Ephesians 1:11
James R. Gorman
November 5, 2000 (All Saints Sunday)
Two years ago I was in New York on the shores of Lake Erie for a pastor's retreat at which I was the worship leader and preacher. On Monday evening the concert violinist, Eva Ingolsfdottir, played Bach's Partita #2 in D minor in a black formal gown, a huge fireplace with a crackling fire in the background. Positively medieval. We were marvelously transported by her lovely music from the shores of Lake Erie to some medieval castle, as if we were the honored guests of royalty enjoying an after-dinner concert for a king. I mentioned this to Eva at breakfast the next morning and she replied in her Icelandic accent, "It was a concert for the King."
Something marvelously metaphysical happened that evening. We were all moved, both in the sense of being emotionally moved as well as in the sense of being physically transported from that place to another place. And we were all moved together. As I imagined in my heart that I had been transported to this medieval other world, I also imagined that everyone there had been transported with me. The fellow sitting next to me was with me in this new place. I had the sense of the movement of his head and feet as Eva played mystically before us. It was as if we had entered the kingdom together as saints who had been rewarded with this marvelous concert for our perseverance.
All Saints Day is always among the most mystical of days for me. It is not only a day of remembrance of the saints who have persevered in their own lives to witness as best they could, remembered with the reciting of their name and a tolling of the bell; it is also a day of allowing them to be physically present in this place with us, physically assisting us in our own perseverance. In Mexico, they celebrate Dia de los Muertos--Day of the Dead. Families put out food and beverages that their departed loved ones enjoyed, and then partake of them with those loved ones. As one man put it: "I have donut holes with my angelito (little angel) in the morning and a whiskey with my Papa at noon."
It is also a day on which I am more aware that these saints are counting on us to do what is right so that Christ's name will be ever glorified in our midst. That we will do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with our God.
The celebration of All Saints Day has as much to do with us as it does with the commemoration of those who have gone before us. It has as much to do with how we live our lives now as it has to do with how they lived their lives then. It has to do with a glad heavenly fellowship that is measured by the way in which we all come together at the table of the Lord. Those in the church triumphant as well as those in the church militant. It is a mystical fellowship that shapes the way in which we work out our faith in fear and trembling.
The novelist and poet Willa Cather has on her tombstone a line once uttered by one of her characters in her novel My Antonia. The character says, "That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."(1)
That is why our evening with Eva in front of that fireplace was so moving. It was our being dissolved into something complete and great and experiencing thereby a happiness beyond any I have felt in a very long time. It is what theologians call "atonement." The word's meaning is easily found when you split it into its component parts: at-one-ment. Becoming at one.
Now, I know that this can sound strangely New Age and vaguely Buddhist. Like the joke about the Buddhist monk who walked up to the hot dog vendor and said, "Make me one with everything." What we have to do with here is more than that. It is becoming one with the whole church stretched out in time and space. One with all Christians around the globe and one with all Christians who have preceded us, not only in this place, but in all the places where the saints have done what they can to be faithful to the Gospel, whether under the oppression of the Roman Emperor in the 3rd Century AD, under Hitler in 1933, or under Milosevic in Serbia. We are all situated in a long line of the saints in heaven and on earth, and together we sing, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabbaoth. Heaven and earth are full of your Glory."
Just a final word about "saints."
We've grown up with this notion of saints as people depicted in stained glass windows who have been beatified, and in whose name certain miracles are now being done.
A little girl walking through a church with her mother asks, "Mommy, who are those people in the windows?" Mother replies, "Those are saints, honey." Later, when the pastor asks who saints are, she says, "I know, I know; saints are people who the light shines through." Saints are people whom God's light shines through.
Phyllis McGinley writes, in a book called Saint-Watching:
"The wonderful thing about saints is that they were human. They lost their tempers, got hungry, scolded God, were egotistical or testy or impatient in their turns, made mistakes, and regretted them. Still, they went on doggedly blundering toward heaven."
Saints in the history of the Church have always been just ordinary people blundering toward heaven. When the Apostle Paul wrote about the saints at Philippi or the saints at Corinth or the saints at Ephesus, he didn't mean perfect people who lived perfect lives. He meant all the Christians in those places who were engaged in a holy struggle to do what is right in the places where God had thrown them. Not so much perfect as persevering.
And thus, here we are. Saints in a grand fellowship stretched out in time and space. What a fellowship, what a joy divine. Leaning on the everlasting arms.
So, when you come to this table, bring all those with you who have strengthened you along the way of your own Christian pilgrimage. Your parents, perhaps. Your Boy Scout or Girl Scout leader who informed your adolescent development in powerful ways. An aunt or uncle. A streetwise neighbor, perhaps, who taught you how to survive in an unforgiving world. A loveable and loving Sunday School teacher who wrapped her arms around you when you most needed to be embraced.
Bring to this table those living saints who cannot be with us.
Bring with you to the table of the Lord all the saints in heaven and on earth who will join you in your everlasting song.
Bring them all to this table as we name the names and toll the bell in just a few minutes. Bring them with you so that you might be strengthened at the table for the journey Christ has for you in your own work and family and community life.
And share with them in the fellowship of Christ's living presence, that together with all his faithful ones we may receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away.
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1. cited in Peter Gomes, Sermons. P. 226.