All Saints Sunday Year B 2009

The Lost Sermon

I regret to say that somehow my sermon for All Saints, which was entitled "Coming Out of the Tomb" was both lost on my computer and from the pulpit where I'd left it on Sunday.

Below then are some excerpts from the last drafts before I finally edited the sermon.

All Saints B 09
November 1, 2009

Isaiah 25:6-9
6 On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. 7 And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; 8 he will swallow up death forever. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. 9 It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Psalm 24
1 The earth is the LORD's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; 2 for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers. 3 Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? 4 Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. 5 They will receive blessing from the LORD, and vindication from the God of their salvation. 6 Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. 7 Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in. 8 Who is the King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle. 9 Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in. 10 Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory.

Revelation 21:1-6a
1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4 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." 5 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." 6 Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

John 11:32-44
32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" 37 But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"
38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." 40 Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

Protestants don’t think they play the saint game. A lot of them will tell you that’s a Roman Catholic thing. But if you don’t think we play the saint game, I invite you to check out the hallway between the Fellowship Hall and the Sanctuary. Or just look at the door to the United Bible Study room, which bears a plaque which reads, “The Mildred Barnes Room.” Or go down to the bathrooms in the education wing, and see the pictures of Carl Prince that hang there.

Of course, we often also speak of living saints, people we know and love who seem to ooze the Holy Spirit, to have God’s power and grace just pouring out of their ears. But the tradition of All Saints Day is to celebrate the resurrection of saints, their ongoing power to be both in heaven and on earth after they have died.

Lazarus, for reasons that we are not told, was obviously deeply important to the many people whom we find mourning his death. We know from other passages in John, that the sisters Mary and Martha, and presumably their brother with them, were important disciples of Jesus and were a significant part of his community. There is another story that raises the image of a houseful of guests, Martha running around attending to them, Mary at the feet of Jesus. From this story we might imagine that this household was a meeting place for Jesus and his community, a place at which he frequently stayed, perhaps even a kind of headquarters for his movement.

The grief of the community at Lazarus’ death was profound. Even Jesus wept. The story seems to be a foreshadowing of Jesus’ own death at the end of John’s gospel. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and Lazarus emerged from the tomb to rejoin the community that needed his presence so desperately.

When John of Patmos had his revelatory visions, he was seeing those who had given their lives in testimony to Jesus Christ’s eternal lordship over the whole earth. They had all been killed by earthly lords threatened by this seemingly inconsequential carpenter from Nazareth. John was calling them out of heaven to be present in the suffering churches to whom he was writing as a comfort and a hope.

We need to make a distinction here between going to heaven and resurrection from the dead. All who die, we believe, have some spiritual destiny beyond death. Many have testified after near-death experiences of a journey guided by dead loved ones to a place of light. Some of us also hold that there may be some terrible place, something like a burn pile, where those who have died in the grip of the demonic go. But neither the ascent into heaven nor the descent into hell is resurrection.

Resurrection and eternal life is the ability to continue to be active both in heaven and in the living world after one has died. It is not like the history of great men or women which simply associates a name with a change in history’s direction, as an answer to the question “Why are things the way they are now?” In fact, the more ordinary science of history, in a very real sense, began in Judaism and Christianity. It was the Jews who really began to consider the possibility that recording events for posterity might be useful in discerning bigger patterns in the ever-changing life of nations and peoples, patterns that might serve to warn and inspire their descendants.

But resurrection and eternal life is more than historical relevance. Jesus, while certainly historically relevant, is also actually present and alive among us in the present. And we believe and are committed to his being alive and among those who come after us, until the end of time. He was for us the first to achieve this resurrection, but he was not the last.

Of course, there is another dimension to resurrection, perhaps, and All Saints may carry this meaning as well. There have been millions of people who have served Christ in obscurity and anonymity throughout history, who have been content to shed their own names and to take on his. If not for all of them, if not for all their work, if not for their disciplined remembrance of those who had gone before them, none of us would be here now. Just as there is a tomb for the unknown soldier, so perhaps there is a resurrection of the unknown saints.

But I think most of us know that real resurrection, the real remembrance we all do together when we gather around the table of Jesus, is something quite special, granted only to those who went far beyond showing up and doing their parts.

So who would we like Jesus to call out of the tomb this morning? Who should continue to be present among us as we gather on Sunday morning? Whom would we like loosed from heaven to share with us some crucial teaching or insight, something we must continue to remember in order to be faithful to Christ and his mission?

Far be it from me to name the names of Philippi’s saints. It’s not my choice that matters. This is a matter for the church, the assembly of believers, and not for any one person. Who do you propose and why?

(The congregation then called out names of those of Philippi's history whose influence is still felt.)

My list is not from this congregation. My list is from the whole church on earth. And it’s a short list. I made it up just from memory, and I suppose it demonstrates who in the history of the church continues to speak to me.

The first and most important name on my list is of course Jesus of Nazareth.

In addition, the ones that I see present among us this morning, alive, even though they have died, are Moses, David, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Paul, Peter, John, James, John of Patmos, Mary the Mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Martha, Lydia, Bartimaeus, Ananias, the beloved disciple, whoever he was, Athanasius, Augustine of Hippo, Anthony, Jerome, Thomas Becket, Francis of Assisi, Theresa of Avila, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Carl Zwingli, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, Jonathon Edwards, Thomas Campbell, Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Mother Theresa.

Amen.