A Sermon for All Saints’ Day

A Sermon for All Saint’s Day
Preached at Episcopal Church at Yale, November 4, 2012

Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44

“Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

I have a confession:
Of all of the feast days on the church calendar, All Saints’ Day, which we commemorate today, is one of my least favorite.  It’s not that I completely dislike this day, but rather that I don’t always know exactly what it means to celebrate ALL SAINTS, because I think I’m still trying to figure out what exactly it means to be a saint.

If you look up the word saint in the dictionary, which I did when I was preparing to write this sermon, you’ll find several definitions. And if you check out the Wikipedia entry for saint, which I also did, you’ll find a survey of what different Christian traditions (and even some non -Christian traditions) think this word means.

For some, the title of saint applies to anyone who is in heaven.  In some traditions, as well, some of those saints in heaven are elevated even further because of displaying particular holiness and virtue.  This category, of all those in heaven, is one that I have always struggled to understand as we, with our human hearts and minds, cannot truly know who is in heaven or not. We can hope and pray that those who have gone before us have reached this beatific vision, but I sometimes feel a little bit weary when we start rattling off lists of names of those we “know” are in heaven.

And like in the hymn we just sang, there are other traditions, still, who define saint more broadly, who believe that a saint is anyone who is a Christian, anyone who knows Christ in their life, either living or deceased. And so, with all of the these different definitions of sainthood floating around, I’m sure I’m not the only one who sometimes wonders what it really means to be a saint.

When I hear these descriptions and ponder the distinctions between them, I wonder where exactly they came from. This saint title can feel like a human marker that we have invented to distinguish some from others; when I think about how some Saints are venerated above others, I wonder whose standard determined this? Was it God’s standard? Or was it an earthly standard?

And although Paul, or Saint Paul as some like to call him, uses this language of sainthood, it has never clarified anything for me. Every year when this day comes around, I find myself struggling to understand what it means for us to remember saints, what it takes to be a saint, and what the experience of sainthood looks like.

But even as I wonder what it means to truly be a saint, I find hope in the words that we have just heard.

True, today’s lessons don’t tell us a lot about specific saints – people whose faithful examples show us how we can follow Jesus Christ. Indeed, most of the people we consider to be saints came after the time of Christ, after the scriptures were written. Yet these lessons do speak to that which is promised to all of God’s saints. These lessons call us to look beyond this moment into what is to come.

Today we hear the words of the prophet Isaiah proclaiming to us that the Lord of hosts will make a feast for all peoples, a feast of rich food and the finest wine. Death will be swallowed up, tears will be wiped away, disgrace will be vanquished. And there will be gladness and rejoicing, for the Lord will be present.

And just listen to Saint John who, in the Book of Revelation, echoes the prophet Isaiah, saying again that God will wipe away our tears, and that the home of God is among the mortals.

How glorious does that sound? To stand face to face with God, to dine at a rich banquet, to have our tears wiped away and our sorrows assuaged by the greatness of God, to be able to say goodbye to sorrow, and death, and mourning? I’m sure we would all welcome the chance to say goodbye to these things in our own lives.

And so, if this is what sainthood would look like, sign up me up.

But…wait.

How do we get from here to there? How do we get from this broken, sinful world, to the banquets with their rich wine, to the wiping away of tears, to the vanquishing of death? How do we join in this beatific vision?

And Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

In the Gospel today, we hear the story of Lazarus, a close friend of Jesus who has died and has been placed in the tomb. And as Mary, sister of Lazarus, and those who were with her suggested, if Jesus had been there, Lazarus would have lived.

Now, I’ve heard this story interpreted in various ways. Some like to read this story as Mary blaming Jesus for her brother’s death, that, when Mary says to Jesus “if you had been here, he wouldn’t have died,” there is a subtext that says, “but you WEREN’T here and he DID die and that is YOUR fault.” Maybe that is what happened. Maybe that is what Mary was thinking.

But I’m not entirely convinced that Mary was blaming Jesus. Perhaps, when Mary said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died,” she wasn’t blaming, Maybe she was affirming her faith in Jesus’ healing power. Maybe that was her way of saying to Jesus “in spite of my grief and sorrow, I still believe.”

And Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

Mary did believe, and Mary did see the glory of God. Mary, Martha, and their friends saw Lazarus, whom they had placed in the tomb, stand up, walk, and live. They saw death vanquished, and their mourning was no more. They saw a little glimpse of the glory of God, the glory that we hear is waiting for us.

But, perhaps, that glory isn’t just waiting for us. Perhaps that glory is as much present now as it will be eternally with God in heaven.  We are a community of the faithful who have gathered here, to pray, to worship God, and to share in a feast together. We are gathered because, although it may not be something we entirely understand or can articulate, we believe that something happens here when we are together.

Today we heard of a banquet with rich food and rich wine where we will feast in heaven, in eternal glory. But in a few moments, we will come to this altar, and through God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, we will feast on other rich food, The Body of Christ, and other rich wine, the Blood of Christ, food and drink that will keep us in eternal life, food and drink that give us a foretaste of what is to come, food and drink which make manifest that heavenly banquet here in the present.

But before we partake in that feast, we will first stand, and say together a creed, a statement of belief. We believe in God the Father, we believe in Jesus Christ, we believe in the Holy Spirit.

And then, a few minutes later, we will “join our voices with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven,” to praise God’s holy name. This is our affirmation as a members of the Body of Christ, as members of the faithful, as saints of God who are awaiting His glory, that we believe in Christ’s sacrifice, and we believe in God’s presence with us, now and forever.

We believe.

And Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
Amen.