Twenty-first Pentecost
All Saint’s Day
A few years ago the press had a field day when it was leaked
that Hillary Clinton, while in the White House, had had conversations with Eleanor
Roosevelt. It’s been so long now that I don’t remember the details
of why or how that was important but it came to mind as I was thinking about
this All Saints Day and about how we do in fact communicate with those who have
gone before us. How we seek the advice, approval, understanding and wisdom of
those we admire who are no longer with us.
For years my sons have been offering to get me a new cookie press. The one I
have is the old style crank press, the box is tattered and some of the discs
are missing. But I don’t want a new one. That press was my grandmother’s
and every Christmas season when I take it out to make cookies it’s as if
she is making cookies with me. We communicate.
A writer for Time Magazine writes of a visit he had with his departed professor.
He writes, “Conversing with dead people isn’t all it’s cracked
up to be. The other night I had a brief edgy chat with Robert Lowell, the great
poet who taught me poetry writing in the 1960’s and died a few years later.
I don’t believe there was a connection. I do this sort of thing a lot lately—talk
to the dead, live in the past—probably because I am getting on. But it’s
mainly a matter of preference. I would rather have a conversation with Lowell
than with most of those who are so-called alive—though I tell you he can
be a royal pain.
We spend a great deal of time with the dear and departed as
it is. On a given day, I can read a Hemingway story, watch a Bette Davis movie,
chomp on a Caesar salad and listen to a Cole Porter tune sung by Frank Sinatra
and I take the F.D.R. Drive to LaGuardia Airport where I board a plane to Washington.”
So too we here in the church reside in the presence of the dead, communicate
with those who have gone ahead.
After all this is All Saints Day, that time in the church when we think about
the saints, all of them, all those baptized who have lived this faith, walked
the way of discipleship before us and who now rest from their labors.
Yet not only this Sunday but also every Sunday we communicate
with the dead. What have we done before this sermon? We have opened the scriptures,
we have read from the testimony of those who have been dead for many centuries.
We have engaged in a rather amazing act, amazing for folk in our culture. We
have acted as if these ancient people with names like Isaiah, John, Lazarus
and Mary and Martha know something more about God than we do. We have believed
that they have something to teach us that we could not learn any other way.
In today’s gospel Jesus visits a family in grief. Lazarus,
after a short illness, has died. His sisters, Mary and Martha, have already
had the funeral and buried him. Jesus is deeply grieved by the death of his
friend Lazarus. Yet he comes out to the cemetery and, with a loud voice, commands
him to rise. While this sounds like a resuscitation rather than a resurrection,
we are right to hear in John’s story a kind of echo of Easter. Jesus is
lord of life. Whenever he comes among the dead (even on the first Sunday in
November) the dead begin to rise. Let that be a lesson for you.
In our world the dead remain that way. We come to a dead end,
last chapter in the story, the end. What can be done? Give up accept our fate,
you can’t fight the facts, and all the other ways that we reconcile ourselves
to death.
But here comes John and his gospel and Mary and Martha to tell
us the story of their brother Lazarus and how graciously Jesus brought him back
to life. Now that Jesus has come into the world things are not as fixed, final,
finished as we once thought. Sometimes by the strong work of Jesus, there is
a way when we thought there was no way. Sometimes even though it’s November
Jesus can make it seem like Easter.
So that’s the story for all Saints Day but it’s really
only half the story—the story of the saints who have lived in faith and
who have gone before.
The other half of the story is the saints who come after us. Are we communicating
with them as passionately as we do those who have come before? Do we imbue our
grandchildren and our great grandchildren with as much import as our grandparents
and ancestors? Sometimes I think we loose that sense of passing on a good world
to our children. We figure that the future will sort out the mistakes we make,
that technology will answer the problems we leave behind. What do we care, we’ll
be long gone before the ozone layer is dangerously compromised? We won’t
be the ones who miss the song of birds because they can no longer migrate to
a rain forest. We won’t be the ones who live with the destabilization of
an epidemic that claims a huge portion of Africa’s population. To deny
the responsibility we have to future saints is as much a denial of Easter as
Mary’s complaint, “if you would have been here Lord.”
I have to tell you, I think our theme for the Stewardship campaign
this year is so good. Into God’s future. Whether we like it or not the
future will come but can we conform ourselves to the future God wants for us.
Can we live into God’s future? Can we be the saints for future generations?
Will we all, as the body of Christ, pass on to Cole and Conrad the assurance
of God’s love? Will we be able to offer them the strength and support of
this community as they make their way through life?
Sometimes I get worried. I’m afraid that we’re not communicating well
with our young people the faith that is so important to us. But the Christian
Century a few weeks back had an issue focusing on “Passing on the Faith”.
While it was all interesting, one article summarized the results of recent Gallup
polls. The current cohort of American teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17
are lonely, spiritually hungry, feel pressured and are intensely aware of the
threat of violence. But the polls also find that 92% of teens consider their
religious beliefs important to them. 95% express belief in God and 67% have
confidence in organized religion. Over half (55 %) call themselves “religious”
with an additional 39 % referring to themselves as “spiritual but not religious”.
And shockingly, American teenagers today more closely resemble
their grandparents in church attendance. On average, the Gallup Youth Survey
documents teen church attendance that is 10 percentage points higher than the
national figure for all adults.
I am encouraged by these statistics. Perhaps just as surely as God holds the
past in God’s hand so God also holds the future.
Amen.