Today is All Saints Day – in the German tradition, Totenfest
– when we remember our departed loved ones, family members and friends and
members of this congregation and of the wider church who have gone on to be
with the Lord. A number of them are listed in the bulletin – but we all know
many, many more whose names and memories we hold in our hearts, far too many to
name at any one time. It is on occasions
such as All Saints that we truly remember how interconnected our lives are, how
much our lives impact one another. We do
not live only for ourselves nor do our deaths affect only ourselves. All of us hold memories of our loved ones who
have passed – tender moments, funny stories – and sometimes sad memories as
well, moments of misunderstanding and tension.
All these memories, for good and bad, are a part of what made our loved
ones the unique individuals they were – and in God’s sight, still are.
The lives of our loved ones, and the memories we hold, the
stories we tell about them are not only a part of our individual stories and
the story of our church, but they are part of something much bigger, the “Great
Story” of faith that began in the Garden of Eden and continues to this day, and
will continue until time becomes eternity and we shall be with the Lord. Many of you, especially the longtime members,
have told me stories of those who shaped your faith – faithful ministers like
Pastor Steinberg and Sunday School teachers like Mr. Bauer, stories of the
members of the church who welcomed you when you came here as children – some of
you clutching the nickels your parents gave you for Sunday school – and many of
the longtimers still remember the verses you memorized for your confirmation,
and who else was in your confirmation class. And so the faith of those pastors and
teachers lives on in you, in us. On one
level, our lives are fleeting – as the book of James says, we are like a mist
that is here today and gone tomorrow.
But in God’s eyes, our lives, our stories, and those of our loved ones
hold eternal significance.
We encounter in our Gospel a story of eternal significance
that begins as a family story.
In our Gospel reading, we hear about another family
devastated by grief, two sisters, Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus,
who live in Bethany, a town two miles outside Jerusalem. We’re told that Jesus had a special love for
this family. Word came to Jesus that
Lazarus was ill…but strangely, Jesus delayed two days in going to see
them. By the time he makes his way to
Bethany, Lazarus has died, and has been in the grave for four days. That detail of four days is significant. In the Jewish thought of the day, it was
believed that the spirit of one recently deceased hovered over the body for
three days, and then departed. And so
the fact that Lazarus had been dead four days meant he was truly dead, at a
point of no return, at a point of no hope.
He encounters first
Martha and then Mary, and both say the same thing, “If only you’d been here,
our brother would not have died.” If
only. But even in this situation of no hope, Martha hangs onto a sliver of
hope, “Even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask him.” And Jesus says, “Your brother will rise
again.” Martha says, “Yes, I know, he’ll
rise at the resurrection on the last day.”
And Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they
die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do
you believe this?” Jesus says to Martha,
basically, I’ve got this. Do you trust
me? When he encounters the mourners,
Jesus weeps – but then asks those there to roll away the stone, and raises
Lazarus with the words, “Lazarus, come forth!” With those words, we’re told
Lazarus came out of the tomb, graveclothes and all, likely looking like
something out of The Mummy. We’re told
that after the raising of Lazarus, Mary and Martha and Lazarus gave a dinner
for Jesus….and we’re also told that the religious authorities had plotted to
kill Lazarus, just as they had been plotting to kill Jesus – but then we’re not
told anything further about Lazarus. And
what does it say about these religious leaders that they are so threatened by
Jesus that they prefer death to life, at least for Jesus and for Lazarus. And, as an aside, are there times in our
lives when what looks like a mortal threat may be seen, from another angle, as
God’s way of bringing about new life.
This is a story of how God provided comfort in time of grief.
This is a story of the saints of God….and on All Saints Day, we remember our
saints – not only the famous saints such as St. Francis and St. Patrick, or St.
Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was just recently declared a saint of the
Roman Catholic church, but all those anonymous but faithful people who have
lived and died in the faith.
We all have our own stories of how God has comforted us in
times of grief. It’s so hard to let go
when a loved one goes to be with the Lord.
My father died just as I was beginning my time as pastor here at
Emanuel….he’d been on dialysis for several years due to kidney failure, and
then developed pancreatic cancer. The
pain of his pancreatic cancer quickly became more than he could live with, and
so he stopped dialysis, and with the assistance of home hospice, he passed
peacefully. It went very quickly – Thanksgiving weekend
2007 my dad had been up patching a hole in the roof of his workshop, and by
early January 2008 he was gone…..just a little over a month. After
he passed, I discovered by chance that I still had a voicemail from him on my
cell phone….just a mundane voicemail from a few months before his death, saying
he’d left the dialysis center and was going home, and he’d call back later. Over the course of coming months, when I
missed my dad, occasionally I’d play that voicemail. Eventually the inevitable happened – after
playing the voicemail, at the end, instead of hitting save, I hit delete, and
so I accidentally erased it – and I guess it was at that moment when I could no
longer play back that voicemail that I finally had to let go of my father for
good. But I also realized that, as much
as I missed my dad, I wouldn’t have wanted him back as he’d been….the voice on
that voicemail sounded old and tired, bone-weary tired, utterly drained,
exhausted, and I wouldn’t want him back if it meant more suffering. Finally I had to believe for myself the same
thing I’d often told others, that all the suffering of his last few years was
finally over, that he was in a better place, that he was with God – and for me,
that was enough, and that is enough.
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life…do you believe?” Jesus telling me, “I’ve got this. Do you trust me?” It was enough for Martha, and it’s enough for
me.
At a UCC meeting a number of years ago, the keynote speaker,
Amy-Jill Levine, a noted Jewish author who wrote a book about Jesus called “The
Misunderstood Jew”, said that Christianity was like football – the goal is to get
into the endzone, into heaven – while Judaism is like baseball, where the
batter is trying to get home – for the author, this is a reference to Jews
needing to have a land to call home. But
as I was preparing this sermon, while I appreciated the point Amy-Jill Levine had
made, I thought the baseball analogy also applied to Christians. When we are born, we come from God, and when
we pass from this life, we go back to God.
We’re remembered for what we do while we’re here – just as a baseball
player is remembered or maybe forgotten based on his success in rounding the
bases and playing in the outfield and such.
But those who pass from this life to be with the Lord, really are in
essence going home.
And what a home! Our
reading from Isaiah pictures our eternal home as a mountaintop on which is held
a banquet, with rich food and well-aged wines.
Perhaps for us it doesn’t sound that impressive, but for Isaiah’s
original readers, who were impoverished and frequently didn’t know where their
next meal was coming from, the picture of an eternal banquet where there was
always plentiful food and drink would have been compelling. And then, Isaiah says that on this
mountaintop, God will destroy the shroud of death that is cast over all
people. In our reading from Revelation,
the writer gives us an amazing vision – “the holy city, the new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband. And I” – that is, John, the author – “heard a loud voice from the
throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away
every tear from their eyes. Death will
be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things
have passed away.’ And the one who was
seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’
That’s the promise we remember on this All Saints day. That’s the hope we cling to, that though we
are but strangers and sojourners in this life, God has a home prepared for us,
where we will live on in God’s presence.
May our words and actions bring glory to God and live on in the lives of
those around us, until we are all safe at home indeed with God. Amen.
