All Saints B
Isaiah, Revelation, John
November 1, 2009
The longer I serve as a parish pastor, the more bittersweet All Saints day becomes for me. Each year on this day we recite the names of those who have gone before us over the past year. Each year I recall names from years prior. As the names are read; as the bell is tolled; memories come flooding back.
I remember Bob and his gentle smile. Zella always offered a HUGE mug for tea and a comfy seat for a visit. Doris was so attentive to detail on the altar. I carry a vision of Susan curled up around her daughter on a hospital bed murmuring into her hair.
There are the funerals where I never met the deceased. Church members who ask for the comforts of the church to be extended to those whom they know and love but yet don’t have a tie to a specific denomination. And so I have the privilege of entering homes, sharing a cup of coffee and listening to hurting souls reminiscing about the people who gave them life or who gave their lives meaning.
I remember the funerals of friends and family over which I presided that were next to impossible to get through. How does one eulogize the grandfather who gave me my first taste of coffee, reserved an empty pipe for me to suck on while he smoked his on the back porch and who truly hated any boyfriend I ever brought to dinner. Then there was the funeral of my good friend who died quite suddenly leaving behind two children and a sister distraught beyond words. How does one offer words of hope in such a hopeless place?
We sit at death beds and funerals weeping for what is lost when someone we love dies. And generally there is someone who will wipe away our tears, comfort us in an embrace, hold us up in the midst of our grief. We all know what it’s like to receive the sympathetic glance, the lingering touch. It’s warm and comforting and hopeful to know that someone else is with us in our pain.
It’s exactly what Jesus was doing even as he was preparing for his own death. Gathered with his disciples at table, around bread and wine, as he presented to them the worst possible news, “My friends, I am with you only a little longer,” he was offering to them a future full of hope—“continue my ministry by loving one another.” “Continue the work of the kingdom by caring for one another as I have cared for you.”
We wonder, could they really hear him? Did they know he uttered a word after he said, “I am with you only a little longer?” Were they saddened? Were they angry? Could they comprehend the depth of his love for them?
Does it even matter? Sometimes tears fall because we’re sad and sometimes anger causes our eyes to well up and sometimes we’re just so blasted frustrated that all we can do is weep. No one asks the motivation for our tears, they merely wipe them away for us.
But not for Jesus. The God who promises to wipe away the tears from every eye has no one to wipe away his tears. It’s as if the entire group of disciples has take three steps back. In my minds eye, it’s a heart breaking scene. Judas, a beloved disciple has chosen to betray his master and friend. Immediately after dipping bread together in the same cup, Judas flees his friend. Peter, his beloved friend and follower, is about to deny Jesus’ very existence publicly. The other disciples will not even be able to stay awake and pray with Jesus. In the middle of his own gathered community, Jesus stands completely alone.
And it is Jesus who is offering the disciples hope and promise and love and grace for what they are about to do. In the middle of the chaos of that night; the misunderstanding and outright lying, Jesus tells them to love one another. To sacrifice for one another. Just as he is about to do. The significance of the actions of Judas, Peter and the others is nothing compared to the significance of the loving sacrifice Jesus is about to make on their behalf.
We hold this picture of Jesus, completely surrounded and yet completely alone up against those beautiful, beautiful images of Isaiah and Revelation; images of life without chaos, images of intimacy with God, images of extravagant, decadent feasts, and we wonder, “Why didn’t God skip all this and get us straight to the top of the mountain where weeping and pain and death are no more? Why didn’t God let betrayal and lying and deceit and denial completely out of the grand plot of redemption?”
And the answer is, “I just don’t know.” I really just don’t know.
The one thing I do know is that God did not skip suffering and death. God does not sit distant in the heavens waiting for that moment when we have suffered enough and then will release us from our pain. The one who brings us to that banquet is also the one who suffered with us. God incarnate sat at table with friends and experienced rejection. Jesus watched a friend walk out on him only to turn him over to those who would put him to death. Jesus knew pain and rejection and isolation. He knew death. God chose not to gloss over the realities of the world in which we live, but to join us in living among disease and sorrow and peril.
Jesus stood among friends and not one of them realized who he was. Not one of them recognized in him the gate to eternal life. One betrayed him. One denied him. Some didn’t take him seriously. Most attended to their own needs rather than pay attention to his. Yet Jesus stood there in the middle of it all—the joy and the anger.
Today is a bittersweet day. We remember those who have gone before us. We weep for their loss while at the same time acknowledging that life was less than gracious to many of them. Suffering, pain, rejection and loss are realities of this life.
But so is joy and feasting and companionship. We cling to the promises of the great banquet to come and the new heaven and the new earth because somehow, some way, they are real and concrete for us here and now. Just as Jesus walked with us in our suffering, so he extends the joys and blessings of the kingdom for us today.
While we might not know what it’s like to be face to face with almighty God wiping the teardrop from our cheek, we do know how wonderful it must be because some angel has most certainly done that for us here and now. Someone has held our hand, made us a casserole, handed us a tissue, erased for a moment our tears.
In a world obsessed with transfats and ever smaller sized clothing, we can’t imagine sitting at a table gorging ourselves on slabs of well marbled steaks and glass after glass of wine aged to perfection. But we have all be recipients of a wonderful meal, prepared with loving hands as we gathered around a table sharing food and fellowship in the warmth of one another’s company all the while the ladies of the church standing at the ready to refill the platters. We most certainly know what it’s like to walk into a church where someone arrived early to set the table and prepare the bread and wine for every person; stranger and friend, child and adult.
And because someone has had the courage to stand by us as a witness to the constant presence of the risen Christ, who joins us in all of our humanity, even unto death, we have had the courage to ourselves hold out a hand, walk beside a friend, stand shoulder to shoulder and point to the Christ in the midst of us.
We anticipate the promises. When we least expect them we get glimpses of the joys that await us. When we are most likely to ignore them, we find blessings, life and a feast of great joy dropped in the middle of the chaos of our lives, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth whose words give us hope, whose touch gives us comfort, whose sacrifice brings us life.
Copyright © The Rev. Aileen Robbins. All rights reserved; use requires permission
Web design and development by our friends at BH PC Technical Services