in Christ helps us see beyond the divisiveness of the world now and see each other as God’s beloved children and to see each other as fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image. It is a hope that reaches beyond any one of us and is nourished in community and in relationship.

An old Hasidic tale tells of a disciple who asked his rabbi the meaning of community one evening, when they were all sitting around a fire. The rabbi sat in silence while the fire died down to a pile of glowing coals. Then he got up and took one coal out from the pile and set it apart on the stone hearth. Its fire and warmth soon died out.[ii]

In his letter, Paul encourages the disciples at Ephesus to return to this enduring hope that is grounded in God’s saving power. (v. 18) He reassures them that God is at work in and through all that they are experiencing, having “put all things under his feet” (v. 22)

Jesus embodies this same hope when he delivers his sermon on the plain in Luke’s gospel. Instead of ascending to a mountaintop and making pronouncements from on high, Jesus comes into the crowd and meets the people there. Apostles, disciples and curiosity-seekers alike. He heals people’s illnesses and casts out demons and he talks with them about their lives.  

When Jesus makes the declarations of blessings and woes that we hear in today’s gospel, he isn’t talking abstractly. He has witnessed the hunger, the grief and sorrow and the ways some are ignored or shut out. These are vulnerable people who come to Jesus with hearts laid bare. And Jesus meets them in their need.

His woes aren’t curses against the people who are satisfied with their lives as much as alarm bells to awaken complacent people who have become comfortable and convinced that they don’t need God. Jesus calls on them to be as vulnerable as the rest of the crowd; to recognize their own deep need for God’s love.

Because it is in Christ and in God’s loving action for us that our hope resides.

Let us pray…

Holy God,
We give you thanks for your Son Jesus who shows us Your love for all people.
Thank you for redeeming us from our sin and counting each one of us among our saints.
As we follow Jesus, give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation and help us live in response to your love for the whole world.
Amen.

---

[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Cost of Discipleship.

[ii] Heidi B. Neumark. Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 61.

All Saints Sunday

Revelation 21:1-6a

On this All Saints Sunday, we name those who have died during the last year. While here at Ascension, only one congregation member is listed this year, there are many more names of family and friends that remind us of the tremendous losses that the last year has contained. And we must not ignore the hundreds of thousands of deaths here in the United States and millions worldwide from COVID-19.

Grief has been described as “a foreign territory with rules all its own that one only discovers by traversing the unwelcome terrain.”[i] It has its own customs and language. And often, at least in modern Western culture, it’s not a destination - someplace we want to stay. Instead, it is seen as something to “get through” like a desolate stretch of Route 66 in Nevada.

In his “Sermon on Preparing to Die” Martin Luther wrote “we should familiarize ourselves with death during our lifetime, inviting death into our presence.” He argued that we must look at death while we are alive, seeing sin in the light of grace and hell in the light of heaven and so, disarm the devil who would fill us with dread and send us running away from death and God.[ii]

Grief and death cannot be ignored or outrun, and when we try to, we risk missing the sacredness of the journey. 

In the Book of Revelation John of Patmos “narrates the reality of suffering” as he writes

a letter of comfort to seven churches undergoing persecution, urging their members to remain steadfast and assuring them that despite all appearance to the contrary, the Roman Empire’s power is not absolute; it is God who reigns supreme.[iii]

The first things that John writes about are the sources of suffering that we experience on earth.[iv] Faith does not exempt us from pain and suffering, but our text today promises us that God is present with us even as we live with feelings of anguish, sorrow and fear.

The vision John has of a new heaven and earth is one where the sea is gone. Remember that in the ancient world the sea was a place of chaos where evil and corruption prevailed, so when John says “the sea was no more”, he is saying that, in this new world that God creates, the strongholds of death, mourning and pain are destroyed. In this new world, we know a new reality unlike anything we experienced before, one where God is victorious.

The second part of John’s vision is the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven. Contrary to popular, fictional ideas, we are not raptured into a pristine kingdom and we do not escape this world for a heavenly reward or stars in our crowns. God comes to us. God comes down to dwell with mortals, and we find healing and new life in God’s presence.

Writing this letter of consolation, John reminds these first century communities, and us, that we know the end of the story. On the cross Christ takes your sin from you, bears it for you, and destroys it… He takes your death upon himself and strangles it so it may not harm you...In that way, Christ [is] the picture of life and grace over against the picture of death and sin.[v]

And knowing the end of the story makes all the difference.

God is present with and among us now and we are invited to ask, “Where can we see glimpses of the new city here and now?”

I believe it’s visible when we tell stories of those who have died and laugh together. Or when we share a memory, knowing that if tears come to our eyes, the person listening to us understands. Or when we hold something that belonged to the person who died or smell a familiar scent and instead of experiencing pain, we are comforted. It’s visible in each one of those moments when pain, sorrow or suffering is transformed by God’s regenerative power to make all things new again.

Let us pray…

Holy God,

Thank you for your Son Jesus whose life, death and resurrection testify to your power over death and the grave.

Help us as we mourn those who have died to remember you weep with us and hold us in our sorrow.

By your Spirit, awaken us to the life we have with you, where death, mourning and pain are destroyed.

We pray in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.

Amen.

[i] Joy J. Moore on Sermon Brainwave for All Saints Sunday, November 7, 2021. https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/810-all-saints-sunday-nov-7-2021

[ii] Martin Luther. “A Sermon on Preparing to Die.” Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, 2nd Edition. Timothy Lull (Ed.) 420-421.

[iii] David L. Bartlett; Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Locations 8440-8443). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

[iv] Rene’ Such Schreiner. “Commentary of Revelation 21:1-6a”. Luther Seminary. workingpreacher.org

[v] Luther. 422.

All Saints Sunday

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today’s gospel text comes from the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, a sermon Jesus preached to the crowds who had begun following him after he had begun showing up in their neighborhoods and towns and healing people. He had traveled all around Galilee, where Nazareth was, and he was known there and even farther north and east, throughout Syria.

Sometimes we turn these verses, known as the Beatitudes, into a set of rewards that say, “IF you will do this, THEN you will be blessed.

As if God’s love for us is transactional.

As if God’s blessing depends on us. 

But thankfully God’s love and grace for us is not dependent on us. As Luther tells us in his Small Catechism in the explanation of the first article of the creed, God provides for us and protects us “out of pure, fatherly and divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness” of ours![i]

So why does Jesus say these things if it isn’t to put a carrot out in front of folks, to encourage us to be better people? 

Remember Scripture is always revealing who God is and what God is doing. God is the actor, not us. So when we hear Jesus’ words, we want to ask, “What do his statements reveal about who God is and about God’s character?”

On this All Saints Day verse 4 stands out:

“Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.”

Today we particularly remember those whom we have loved who have died during the last year. And certainly we hope ritual and remembrance bring comfort to those who grieve and mourn, and we trust that God is with you today and every day.

But Jesus isn’t saying “Oh, lucky you, here’s your reward for your suffering.” Loss and death are not blessings, and in the depths of new grief, especially, I don’t think anyone feels “blessed”.

Instead Jesus is saying, “God sees you are hurting and the same God who created you and loves you, will comfort you, wipe away your tears and sit with you in your grief.”

This is the God who is portrayed in the beatitudes, one who sees and honors those who are suffering.

It is in words like the ones Jesus preaches today that Scripture is so clearly a living Word that we hear differently in different seasons of our lives. It is not a historical document chiseled in granite, but a Word that God speaks that we may hear and know who God is, and who we are as God’s people.

In Jesus’ words, we are reassured that God does not simply leave us in a deep pit and say, “there, there.”

But, sits with us in the midst of ugly tears and sleeplessness, in the too-quiet house or at the desk where a stack of papers waits for our attention.

Later in his sermon, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are merciful because they shall receive mercy.” And while the word here is “merciful”, I heard it today as “full of mercy.”

I believe God’s comfort is mercy itself. One definition of mercy is “kindness or help given to people who are in a very bad or desperate situation.”[ii]

A distant and impersonal God who sets the world in motion and then leaves wouldn’t draw near to us in grief.

A God who wants to play “gotcha” and punish us when we make mistakes wouldn’t be there to wipe away our tears.

Instead, we know this loving God whose mercy, compassion and steadfastness is revealed to us first in the cross.

When sin and brokenness bring us to the foot of the cross, aware that we cannot live and be who God created us to be on our own, God doesn’t leave us there either. God forgives us and gives us new life.

I think Jesus is saying to all of us, who are full of God’s mercy for us, that whatever fills us up are the things that the world will see overflowing from us. When we are full of God’s mercy, we will be merciful to others.

Psalm 57 isn’t a psalm that’s assigned in the lectionary so we don’t usually hear it in worship, but in its first verse, it names why God’s mercy is so important to us all. It says:

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful, for I have taken refuge in you; in the shadow of your wings will I take refuge until this time of trouble has gone by. (57:1) 

The psalmist often calls upon God to be the God that Scripture has already revealed. The God we call upon is the same merciful God who saved Noah from the flood and Isaac from death; the same God who parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could escape from Pharaoh; the same God who spared Nineveh from destruction. 

And, in God’s mercy, God provides us with refuge, a place apart from the time of trouble, or the destroying storms. God shelters us, like a mothering hen gathers her brood under her wings (Matt. 23:37)

The psalmist tells us God does not leave us alone to wait out the storms. Living in the shadow of God means God is always nearby. God remains with us and promises us that “the worst thing is not the last thing.”

That is the resurrection promise: that evil and death will not win; in Christ, God’s love for us and the world wins, and we are freed from our fears and transformed.

The Beatitudes aren’t a system of rewards, and we have confidence in God’s love and mercy for us. As we are sent into the world this week, I wonder where we can notice what God is doing, and, with God’s help, how we can participate? How can we let the things of God overflow from us? How can we extend God’s mercy to others? How can we provide refuge and safe shelter to others? How can we accompany others so that they do not have to be alone?

Let us pray…

Good and Gracious God,
Thank you for your love and mercy, and for making us all your saints in your kingdom.
We give thanks especially for those who have gone before us and showed us how to live faithfully here on earth.
By your Holy Spirit, continue to fill us with the things of God that our words and actions would reflect who we are as Your people.
We pray in your Holy Name.
Amen.

[i] Martin Luther. “Explanation of the First Article of the Apostles Creed.” Small Catechism.

[ii] Karoline Lewis. "A Merciful Advent." Luther Seminary. https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4225

All Saints Sunday (November 3, 2019)

Luke 6:20-31

Today, on All Saints Sunday, we remember church members, family and friends who have died over the last twelve months. And as we recall them and their lives and their significance to us, we also remember the gifts they shared with us, especially those gifts we continue to carry into the world in their honor. Their spirits live on in their children, families and friendships.

Author Alice Walker once wrote a short essay called “A name is sometimes an ancestor saying, “Hi, I’m with you.” Across cultures indigenous peoples call the people who lived before us throughout history our “spirit helpers.”[i] Because her name comes from the Greek word for “truth” Walker names Sojourner Truth as one of her own spirit helpers, writing,

She smiles within my smile. That irrepressible great heart rises in my chest. Every experience that roused her passion against injustice in her lifetime shines from my eyes.[ii]

Walker writes, “The spirit of our helpers incarnates in us, making us more ourselves by extending us far beyond.”[iii]

She then suggests that this is how we might understand the transformation we experience through faith, a way of becoming not only “like” Jesus but embodying Jesus to the people we meet.

In today’s gospel, Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Plain, and while we often hear the language of blessing and woe as language of divine favor or damnation, it’s hard to find the good news in that interpretation. Luther Seminary New Testament professor Matt Skinner suggests that the meaning changes when, instead, we hear “blessed” as “satisfied” or “unburdened.” Skinner also translates “woe” as “yikes” or “look out!”, and Eugene Peterson writes in his Message paraphrase, “There’s trouble ahead!” The word is like a bright yellow traffic sign or flashing lights.

With these woe statements, Jesus cautions us to be alert for those things in life that are distractions that divert us from following Jesus and from being Jesus to those we meet.

The poor, the hungry, the grieving and those who have been discarded by the world are people who trust God because their other options have been stripped away. Trusting God is more difficult for anyone who still thinks we can stand on our own or make our own way; it is more difficult when we only look for God’s mercy after we’ve exhausted every other possibility, instead of beginning on our knees at the foot of the cross with God.

Addressing “those who are listening” Jesus seems to acknowledge that some won’t listen, even among those who are close to him, even among those who profess to follow him.

And then Jesus gives a rapid succession of commands to the disciples, instructing them to live in faithful obedience with their eyes set on Jesus, saying:

Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Submit. Give. Serve.

Just like six of the ten commandments Moses received on Sinai, these commands are focused on our relationships with the people in our lives. Jesus tells us to be motivated by the love and mercy of God to be Christ to them:

• Love your enemies; love the very same people you despise or you think are unlovable.
• Do good regardless of whether you will reap the benefit or your good will be appreciated or even acknowledged.
• Bless those who curse you and pray for those who abuse you; importantly, Jesus doesn’t say to subject yourself to continued abuse or continue in relationship with the abuser, but we are called to see each person — no matter how much it upsets our dual-thinking — as someone whom God can love and redeem.
• Jesus then says to offer your other cheek to one who slaps you and offer your coat to the one who would take your shirt. He commands us to adopt a posture of humility in the world, to submit to God’s care and provision.
  Give to those who beg.
• And “do to others as you would have them do to you,” an instruction to serve others selflessly, entering into relationship with them and addressing their needs as brothers and sisters.

It still sounds like a lot of law; a lot of rules to keep and impossibly high standards to meet. And we know that “everyday saints struggled as we do to hear this passage as good news.”[iv]

But just as Walker suggests that our “spirit helpers” empower us to be more ourselves, who we are created to be, Saint Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians that we have been “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit” (v. 13) — that we are no longer trying to imitate Christ by our own power, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, given to us.

This process of becoming more Christ-like, of being made holy and righteous, through faithful obedience is sanctification.

As Martin Luther wrote in the explanation of the third article of the Creed,

I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but [the Holy Spirit] calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies [or makes righteous] the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith...[v]

This is faith active in our lives, transforming us, setting us apart, sanctifying us or making us holy, and empowering us.

Too often we live out of our brokenness, and when we do that, we will have trouble ahead.

But, from Jesus we hear the Good News that through faith, we can live in a world in right relationship with God and with each other.

Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we are called to live holy and perfect in an imperfect and broken world. We have a great cloud of witnesses who went before us and whose memories continue to sustain us even as we follow Jesus now.

Let us pray…[vi]
Holy and Redeeming God,
We give you our thanks and praise that through your Son Jesus you make us holy and count us among your saints;
By your great power you have called us to a rich hope  and given us the word of truth that gives us life in Christ.
Send us out as your witnesses, confident that we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit, that we may love others and live out Your Good News in the world.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus, our savior and Lord. Amen.

[i] Alice Walker. Living by the Word. 97.
[ii] ibid
[iii] Walker, 98.
[iv] David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 4: Season after Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ) (Kindle Locations 8521-8522).
Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[v] “Small Catechism, Book of Concord, 355-56.
[vi] adapted from Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources, http://laughingbird.net/ComingWeeks.html