All Saints

(Scriptures: Haggai 1:15b-2:9
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 Luke 20:27-38)

Today we celebrate All Saints Sunday, also known in historically German churches like Emanuel UCC as Tottenfest, or. In the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions, there are many days set aside for specific saints – of course, we know St. Patrick’s Day as March 17. For some other examples, St John the Evangelist’s Day is December 27, and St John the Baptist’s Day is June 24. But November 1 is designated as All Saints Day or All Souls Day, when we remember all the unknown saints, all those believers who have gone before us, including departed family members and friends and church members. We give thanks for their lives, give thanks for those whose faith in Jesus Christ has shaped and strengthened our own.

It’s also a day when we ponder those most basic questions of our faith – what happens to those who die? Where do they go? Do they experience joy? Will we see them again? Will they recognize us and remember us?

It was to these questions that Jesus spoke in our Gospel lesson today. Jesus was being challenged by the Sadducees, the wealthy, aristocratic leaders who controlled the Temple priesthood with its system of sacrifices. The Sadducees could be considered the fundamentalists of their time – they considered only the written Torah, especially the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Numbers – as authoritative. The Sadducees rejected the oral “tradition of the elders” that had built up over time to guide Jews in applying the written word to a changing society. Based on their interpretation of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, they rejected the idea of an afterlife. Since they thought death was the end of human life, they concentrated their efforts on keeping the peace with Rome so that the Temple system of sacrifices could be continued undisturbed.

And so, in the typical manner of theological argumentation, they presented Jesus with a situation which they supposed made the idea of an afterlife absurd: a woman married a man, who had six brothers – so there were seven brothers in all. Her first husband died without fathering a child. Under the institution of Levirite marriage, under this circumstance, the wife was supposed to marry the late husband’s brother, assuming the brother wasn’t already married. The first child coming out of the wife’s union with the brother would be reckoned as the child of the deceased husband, thereby ensuring that his family line continued. So in the absurd example proposed by the Sadducees, the woman would up marrying all seven of the brothers without producing a child, after which she died. In the resurrection, whose wife was she. The Sadducees asked their question, not in a spirit of seeking fresh understanding, but rather they were trying to trip Jesus up, to put him into a theological box and make him look foolish.

But Jesus does not allow himself to be boxed in by their ridiculous example. The Sadducees proposed their question, assuming that Jesus’ conception of the resurrection was a continuation of life in its present form. But Jesus rejects that assumption. Jesus responds that, while life continues beyond death, our human institutions do not – the people of this age marry and are given in marriage, but it is not so in the resurrection.” But then Jesus goes on to turn the Sadducees’ trick question into a teaching moment: he affirms that since God out of the burning bush told Moses that he was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that since God is the God of the living, therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to God are….alive – for to God, all are alive. As are our departed family members, friends, church members – our saints.

God is God, not of the dead, but of the living. A dangerous text to preach in a church that’s surrounded on two sides by a cemetery, the maintenance of which has been a primary mission of our congregation in recent years. But nonetheless, the text stands – God is God, not of the dead, but of the living. The memorials of our loved ones are in the cemetery outside our window. But to God our loved ones are not headstones and memorial markers, but are alive, beloved of God, enjoying God’s presence. They are the cloud of witnesses spoken of in the book of Hebrews: “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” The language of the text puts me in mind of a racetrack, on which we are all running a race, which represents our earthly life. Up in the stands, cheering us on, are all our departed loved ones who died in the faith – mom and dad and grandma and grandpa, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, all those who have gone on before us, cheering us on in our life’s journey. We feebly struggle; they in glory shine.

God is God, not of the dead, but of the living. So our church is not called to be a funeral parlor, a place weighed down by death. Rather we are called to be a place bursting with life – the new life of the Spirit, abundant life in this world, and eternal life in the world to come. In this world we suffer all the infirmities of the flesh – illness, weakness, temptation, exhaustion. But in the world to come, we will have glorious, resurrection bodies, as different from our own as an oak tree is from an acorn – in the words of our hymn, “unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.” In this world we miscommunicate; we keep secrets and hold grudges; as a result we suffer loneliness, alienation. But in the world to come we will all be in God’s presence, surrounded and embraced and enfolded in God’s love and the love of those who have gone before us, and God will wipe away every tear. In this world we see through a glass, dimly; in the world to come we will see everything in full, even as we ourselves will be fully known.

So our saints shine in glory…but we still feebly struggle. We still run our race, still pursue our journey through life, keeping our eyes on Jesus. May we draw encouragement from these words of the Apostle Paul, written to the church at Thessalonica: But we must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth. For this purpose he called you through our proclamation of the good news, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by our letter. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.”

May it be so with us. Amen.
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Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org