All Saints Sunday – November 3, 2024

John 11:32-44

So…when I began thinking about this Sunday…All Saints Sunday…I thought about the baseball and football cards I collected when I was a boy.

You remember…they had a picture of the athlete on the front and their stats on the back.
And then a slice of bubble gum came with the card inside the wrapper.
And…of course…we bought cards and traded them too…because we all had our favorite players and teams.

The Lord be with you

And also with you

So then…I thought…why not Saints Cards.

Collecting cards with pictures of our favorite Saints…with their stats on the back.
Instead of the number of home runs and touchdowns…the number of miracles and good deeds.
Obvious…our cards would have Saint Frances and Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr…and Mother Teresa’s picture on them.
The gum would be Juicy Fruit…you know…the fruits of the spirit.
But my stack of Saint Cards would include vast numbers of saints who moved my life forward and nurtured me in positive ways.
Including saints from the congregation I grew up in.
Teachers and educators and coaches during my lifetime.
And a host of saints who I had the privilege of being connected to during my ministry of Word and Sacrament.

Today is a day set aside in the church year to remember all these saints.

But not just the ones who are on trading cards…
Since it is All Saints Sunday and not just Some Saints Sunday.
To be clear…this is not like a cult of saints or anything.
We do not need special saints to intercede for us.
Why? Because God does not listen to them more since they were better Christians than we are.

What we celebrate when we celebrate All Saints is not the superhuman faith and power of a select few.

What we celebrate is God’s ability to use flawed people to do divine things.
We celebrate all on whom God has acted in baptism…
Sealing them…as Ephesians says…with the mark of the promised Holy Spirit.
We celebrate the fact that God creates faith in God’s people.
And those people…through ordinary acts of love…bring the Kingdom of Heaven closer to Earth.
We celebrate that we have…in all who have gone before us…
What St Paul calls such a great cloud of witnesses…
And that the faithful departed are as much the body of Christ as we are.

It is quite a thing…really…that we are connected to so many.

Connected to so much faith. So many stories. So much divine love.
Especially in these days of alienation and trying to find community and belonging.
I may think that the basis of me being connected to other people is in having theological or political beliefs…
Or denominational affiliation…
Or book clubs or musical groups…
Or bowling or golf leagues…
Or Facebook groups in common.
But none of that is what connects us to the Body of Christ.
What connects us to the body of Christ is not our piety or good works or theological beliefs.
It is God…a God who gathers up all of God’s children into the church eternal.

So…today let us remember all the deeply faithful and deeply flawed saints of God’s church through whom the glory of God has been revealed…

Is being revealed and will be revealed.
Let us remember Mary Magdalena and Peter the fisherman and the glorious disciples.
Let us remember St Frances and Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr.
Let us remember Trudy Crowder and Janet Alexander and Shirley Gioe.
Today…let us thank God for gathering so many into the church eternal…some of whom still light our own paths.

O blest communion…fellowship divine!

We come here today to honor someone we have loved who has died.

Our hearts are heavy with the loss of someone dear.
We have our own beloved dead to remember this day.
People who we would rather still have here in this sanctuary as a living person.
And not as a name spoken at church the first Sunday of November.
We would rather be standing behind them in line for communion than adding them to the litany of saints.

All Saints Sunday’s meaning is connected to being part of this mystic body of Christ because it means that death is never the final word.

Because in both life and death we are connected to God and to one another.
The letter to the Ephesians calls this the inheritance of the saints.
That God gathers us all up into the divine love of Christ and makes us a body both now and in the life to come.
That even those whose names are eventually forgotten are always and forever held in the light of God in glory.
Because while death is a wrenching painful reality to us…it is meaningless to God.

Not that God is untouched by the pain of death…after all…

Jesus had real friends who died…and he stood outside the tomb of Lazarus and wept.
And then…he raised Lazarus from the grave…
As though before Jesus was to defeat death for good…
He needed first to give it a good slap in the face.
God in Jesus was so moved by compassion and love for those like Trudy and Janet and Shirly that his hand is ever extended to them.
A God who…in Jesus was so full of grace…that he went to a cross we built for him.
A God who in Jesus descended to the dead as though to say to us: “even here I will find you and not let go.”
Because death has no sting…death is rendered meaningless to a God of resurrection.
And lest we forget…it is a God of resurrection who we worship.

So…O Jerusalem…what can we do but also give thanks for this table we are about to gather around.

A foretaste of the heavenly banquet around which the saints are already gathered.
We give thanks that around this table we are tied to the whole communion of saints.
United with all who have ever received bread and wine and told it was Jesus and it was for them.
We are joined here with angels and arch angels…cherubim and seraphim.
We are joined with the church on earth and the church in heaven.
And all who have called on the name of God.

O blest communion…fellowship divine.