Then I saw a
new heaven and a new earth, for the former heaven and the former earth had
passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 I saw the holy city, New
Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride
beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 I heard a loud voice from the
throne say, “Look! God’s dwelling is here with humankind. He will dwell with
them, and they will be his peoples. God himself will be with them as their God.
4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no
more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things
have passed away.” 5 Then the one seated on the throne said, “Look!
I’m making all things new.” He also said, “Write this down, for these words are
trustworthy and true.” 6 Then he said to me, “All is done. I am the
Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”
On this All Saints’ Sunday, we celebrate the lives of
those who have finished their course in faith, who now rest from their earthly
labors, whose lives shine like so many twinkling stars in the heavens. We join with Christians through the
centuries, a great cloud of witnesses who testify with one voice to our
resurrection faith.
While the patterns and
symbols are fairly standard and straightforward from place to place – names
read, bells tolled, candles lit – each community will still celebrate in its
particular way, for the life of each person is a delicate and unique strand of
a complex tapestry we call “life.” For
every person whose individual thread has made the entire piece a closer
reflection of the goodness and beauty God intends for this world, we call one
such person a “saint.”
On this Sunday each year,
we take a few moments to remember the saints who have moved their membership
from this church into the Church Triumphant, and this year we remember Margaret
Robinson, Eazora Cummings, Fred Williams, Sr., and Willie Maude Michaux. We remember other saints – persons in our own
lives and total strangers – who have made that same journey, whether recently
or a long time ago. We give thanks for
their witness, and for the faith they have given to us.
All Saints’ Day is one of
those days where a grab bag of emotions flood our senses, moving us seamlessly
from grief to hope, tears to smiles, sadness to joy, and then back around
again, because we not only remember their lives with us on this side of the
resurrection, but we celebrate that God has restored them and healed them fully
– their tears are wiped away, death has passed away, and mourning, crying, and
pain are no more. Thanks be to God!
My family, like many of
yours, is remembering the lives of our saints this year. A month apart in August and September,
Ashley’s Grandma Alice and my grandfather, “Papa” Bill Breese, joined the
Church Triumphant. Many people asked if
I conducted the service, having done how many dozen funerals before, surely I
was qualified to do it! I just smiled
politely, and said, “There is a time for me to be a pastor, and a time for me
to be a grandson.”
Grandma chose a gravesite in the back corner of the town
cemetery, almost within throwing distance of the fields Papa had worked for 65
of his 86 years. As the breeze blew on a
warm, Pennsylvania fall day, Grandma and Papa’s pastor commented on something I
have also witnessed in my years of ministry – that when a family is one of
faith, yes, there is crying and mourning (I mean, even Jesus wept at the grave
of his friend, Lazarus), but that is accompanied by the calm assurance and
hopeful confidence that death is not the end of the story.
The tears are for us,
not for our departed loved one. Friends,
our faith is a resurrection faith – death is not a final stop but rather a
beginning. Jesus promised that he is
making all things new – and for the saints, death is but the beginning of the
next chapter of a life lived in the sunshine of God’s delight.
My Grandma Thomas spent
her last few years in a nursing home because of advanced dementia. Now, if you want to get a picture in your
mind of my Grandma Thomas, think Driving
Miss Daisy, and other than the part about being Jewish, there she is. She and her sisters were the quintessential
proper, Southern women. On the morning
she died, she awoke early in the morning, called down to the nurses’ station
and asked that they come and get her dressed.
They said, “Miss Elsie, it’s not time to get up for a few more hours, so
go back to sleep, dear,” but she insisted
they come down to her room and get her dressed.
As soon as she was dressed, she said, “I’m tired now, and I’d like to
lie back down,” and she laid back down on the bed fully dressed. They came to check on her a few hours later,
and she had passed away quietly.
They called us to let us
know, and recounted this story, which they were having trouble making sense
of. We just laughed, which was even more
puzzling to them, until we explained: we think she knew it was time to go, and
being the proper Southern woman she was, even with her advanced dementia, she
wasn’t going anywhere until she was properly dressed. There’s no way she was going to meet Jesus
wearing just a nightgown!
Friends, the saints have
gone on to a better place, but they haven’t left us – that’s another promise of
our faith. We are not separated from the
saints who have finished their course ahead of us. The verse of the hymn says,
“Yet we on earth have union with God, the
Three-in-One,
And mystic, sweet communion with those whose rest is
won.”
We call this “the
communion of the saints,” it’s one of the things we affirm in the Apostles’
Creed, and by it we mean that nothing shall separate God’s saints from each
other or from God’s very self. We are
connected to each other – all members of the body of Christ are joined to one
another with the ligaments of love. Even
through the thick, dark curtain of death, the light of God’s love is strong
enough to shine through.
A young girl in Sunday
School was asked, “What is a saint?” She
paused for a minute, thought of the saints depicted in the stained glass
windows in the sanctuary, and said, “A saint is
someone the light shines through.”
And that’s really all
there is to it. Sainthood is not
reserved for some special brand of super-Christian, or something that only an
elite few will ever attain. It’s
something we can all do, by the grace of God.
It is less about who we are and what we do than it is about being open
for what God will do in and through us.
God’s light can and does shine through anyone.
Further, we don’t have to
wait until we die for God’s light to shine through us. Sometimes after funerals, people will tell me
what a beautiful and fitting service it was.
Can I tell you the secret to that?
I work with the material at hand; it is easy to craft a beautiful
service for a person who lived a beautiful life. Every day, we are given an opportunity to
write our own eulogy. The surest way to get into heaven when
we die is to let heaven get into us while we live. Though our days on earth are
numbered, the saints are those who made their days on earth count. Their love still shines brightly because it
is really God’s love shining in and through them. May it be so for us.
On this All Saints’
Sunday, we celebrate lives of love that live on beyond death. The candles in this room represent the light
of their love that still lives on. In a
few moments, we will light these candles, first Margaret, Eazora, Fred, and
Willie Maude, represented by the pillar
candles on the altar table, which will be lit by members of their families who are here today. Then, we
will celebrate Holy Communion together, and after you have received the bread
and wine, you are invited to light one of the candles along the side to
remember the beloved holy ones in your life who have gone on before us, and to
proclaim that they live on still.
Death is not the end of the story. To be sure, the saints are always with us,
but on this day, when the light of their love fills this room and warms our
hearts, we press up against a thin place in the veil between this world and the
world to come, and we realize that our loved ones may, perhaps, be much closer
than we first thought.
Barbara Brown Taylor says,
“Because of them and because of one another and because of the God who binds us
all together we can do more than any of us had dreamed to do alone.”
In life, in death, in life
beyond death – we are not alone! God is
with us, and we are with each other.
There is yet one more
place where the reality of our enduring connection is realized – around our
Lord’s table. Again, there’s a reason we
say we believe in the communion of the saints. Holy Communion means
many things, but an emphasis I want you to remember today is that, at our
Lord’s table, the connection we have with the risen Christ is made real, as is
our connection with all others who ever have or ever will take their place
around this table.
At one point in our
Communion liturgy, the presiding minister says that we praise God and celebrate
this meal, not alone or in isolation, but “with God’s people on earth, and all
the company of heaven.”
Belton Joyner, a retired
United Methodist pastor from the eastern part of our state, tells of a
friendship he and his wife had with another pastor and his wife. For decades,
these two couples had been close friends, doing the things that friends do –
trips, time in each other’s homes, meals around the table. Susan, the wife in
the other couple, died a few years ago, and a few months later, both pastors
found themselves at a worship service that would include Holy Communion. Belton leaned over to his now-widowed friend
and said, “I sure am looking forward to having dinner again with Susan.” With
that, they went, together, to the Lord’s table.
The other night, Ashley
told me that she thinks about my mom every time she comes to Communion. My mom died of breast cancer only a few
months before Ashley and I met. She
said, “I hope to have 1000 meals with your mom before we ever meet
face-to-face.”
Today, we celebrate the communion of the saints – and guess
who’s coming to dinner! We are looking
forward to having dinner again with Margaret Robinson, Eazora Cummings, Fred
Williams, Sr., and Willie Maude Michaux.
Our friends who have gone before
are already enjoying the fullness of the heavenly banquet; this meal of bread
and wine is for us a foretaste of the joyful reunion that awaits us.
Today, I am looking
forward to having dinner again with my mom and her dad, my Papa Breese. Today, I am looking forward to having dinner
again with Ashley’s Grandma Alice and Papa Sam, with Grandma and Papa Thomas,
and countless others who have finished their course in faith.
With whom are you looking
forward to having dinner again? We are
looking forward to having dinner again with all the saints of light whose love already
shines around us in this room.
Dinner’s on the table;
let’s not keep the saints waiting any longer.
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