Homily:
November 4:Ordinary Time, Proper 26 st mark 11 am
Introductions
Thank you for the invitation to celebrate Eucharist with you, to give thanks for the work that God has done, is doing, and will do in your midst.
Briefly, about myself.
Hawai’i
parishes in WI, IN, HI, and supply in NC & USC.
Taught college in Indiana, Hawai’i, and SC. Currently an adjunct in Religion department at Winthrop. It’s because my wife, Mary Pat, got hired by the Math department to teach teachers how to teach Math that brings us to SC.
This is my first time in Chester, SC. I have a smattering of input from people who have knowledge of your community. For one person it has been the center for them over many years of one of his chief passions: skydiving. The bishop has shared with me his perception that the people of this particular community are seriously engaged in doing “God’s work” in this place, making Christ known by serving God’s people.
We drove around Chester on our way to observe the eclipse last year.
Observing All Saints (tr.)
Associated with Halloween. When I became Episcopalian as a young teenager, one of the things that happened was we shifted from Halloween to All Saints as the focus.
Necessary to start with a sense of the “Communion of the Saints.” We, of course, have saints days throughout the year. But only one day is set aside for – all the rest. Who are they? Well, it’s a lot as it turns out.
It’s about a time of a lineup of Saints, capital “S” and lower case “s”. What makes a saint? What a menagerie of different kinds of folks that make up our well-known saints.
It’s about All the saints. And that’s why we have to recognize how broadly the net is cast.
Paul and all the saints in …
Paul refers to “the saints” many times in his writings. The clearest definition of a saint is found in his salutation at the beginning of 1 Corinthians:
1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, 2 Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours: 3 Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 1:1–3)
All Saints calls us to recognize the vast family of humanity, known and unknown, as a part of the family that binds us together.
Communion of the Saints
I can remember when I first came head to head, eyeball to eyeball, really began to understand the communion of the saints. I think it was through C.S. Lewis. At one point I tried to read everything he had written – I didn’t succeed.
Although I had heard the phrase in the Apostles Creed that I had memorized when I was confirmed as a teenager. At that age it didn’t really impress me very much.
… I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
Afterall, the 3rd stanza of the Apostles’ Creed sounds a little like a grab bag of concepts that were left over after you got through with the first 2 important ones: God & Jesus. (I’m being tongue in cheek there.)
I would learn in time that I was quite mistaken.
It may have been in C.S. Lewis’s last volume, Letters to Malcolm, [1] The context is in a discussion of how we ought to pray to the saints, what kind of devotion is appropriately directed toward them. It’s a classic Anglican issue: How much are we like the Catholics? How much are we like the Protestants?
“The consoling thing is that while Christendom is divided about the rationality, and even the lawfulness, of praying to the saints, we are all agreed about praying with them.”
I was delighted to learn from him a vision of being connected to the whole family of saints, living and dead.
It allowed me to see and feel in Christian faith a connection with a multitude – rather than a laser-like focus on the inner movements of the individual.
A part of me thought, “What does God care about whether some individual accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior?” What God is about is way moe bigger than that – as Hawaiian pidgin would put it.
It has been said that “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses,” [2]
The communion of saints (Latin, communio sanctorum), when referred to persons, is the spiritual union of the members of the Christian Church, living and the dead. They are all part of a single “mystical body”, with Christ as the head, in which each member contributes to the good of all and shares in the welfare of all. [3]
All Saints is a central part of the who is my neighbor equation – you know the one where Jesus responds by telling the Good Samaritan parable. Our neighbors are all around us – and they are those who have gone before and those who will come after.
Honoring the past and our heritage
All Saints has been a prominent, even distinctive, Anglican celebration for many centuries. It’s important that it not be forgotten or lost amid the many competing forces.
We need it to keep the celebration – at a time when it can be a challenge for many who have lost the ability to celebrate, especially to celebrate in the face of loss and mourning.
An increasingly well-known festival-holiday associated with All Saints is the Day of the Dead.
The Day of the Dead (Spanish: Día de Muertos) is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico, in particular the Central and South regions, and by people of Mexican heritage kkelsewhere. The multi-day holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died, and help support their spiritual journey. [4]
This holiday is being rediscovered or reappreciated by many because it lifts up in celebration those for whom we may mourn. Like All Saints at the center of it all, it guides us in lifting up our spirits at a time when we may feel surrounded by loss and fear.
Honoring elders
In some way All Saints Day calls us back to where we used to be, where many in the world still are, to a place that honors those who have come before us. Our elders, and grand-elders and grand-grand-elders.
Our elders are gone. But in some magical kind of way they remain with us and in us and All Saints is one time of year when we remember and we honor our fathers and mothers – the great cloud of witnesses.
Turning mourning into feasting
All Saints celebrations can turn us away from the modern focus on progress and consumption and at least for a moment connected us with the past – the past we have lost. It’s no longer the present. We mourn its loss. But to celebrate the saints who have made us who we are is to turn mourning into feasting.
Letting the light shine in
Someone said, “We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in.” All Saints is about letting the light shine through our brokeness.
We live in a time that seems dark to many. It is a time when people of all political and religious stripes look backwards and lament the loss of what used to be.
We need to re-learn how to turn nostalgia into celebration.
On Friday Shabbat services began at Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh. The members couldn’t hold service inside because the building was still a crime scene. CNN reported:
About 50 men locked arms and swayed, harmonizing in Hebrew under darkening skies, while police looked on and pilgrims laid stones and flowers at memorials for the 11 congregants who were slain last Saturday. The building is still closed while police process the crime scene.
Within days the Muslim community of Pittsburgh had raised thousands of dollars to assist their brothers and sisters of the Tree of Life Congregation.
All Saints helps us to know that those were our brothers and sisters praying, letting the light in.
Last Sunday at the church I was supplying at and yesterday at a Catholic church we were visiting, we sang one of my all-time favorite songs: One Bread, One Body.
Refrain
One bread, one body One Lord of all One cup of blessing which we bless And we, though many Throughout the earth We are one body in this one Lord
Gentile or Jew Servant or free Woman or man, no more
Many the gifts Many the works One in the Lord of all
Grain for the fields Scattered and grown Gathered to one, for all
That is All Saints in song.
It helps me to know that we are one with all the saints, that we are bound together across all the barriers that humans have erected. Thanks be to God.
Appendix
All Saints lectionary
- The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them. - I saw a new heaven and a new earth;
- Jesus began to weep. (Mary & Martha – Lazarus)
No comments:
Post a Comment