For All the Saints (Yes, You!)

All Saints

The Raising of Lazarus John 11:32-44

3 Nov 2024

When I was growing up I lived across the street from a family who practiced Roman Catholicism and the children went to a school called All Saints, which was associated with a church of the same name. In my mind, for years, the name was associated with the school and the church. I had no real curiosity to learn where the term came from or why a church would have such a name. It was just something Catholic! I attended Epworth United Methodist Church with my parents, and later Highland Park Christian Church.  Place names, but no saints involved.  That was for Catholics.  We might say St. Peter or St. Paul; to me that was just part of their names that helped keep them separate from all the other Peter’s and Paul’s. Saints were old timers who, for the most part, were martyrs.  There were no saints in my day or time.

Wrong. So wrong. Saints are everywhere.  We have All Hallow’s Eve,  All Saints and All Souls days, our autumn triduum, but I think there is little difference in the true reasons why we should remember people. Some people we label as saints were probably not in the least bit saintly; others unnamed but to God alone deserve the title.

This Sunday I would like for us to remember, both our own friends and family who have finished the race, and all those who have died in the faith, or perhaps not even in the faith.

Let us start with a prayer.

Lord Jesus., We give you thanks for those who have preceded us in following you. We are grateful that we were not the first to venture forth in discipleship. We did not have to summon up the courage to serve you all on our own. You gave us the Saints. By their example, their prayers, their witnesses, their stories, and all the other ways they encouraged and instructed us, we give you thanks. Enable us to profit from their examples. Give us grace to walk with your Saints, to follow down the courageous way that they beckon us, to allow these noble examples to prod us to live lives of greater faithfulness. Amen. [1]

None of us lives long enough to figure out the meaning of life and the wisdom of the world God created.  We build on the skill, knowledge and even the mistakes of those who came before us. Let us then give thanks as we remember those who were saints in our own lives. In a sense they live on in us as we carry on the journey started so many generations ago and passed to them and now to us and to our children and our children’s children.

Yet, while we say we live in the present, we call on the past every Sunday. The words we read today were written by saints over 2000 years ago. And what words they are! The words of the long dead John the Gospelist come alive for us; his story is resurrected, just as Lazarus brought back, not resuscitated, and we know the story is not over. We know, as daylight turns to darkness and winter comes, that death is not the final word. We know that God wants a world where there is a feast to which all may come, for Isaiah proclaims that to us.  We know that there will be a new Jerusalem to which all people will come because John of Patmos left us his visions. We depend on the words of people long dead to come alive for us and give us hope and meaning.

While death is a great unknown, it is not the final word.  Poverty, war, disease, and famine are not what God intends for this world. People early on heard these words and accepted them, for they told them that there was, and is, a better way.  They became saints, some as martyrs and many in the way they lived their entire lives. 

But what is it we are being told by and about the saints?  What is this Good News that they proclaimed?  I don’t believe it is about living forever, for it seems that so far no one escapes death, but rather about how we live our lives and what we leave for others. And maybe the way we do that is through love. Jesus wept for Lazarus; he loved him. The raising of Lazarus is not a promise to all of us we will live forever; Lazarus died twice! No, it is the Easter promise.  Ultimately death is overcome, it is not the final word.  The saints point us to Jesus, who shows us a world where love rules here on earth as in heaven.  I picture God’s reign as one where we live in the New Jerusalem, the city of Shalom, and there is a feast for all people.  Do you feel God sometimes taking you by the hand and leading you and sometimes pushing you to do what you are called to do to make that happen?  I do.  I feel my parents with me. “Heaven is not only about the future, but it is also about the past and the present.”[2]

Give thanks this Sunday for all those who came before, known and unknown, who gave us scripture and story, who lived out the Way in the world around them, sometimes faithfully and sometimes not so much so.  Our religion has been used and abused by many for their own gain, but the saints tell us a different way of being.  We are called to follow Jesus as the one who can lead us to God.  And so I admonish you to live lives worthy of that calling.

[1] Will Willimon’s Lectionary Sermon Resource, Year B, Part 2 p. 234, All Saints.

[2] Leonard Hall Stookey