|
First
Reading
|
Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Revelation 7:9-17 |
Psalm 34:1–10, 22 |
1 John 3:1–3 |
Matthew
5:1–12
|
Welcome to this space of worship, built in a type of Gothic style to remind people of an age long gone by. Welcome to a liturgy whose origin goes back thousands of years. Welcome to the experience of being surrounded by things deep and heavy in tradition.
We are surrounded by plaques commemorating dead people, but whose presence lives on, enriching and supporting us in ways we cannot fully comprehend. Without them, none of us would be here. The ambiance is not simply visual. At the beginning of the Prayer of Consecration we will ring a bell, cast in the 1820’s. It is likely the original bell which hung in the wooden tower of the first church of this parish and which has been heard over this valley every Sunday for over one and three quarter centuries. We sing hymns accompanied by an instrument that developed in the ancient circuses of Rome. These vestments, this costume as it were, date back to the Roman toga, the stole to the prayer shawl of pious Jews in the synagogues of early Israel. The very spot where we sit has been the seat of others, for several generations. Welcome again to the yearly festival of All Saints’!
It is easy for us today to feel a sense of dismay, if not dread. The Episcopal Church seems to be in a long bear market, steadily losing prestige and influence. It seems to be rocked with division and conflict. Formerly prosperous mainline center city churches are becoming tattered remnants and rural parishes that were once the center of their close-knit communities are now abandoned and deserted. The feast of All Saints and the lesson from Revelation comes just at the right time.
Revelation with all its colorful images places a besieged community of Christians within a big picture, within the large movement of God’s mission of the reconciliation and reclamation of humanity. Revelation is a virtual antique mall, flee market, and giant yard sale of cosmic symbols all jumbled together. Beasts with horns, angels, fire, trumpets, palms, crowns and blood are all connected to the life of ordinary Christian people. We don’t know the exact name, place, or time of the community that the Book of Revelations was written for, but we do know it was during a time of persecution; when the church was being held up to ridicule, when the larger society suspected Christians as being seditious, weird, or worse. Heretofore, people had been curious and open to hear the welcoming words of this new Jewish teacher from Palestine. But now, the state had become suspicious and hostile, members were dropping away, attendance at services was down, and those who remained began to feel sorry for themselves and to play the blame game.
“Wait a minute,” says this writer we call St. John the Divine. “Salvation belongs to our God. Yes, you are a small group under siege, but you are included, you are part of a great multitude. Of course, God remembers you. You are not insignificant or forgotten in the eyes of God. People from every tribe, every nation, every language are virtually uncountable by our own calculation, but not by God’s count. Like you, many of these people have come out of great trials and setbacks. But God has seen to it that they will be gathered from the ends of the earth and there for the banquet of victory. You and they will come together to rejoice. It will be a universal reunion arranged by God, and it will be grand. You will forget about the tears, the hunger and the despair, for you will be feasting and celebrating beyond words.”
The wonderful gift of history and tradition, is precisely what gives Christians roots, stability, breadth, and depth. It is what gives us a whole spectrum of options that so many in contemporary society sadly do not have. Contemporary society has so little of what might be called cultural or even institutional memory. For many in the world, their lives are just isolated private affairs, unrelated to a large whole. “Me, myself, and mine” is the only declension of reality they know. That’s the tyranny of modern society’s worship of individualism. There may be lots of talk about alternatives, but in reality, we live in a paradoxical age of the narrowing of perspectives.
All Saints surrounds us with the voices which liberate us from the rigid and completely humorlessness of political correctness and trendy opinions of the moment, and opens to us a universe, which stretches back in history and forward into God’s vision for the future of humanity. That is, of course, the perspective Jesus stretches before us in the Sermon on the Mount. Like Moses who brought the Torah to the ancient tribes of Israel, Jesus delivers his inaugural address to those who will be formed into his disciples. As Jesus lifts and widens our horizons, he warns that complete self-reliance leads to profound spiritual poverty. He affirms that generosity of spirit produces boundless dividends, that the struggle for justice is never futile, that relationships built on integrity build true legacies, and that the harvest for the food of paradise is sown by those who sow peace today.
The celebration of All Saints reminds us that we are surrounded by the witness, the prayers, and the wisdom of many more people than ourselves and those whom we never would know personally. We have that great endowment of a millennia of tradition and history which frees us from the one-dimensional and vicious grasp of the contemporary, and bonds us to a large family, many who in their journey have suffered, endured, questioned and overcome what we, in our life of discipleship, must deal with, too. Yes, discipleship is made for tough times, because that is when our world especially needs the witness of the Good News of hope and deliverance from the world’s own myopic vision. Take a look around. We are surrounded by the fullness of God’s grace of the ages. Truly we are never alone. Breathe in deeply the ambience of All Saints’. Rejoice and enjoy!
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
