Lectionary Lab PREMIUM Edition for All Saints Sunday, Year B
November 3, 2024
Thinking the Texts by John Fairless
This key piece of Isaiah 25 shows up in some pretty interesting places in the Christian scriptures, in addition to its beautiful message for Isaiah’s own time. Who doesn’t want to come to a feast with “well-aged wines” and “rich food filled with marrow”? That sounded especially good to people who were returning from exile and a likely lean diet of Babylonian gruel day after day. The apostle Paul certainly picked up the great line “he will swallow up death forever.” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:55) And John the Revelator begins to close the vision of new heavens and a new earth with “Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces.” (cf. Revelation 21)
That same Revelation 21 makes tangible the promise of “God with us” that has filled both Hebrew and Christian scripture. God walked with the first humans in the garden, God traveled with the Israelites through the wilderness, the Lord blessed King David and was with him, just as Jesus came and was given the name Immanuel — God with us. Now, in the final chapter of all time and eternity, God “will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” No wonder death and sadness and crying must flee!
Why did Jesus weep in John 11? It’s a question that has intrigued readers and hearers of this story for centuries. Did he weep for poor Lazarus, who, having endure the rigors of death was now being called back to the other side only to have to do it all over again (eventually)? Did he weep with the sisters who had been put through so much trauma over losing their brother, as we often sit with mourners in our own time? Was he getting a head start on the tears he knew he would soon shed for himself in his passion and death? Did Jesus weep for the heavy weight of sin and suffering that inflicted a whole world that God loved?
Whatever the reason, Jesus wept; we follow him into both weeping and rejoicing in the enduring presence of God with us.
And Just for Fun
Sermon by Delmer Chilton (Bonus Included!)
Today is All Saints Sunday, an interesting Holy Day on the Church’s Calendar. It is the Christian equivalent of the ancient Greek “Altar to an Unknown God” which Paul referred to in Acts. The Greeks had altars to hundreds of gods. They were afraid they might have left one out, so they built an altar to an “Unknown God” just to make sure they didn’t make some minor, obscure god mad, and thus get punished for failing to worship a god they didn’t know about.
In the early days of the church, people began to remember those who had been especially devout and holy and who had died as martyrs for the faith as “Saints,” persons already in heaven and able to hear prayers and help out those still living. By medieval times, the church calendar was filled with Saint’s Days honoring all the official Saints of the Church. And All Saints Day was an attempt to cover their bets, like the ancient Greeks, by giving a day to all saints, to make sure no one was left out. A bit later, All Souls Day began to be observed on November 2, as a way to commemorate all those who had died in the faith.
After the Reformation, Protestant Churches continued to observe All Saints, but eventually changed its meaning to one closer to that of All Souls - remembrance and celebration of all Christians, “all “saints” - past, present, and future with whom we share communion in the universal, catholic, church. It is especially observed as a day to remember those in the local parish who have died in the last year.
All Saints Sunday is a reminder that; as important as the future is; and as all-consuming as present problems can be; the past is important too. In many important ways, William Faulkner was right when he said, “The past is not dead. It is not even past.” Or as Dr. Bernard Boyd said in New Testament Class at the University of North Carolina; “Christianity acknowledges the ISNESS of the WAS.”
I am an admitted Luddite. Technology befuddles me. I still carry a fountain pen, my watch has a dial with numbers and a big hand and a little hand. I can’t program a VCR or anything else. To me, a computer is a fancy typewriter and I treat it like one. Often times even simple technology defeats me. For instance, passenger-side rear-view mirrors. I am sure someone will explain this to me after service, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why they put mirrors there that are designed to deceive us. It happened again this summer. I was rushing up and down the interstate, back and forth to Atlanta. I looked in the outside mirror, plenty of room to move into the right lane. I slide over, horns blare, brakes screech, and I glance back over my right shoulder; there’s a car even with my rear bumper in the right lane. Looking in the mirror, it seemed so very far behind me. Then I read the fine print, the fateful words. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Why do they do that? I fumed.
Since I am stumped by technology I, of course, could not come up with an answer, so I commenced thinking about thinks I do understand, philosophy and theology and such. “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” “The Past is not dead, it is not even past.” “The ISNESS of the WAS.” On All Saints Day, we celebrate the positive side of this truth. In Spirit, we are as close to the Cross as the Disciples.
In Faith, we are as connected to Jesus as his friends. In Christ, we are as much a part of the Resurrection as Mary and Martha and Peter and John.
Christianity is an historic religion, rooted in a true story that happened at a particular time in a particular place involving a real Jesus who suffered real torment and died a real death on a real cross. But Christianity is not just history; it is not just yesterday’s news. The study of Scripture is not just the study of the writings of ancient sages in order to learn the wisdom of the past and apply it to the problems of the present. It is partially that, but it is so much more. Christ and the Cross transcend time and place in such a way that when the Bible is read in the midst of believers, Jesus is here speaking to us. When we worship together, participate in prayer and praise, remember Christ by receiving Holy Communion Christ is really present with us, and we are really present with him in the Upper Room at the Last Supper and at the Mountaintop feast where every tear is wiped away and death is swallowed up. We are in Old Palestine and the New Heaven, all at the same time. Objects in Mirror are closer than they appear.The Christ of the past is not dead, he is not even past.
He lives, and because he lives, those whom we name here today, all those who have gone before us in the faith, all the Saints, live also, “See, the home of God is among mortals. (God ) will dwell with them, they will be (God’s) people, and God . . . will be with them; God 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.” (Revelation 21:3-4)
Amen and amen.
BONUS: All Hallow’s Eve
We mask our fear of death
with faces of silliness, or power, or both -
attempting to laugh off or scare away
the dread knot of anxiety that fills our hearts and souls.
Pumpkins with crooked grins and flickering flames
stand-in for all those things which really keep us up at night -
the loss of life or love or sanity,
the slowing step or fading memory
that remind us that we too will one day
go where those who have died have already gone.
And where is that, exactly?
Where is that “far country?”
And do we really want to go there?
On this night we approach with timid step
the house where God’s deepest and most enigmatic mystery dwells.
We knock and quake behind our masks and hold out our hands and beg,
“Trick or treat?” -
whilst deep within we hold on to the fervent hope
that all the things we have heard and believed about a God of grace are true.
Delmer Chilton