All Saints Sunday Year B November 4, 2018
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Hutson
Isaiah 25: 6-9 + Psalm 24 + Revelation 21: 1-6a + John 11: 32-44
Beloved, grace and peace are yours from the God who was, and who is, and who is to come. Amen.
I believe I have shared this with you before, but it’s worth remembering again: Research has shown that the three most beloved phrases in the English language are I love you, I’m sorry, and Come to Dinner.
Today is All Saints Sunday. This is a major feast day in the Church as we remember and give thanks for the lives of all the saints. Today we have remembered those from this place who have died since last year’s observance of this day: Bjorg, Jennings, Naomi, Leota, and Brian are with us, gathered here at the table. I can even see our sweet Pancho, who we just lost on Friday there begging for just a bite from the table. (So my tears today feel very new.)
But as we gather, we’re going to remember the saints, and reflect on how we are together in the world by letting those three phrases guide us: I love you. I’m sorry. Come to Dinner.
I love you…love is a wondrous, terrifying, tender, exhilarating thing. Whether it’s romantic love, the love between friends, or the love we have for our families…because we love, we open ourselves up for all sorts of things. For joy and happiness, for long term relationships, for adventure. But the reality is that love also opens us to heartache and heartbreak and sorrow. Relationships end. Loved ones leave, one way or another. Those we love and who love us deal with challenges that we cannot fix, which for many of us is one of the most frustrating things of all. Our loved ones get sick and they receive diagnoses that scare us. There is an accident. They are missing. The anger seems too much to overcome. Love opens us up to that heartache.
This is one of the stories we learn from the Gospel reading today. Martha and Mary are heartbroken over the death of their brother, Lazarus and Jesus joins in their sorrow with tears of his own. The Jesus we meet in this story is not some stoic, hard hearted, disinterested party. This Jesus is friend to Lazarus and Martha and Mary. He has been in their home many times. They have shared meals and told stories and as you may recall, Mary and Martha have taken their sibling rivalry to him. Jesus knows them and Jesus loves them and his heart breaks for them. And it breaks because of the love they share.
Love is worth the heartache, though. Because in loving we are known more fully and we know others and ourselves more fully. So the love we share with another, whether it is a partner or a sibling or a parent or a friend….that love holds a mirror up to the best of who we are. On our hardest days, it reminds us that we are beloved. It points to our worth, not because of anything we have done or not done, but simply because we exist. The love we experience in our lives is a safe place to put our fears and our troubles. Because pure love, the kind that Jesus shared with Martha and Mary and Lazarus, is without condition. It does not depend on what we do for its existence.
And it’s that kind of love we all long for and that we remember, well, not just on this day, but every time we worship. That God loved us enough to become enfleshed and walk on this earth and cry real tears. God loved us enough to allow God’s own heart to break. The most profound I Love You we experience is the presence of Jesus the Christ.
I’m sorry. Important but often hard words. Words that carry a multitude of meanings. Words of regret, yes, but much more. A life of discipleship calls for a profound I’m Sorry as we acknowledge and repent of the ways we fall short. The word for repent literally means to turn around and begin again. And we do this on a personal level, to be sure. The Lutheran church does have a rite for personal confession and absolution. We don’t have booths to do it in because there is something deeply important about looking at another person and saying: “i’m sorry. I will turn around and try again.” And for that person, most often a pastor in this case, to say “you are forgiven. Be at peace.”
These days it feels as though we need to put our entire country in a large metaphorical confession booth, so that we might turn and start again. And that when we do, we would keep the needs of the oppressed at hand. That we would value all people, but especially those at risk. That we would reject words of hatred no matter who speaks them. And that we would begin anew. I’m sorry. We’re sorry. We will turn around and try again.
Come to dinner. We set this table today, intentionally to reflect a dinner table, where the saints have gathered. A place where they are fed as we all are, at a feast for all peoples, as the prophet Isaiah wrote in our first reading today. When we gather at our own tables, whether we are there singularly or with one or two or whether it is full….we never gather alone. All of those we have loved and who now gather at a heavenly banquet are with us. Everything they have taught us, everything we have shared, everything we remember about them….they bring that and pull up a chair and join us, too. They do not really leave. Oh, of course, they are no longer breathing and walking with us….but our lives are so connected to theirs, that they remain with us.
These celebrations of All Saints and All Souls and All Hallows Eve and Day of the Dead are celebrations and feasting is appropriate. We celebrate the gifts of these people in our lives. They are alive in the memories we share. In the movie “Coco” Hector says: “Our memories, they have to be passed down by those who knew us in life – in the stories they tell about us.”
Worship is the way we tell the story of the ancestors of our faith. We remember Lazarus and Mary and Martha, although we did not know them, because of their stories. We remember Martin Luther King, Jr. because of his story. The saints who died at Tree of Life Synagogue and Majorie Stone Douglas High School and in a park and in our lives….they are remembered in the stories told of them.
Beloved children of God, these days, well, they feel heavy. Not just because we are remembering those we miss, for their lives are cause also for celebration. But they are heavy days because we seem to have lost the capacity to open ourselves up enough to say what we are sitting with. We are afraid that our I Love You may seem misplaced or not be returned or that we will have to earn a response. But so what? So what if our expression of love is just that, our expression. That does not lessen it. It is powerful and enough all on its own.
And our capacity for repentance has taken a back seat to our need to be right. We have so polarized every single aspect of our communal life together, calling for everyone to choose a side, and insisting that there is only right and wrong, that we have lost our ability to see the role we may have played in the fracture. Romans reminds us that ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Perhaps we remember those words each day “I’m sorry” as we turn around and start anew, again, walking in the path of God’s righteousness.
Maybe, like our family, your hearts feel very tender today. Maybe your tears are very fresh. By his own tears, Jesus reminds us that in this life, there will be much sorrow. Our tears will flow. Our hearts will break. But in the life that is to come, we will gather at a rich feast where death and mourning and crying and pain will be no more. And the God who loves us beyond compare, who walks with us in every sorrow, will gently wipe the tears from our eyes.
Thanks be to God, and let the Church say…Amen.