"All Saints Sunday 2022: an appeal for family support"
Sermon for
All Saints Sunday
6 November
2022
University
Lutheran Church, Cambridge
The Rev.
Carrie Ballenger
I sat in the little chapel all alone, silent, and took
in my surroundings. There was a stark modern rendering of the Stations of the
Cross to my left, 3-dimensional bronze figures marching across a shelf above my
head. There were deep blue and gold tiles on the wall just behind the altar
before me, in the shape of a globe. There was a stone pillar mounted on the wall,
supposedly the pillar where Jesus was chained and whipped on the way to the
cross (hence the name “Chapel of the Flagellation”).
And then I noticed the base of the altar itself. It seemed
to have many figures emerging out of the stone. I stood from the pew and walked
closer to confirm that indeed, the altar was being supported by—was perhaps even
emerging out of—human faces, each one of them somehow reaching out to me from
the stone.
To be honest, at first I thought this was a little bit
creepy! But the more I looked at them—friendly faces, smiling faces, old faces,
young faces, regular faces—the more they reminded me that I was not really
alone in that space at all. In fact, I was struck again by the reality that each
time we come to the table, each time we gather as the Body of Christ, we are
joined by the entirety of the beloved community—those in other churches, those loved
ones who live far away whom we wish we could see more often, and especially by those
who have already crossed the Jordan before us.
Evelyn Underhill, an English writer and pacifist who
was a master of the spiritual life, reminds of us what it means to be members
together of the body of Christ across time and space. She says:
“Christian worship is never a solitary undertaking.
Both on its visible and invisible sides, it has a thoroughly social and organic
character. The worshipper, however lonely in appearance, comes before God as a
member of a great family; part of the Communion of Saints, living and dead. His
own small effort at adoration is offered “in and for all. …The custom of invoking
those saints, found from primitive times in the Eastern and Western Church, is
a special aspect of this spiritual solidarity; an appeal as it were from the struggling
individual for family support.”
An appeal for family support.
I love this idea.
I love to think that this morning, as we sang in
thanksgiving for our ancestors in the faith from biblical times, and then named
those saints who have died in more recent days, we were honoring them, and remembering
them, and also appealing to them for family support.
God knows we need family support these days. We need
them, not only because we love and miss them, but because the life of
discipleship is not easy. We cannot do this alone. We need the saints’ stories
of persistence, of courage, of good humor in the face of life’s challenges. We
need to be reminded of their love, both for us and for God. We need to feel the
foundation of their faith under our feet as today we step out to do justice, to
love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.
The Gospel reading today is from Jesus’ most famous
sermon. I remember memorizing Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes as part of my
Confirmation classes as a young person (I was trying to win a free dinner with
the pastor, which tells you exactly what kind of nerd I was!) The Beatitudes
have remained very meaningful to me. But my interpretation of these words was transformed
through the life and witness of Archbishop Elias Chachour, the Greek Catholic
bishop of Akko, Haifa, Nazareth, whom I met when I worked in the Holy Land. He
is a prominent campaigner of peace through justice between Israeli Jews and
Arabs, working through a process of reconciliation through education and establishing
good relationships across the divide.
Archbishop Chacour wrote, in his book “We Belong to
the Land”:
“Knowing Aramaic, the language of Jesus, has greatly enriched my
understanding of Jesus’ teachings.
Because the Bible as we know it is a translation of a translation, we
sometimes get a wrong impression. For
example, we are accustomed to hearing the Beatitudes expressed passively:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be
satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of
God.
‘Blessed’ is the translation of the word makarioi used in the
Greek New Testament. However, when I
look further back to Jesus’ Aramaic, I find that the original word was ashray
from the verb yashar. Ashray does
not have this passive quality to it at all.
Instead, it means ‘to set yourself on the right way for the right goal;
to turn around, repent; to become straight or righteous’.
When I understand Jesus’ words in the Aramaic, I translate like this:
Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you who are
hungry and thirsty for justice, for you shall be satisfied.
Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you peacemakers,
for you shall be called children of God.
To me this reflects Jesus’ words and teachings much more
accurately. I can hear him saying, ‘Get
your hands dirty to build a human society for human beings; otherwise, others
will torture and murder the poor, the voiceless, and the powerless’.
Christianity is not passive but active, energetic, alive, going beyond
despair.”
Hear those words again:
Get up, go ahead, do something.
Or, as Jesus ended his Sermon on the Plain in our
reading today:
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless
those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the
cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not
withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone
takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would
have them do to you.”
Dear people, this is why we need the saints. This is
why we honor them through liturgy, song, prayer, and lights on this day, among
others. We need our beloveds of the faith who have gone before us, because
2,000 years later Jesus’ words are still counter-cultural. They still have the
power to disrupt our world and to birth the kingdom of heaven on earth. The
path of discipleship can still lead us to ridicule, persecution, or worse.
Jesus calls us to “get up, go ahead, do something” and
I think the fact that we are here gathered here this morning is a witness that we
desire to do just that. Our hearts are willing and ready to follow him wherever
he leads—even as far as the cross.
But somedays, it’s just hard.
Some days, I read the news and I have very little love
for humanity.
Some days, I mess up, and I have very little love for
myself.
Some days, I wonder if anything we are doing or saying
or praying can make a difference.
And then I think of Dorothy Day, the founder of the
Catholic Worker House in New York City, who said, “No one has the right to sit
down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.”
(She also, by the way, said “Do not call me a saint. I
don’t want to be dismissed so easily!”)
I think also of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther
King, Jr., and the Apostle Paul, and many others who have written to us from
prison, reminding us to fight the good fight even when we can’t see the light
at the end of the tunnel, even when the powers and principalities try to
oppress us and the truth.
With a smile, I very often think of one of my late
parishioners, who died just before her 100th birthday. Iva had
outlived several husbands, several children, and sadly at least one grandchild.
She had lost one eye to cancer. She could no longer walk. When she started to
come to the church where I was pastoring, she rode in on horseback. At the end
of her life she was sending me emails.
One day, Iva’s children called me in to say a last prayer
at her bedside. We gathered around the hospital bed set up in her living room and
had a moment of thanksgiving and prayer and of letting go.
But when we said “amen”, Iva, bless her heart, opened
her one remaining eye, looking in my direction, and said, “Sorry, Pastor, false
alarm! I’m still here I guess.”
I’m still here.
Dear ones, on this day, surrounded by the lights we have
lit in honor of the saints both old and new, what I want you to remember is
that although they have died, and they are no longer with us in body, they are
still with us. They are with us through the stories we tell about them. They
are with us in the way they have shaped our lives. They are with us through the
art they created, the work they did, the children they raised, the love they
shared. We are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, thanks be to God.
Therefore, when you are called to love your enemies,
and to speak truth to power, and to face your own shortcomings, and to step out
in faith toward a future that seems uncertain…know that you do not do it alone.
We are not lone disciples. Through baptism, we are joined together with the
saints of all times and places. Through Water and the Word, we are one Body,
knit together as one communion and fellowship through the mystical body of
Jesus Christ, our Savior. We walk together, all of us. Through prayer, through this
community, through love of God and neighbor, we are able. Together, we shall
overcome—for the sake of the Gospel. For the sake of our neighbor. For the sake
of all those who have gone before us.
Thank you, Creator, for their lives. Thank you for our
lives. Let us honor life, and you, in all our days.
Let the peace of God which passes all understanding keep
your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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