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November
7, 2004 (Jimmie Johnson) Scripture Readings for Sunday, November 7 Revelation 21:1-6a Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I John 3:1-3 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Luke 20:27-38 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I have become notorious to the staff for what Sherry has known for years. I can’t find my way. I get lost because I set out not knowing where I am going but arrogantly assuming I can find my destination with no need to refer to a map or check the accuracy of the address. This past week it came to light that several weeks ago I thought I had delivered the stork announcing the birth of the newest Presbyterian baby to the McNair’s. Well, I delivered the stork all right. To the wrong house! Some of us need help in getting to the right destination. We need help on finding our way, and we need help to find the courage even to desire to travel toward God. That’s really what this day we call All Saints Sunday is all about: remembering we have the help available to us to find our way and to find the courage to travel the road. There are people in our past that the church says are still with us. They are with us not to condemn us but to strengthen us, not to accuse us but to guide us as God’s agents of love. In the Creed we say: “I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting.” The gift of the Spirit is the creation of a people who belong to each other because in life and in death they belong to God with whom there is forgiveness and with whom resides the power to so hold our hands that nothing in life or death can separate us from God’s love until we come home and find we have belonged to one another forever because of that love. To those of you who have lost a loved one to death and have remarried or carry the hope of doing so, you have their blessing to love again, to be with someone again. To those of you who have lost your love to death and decided you have been given the gift of remaining alone, you have their blessing to live again. To those of you who have lost a sibling or a child or as a young boy or girl lost your mom or dad, remember Christ holds their hand in death and your hand in life. There will come the time where you are given the time to enjoy what you missed in this life and finish what was begun. Even more is promised by the faith. When you are at the most frightening time in your life, the darkest moment, remember the communion of saints. Perhaps what a young woman recently wrote to me and her uncle will help you grasp the power of the communion of saints. Her uncle has been going through hell and heartbreak and a time of great grief and loss. This young woman now in her late twenties wrote to him and me telling us about the memory she has of when she was facing the greatest fear and threat to her well being she has ever faced at this point in life. It was a time when the pain truthfully was greater than her faith and joy, a time when despair was swallowing up her life. She wrote she felt as if she were barely hanging on to a tree branch, losing her grip and slipping, convinced she was about to fall into the great abyss from which she would never return. Then a friend said to remember the faces of all who loved her and imagine these faces of love surrounding her. She started remembering the faces of all who truly loved her. Suddenly she could see their faces all around her. They were present to her with their smiles and love and support and belief in her. She could let go of the branch and fall. They were all around her. Perhaps they could not keep her from falling toward the darkness, but they would be there with her, around her even as she fell to God knows what. Hour by hour on some days, this was the sustaining vision. She was about to fall into what she did not know but only dreaded, but they, the ones who loved her, were there present to her. What she found through this belief was life not death, forgiveness not domination. She found in letting go she was held, and she found herself coming home to her truer self, her lovely self given to her by God through the love of all her family and friends. This is what belief in the communion of saints really means. They are here, all around us, cheering for us, praying for us, blessing us, not lost to us because of our fear or seemingly hopeless predicament, but faithfully here for us held in God’s hand to help us find our way even as we fall toward darkness. They could not keep from dying, and those still physically alive have not always been faithful and loving, but we can forgive them for what they were and are powerless over. But they are present to us with love and hope as God holds their hands and ours. Look, it is our belief. We hold this cherished belief with a proper humility understanding that others may not be convinced it is true. We ask ourselves in humility if the belief is nothing more than an example of disappointed human hopes changed into expectations from the divine because disappointment is unbearable. We understand that this belief in the communion of saints, this belief in the life beyond somehow also strangely present to us now, is an easy target of Enlightenment criticism. If its truthfulness is measured by the evidence of history, then it can only be wishful thinking, a form of fantasy, for history doesn’t reveal the church to be a city set on a hill revealing truth and love. If the value of faith within the bounds of reason is the capacity to support moral life, we know the terrible track record of the faithful regarding morality where we have either revealed hypocrisy by our secret lives suddenly revealed, or acted with a social fanaticism wanting to make everyone into our image, or we have encouraged social passivity, a pie-in-the- sky-by-and-by critique. At First Presbyterian we humbly acknowledge all the problems associated by belief. Nevertheless, what in humility we believe is that in the end as embodied creatures and as God’s people, we shall reach the full sharing in God’s own life that Jesus as the pioneer and perfecter of faith has achieved. Our body of humiliation will by God’s love be transformed into the body of God’s glory. As Julian of Norwich interpreted the faith, “all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.” This means that because we believe in life after death, we now must engage the structures of this world to move them toward the new creation which means making sure we do all we can to use politics and wealth to clothe the bodies of those who are naked and visit the bodies of those who are sick or in some form of imprisonment. It also means that we must act with a hope-filled life which means we will not be participants in lifestyles which pillage and pollute God’s creation. I can fast or feast, march or watch, say yes or no to my neighbor. And I can never know if I did the right thing. But I can let go of that limb and the fear that surrounds by believing in the communion of saints. In other words, by believing in life and not death, by believing that underneath are the everlasting arms which in the end will carry me home, I can by this humble believing and obedience live and die in the faith that God is never out to get us but only and always to love us into shape. Until that day when by God’s grace we see the communion of God’s children and all shall be well, we will end up where we were meant to arrive from the very beginning: in the brightness of God’s glory surrounded by all the loves and faces which on their best days were still faint resemblances but now are bright and full reflections of love so amazing, love so divine. |
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