All Saints Sunday A – November 6, 2011

All Saints Sunday A – November 6, 2011

Amos 5: 18-24      Psalm 34: 1-10, 22

1 John 3: 1-3         Matthew 25: 1-13

May the word of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, our rock and our redeemer.  Amen.

Craig’s mother was rarely home.  She had to work several jobs just to pay the rent on the studio apartment that she lives in with seventeen year old Craig, and his sister, thirteen year old Ashley.  There’s a couch in the apartment, but no bed or bedroom for that matter.  Craig usually just sleeps on the floor in a sleeping bag that he pulled from a pile of trash that was waiting to be collected on the side of the road.  Craig knows that Ashley has started skipping school, but he doesn’t want to tell his mom.  He figures she’ll think she needs to stay home more to keep an eye on Ashley and if she’s home, she’s not working and if she’s not working there’s no money and if there’s no money there’s no apartment.  Craig has tried to get a job, but there aren’t many jobs available for seventeen year olds these days and even if he had a job, who would keep an eye on Ashley?

Some days there is food enough in the house, but not always.  Both Craig and Ashley get free lunches at school and Craig tries to save some of his lunch to bring home for either Ashley or his mom.  Sometimes, especially in the summer when school is out, Craig looks for food in the dumpster behind a nearby restaurant on Greenwood Avenue.  That’s where Craig met John.  At first Craig thought John was up to no good…maybe a dealer or a junkie or worse.  John asked Craig what he was doing  on a hot summer day, digging through a stinkin’ dumpster.  “Nothin’ man.  Back off.” Craig replied.  But John persisted, because just like all people, there are good guys and bad guys.  And John was one of the good guys.  Eventually John got Craig to admit that he was looking for food so that he and his sister would have lunch.  Since school was out they hadn’t been eating lunch regularly and there wasn’t any money.  “Come with me” John said and they walked a few blocks down Greenwood Ave. until they came to the doors of this church.  “There” John said, pointing to the door, “they have food.  Just ring the bell and they’ll give you some.”

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.

These are the words from the prophet Amos to God’s elect, to the people God had chosen.  God is not interested in the religious lives of God’s people unless they are willing to pursue justice and righteousness.  Any worship service, any offering, any songs, are empty if they are not joined with the pursuit of justice and righteousness.

I’ve seen a posting on Facebook that addresses this very thing.  Perhaps it is the social media version of a prophet’s voice. It says “Sometimes I want to ask God why God allows poverty, famine, and injustice in the world when God could do something about it, but I’m afraid God might ask me the very same question.”

Today is All Saints Sunday in the life of the church.  It is the day when we remember and celebrate the saints in our lives, those people who have made a difference.  As we began worship we remembered both those who have been baptized over the previous year as well as those who have died, saints all.  But I am looking out over a church filled with saints.  Saints who are beloved children of God.  The writer of 1 John said “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”  Saints.  Beloved children.  And we join to those titles workers in the kingdom.  Workers in the ways of justice and peace and righteousness.

The baptized we remembered this morning are all under the age of three.  Anastasia, Agnes, and Victor were all baptized with water that rolled down their foreheads.  They were claimed as Christ’s own…beloved children…saints.  They haven’t had much of an opportunity to work for justice and righteousness, but they will.  The first time they are in preschool and something unjust happens on the playground, a bigger child pushes a smaller one, or a stronger child takes a toy from a weaker one…they will begin to learn what those words mean.

But those we remembered as saints who have left this life, they had a lifetime of understanding what justice and righteousness were about.  Marge, Gail, Marie, Henry, Mark, Judith, and Edith all had stories of how they worked for justice and righteousness, stories of how they put feet to their faith.  Those who loved them, their families and friends, have the sacred task of keeping their stories and sharing them.

All lives, yours and mine, and every life….are stories.  They are a compilation of stories.  Sometimes our stories are tragedies and sometimes they are comedies and sometimes they are love stories or mysteries.  But they are our stories, our lives.  Stories of saints.

Let me share the story of another saint, who also died this year.  Wangari Maathai was the first woman from Africa to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She endured harsh beatings, she was arrested, she was slandered in order to work on behalf of justice and righteousness.   Maathai founded The Green Belt Movement in Kenya.  Thirty million trees were planted in order to stop desertification and in order to restore the water supply.  Maathai  believed that “restoring the environment would lead to economic stability for the poor, which would in turn dissuade people from joining factions prone to war and other violence.”  Because of her unflinching work for justice and righteousness democracy gained a foothold in Kenya and the UN launched a similar effort worldwide, planting eleven billion trees.

In a film called Dirt! The Movie, Maathai offered this story to illustrate how she and others were able to carry out their work in the face of such intense opposition.  It is a story of a hummingbird carrying one drop of water at a time to fight a forest fire, even as animals like the elephant asked why the hummingbird was wasting his energy. “It turns to them and tells them, ‘I’m doing the best I can.’ And that to me is what all of us should do. We should always feel like a hummingbird,” she said. “I certainly don’t want to be like the animals watching as the planet goes down the drain. I will be a hummingbird. I will do the best I can.”

Perhaps more well known to us than Wangari Maathai was the death of Steve Jobs.  Since he died, much has been written about him, about his many accomplishments and about how his life’s work has forever changed the world.  Much has been written about his shortcomings as well.  But the most touching piece I read was the eulogy written by his sister, Mona Simpson, and published later in The New York Times.  I encourage you to find it online and read it in its entirety.  In it, Simpson notes that all of us die in medias res…in the middle of a story.  Whether our deaths are at an old age or as the result of a long illness, or  sudden and unexpected, they happen in the midst of the story of our lives.

The poet Mary Oliver ends her poem The Summer Day with the question: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Child of God.  Called to be saints.  What is it you plan to do?  What is it we plan to do?  Will we cower in fear and suggest that there is nothing that can be done because it’s all gone bad, it’s all gone too far?  Or, will we look around us, just right here around us and find the way that our gifts, whatever they might be…and we all have them….can meet the needs that are before us? Economic injustice is an overwhelming issue when taken in its entirety.  But there are things we can do.  Basic things.  We can shop locally.  We can make a sack lunch to give to a hungry teenage boy and his sister.  Care of Creation seems overwhelming….how can we reverse global warming?  How can we insure there is enough drinkable water?  We can plant a tree.

Saints of God, beloved children of God.  We live in the middle of our own stories even as we remember and celebrate the stories of all the saints.  We live in the middle of our one wild and precious life.  And this day is what we have.  How will we act on behalf of others in a way that brings about justice and righteousness?

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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