Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
November 2, 2003 All Saints Day
Revelation 21: 1-6
For me, an All Saints Celebration is really is a celebration in two parts and this is going to be a two-part sermon. Certainly it is a time to remember and reminisce; but it is also a time to take stock and think about where we are now. So first it is a day of looking back, thinking about those saints who have touched our lives, who have touched the life of this church. And so an All Saints Sunday is a day of laughter and tears: we remember, we give thanks and rejoice in all those memories; but we remember and also grieve — we feel that sense of loss which never quite goes away.
This last spring a colleague, Diane Phillips, died after a lengthy battle with breast cancer. At her memorial this little reading was shared, a reading I have shared with some families in this church at their time of loss:
‘Tis a fearful thing
To love
What death can touch.
To love, to hope, to dream, and oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
But a holy thing to love.
For your life has lived in me,
Your laugh once lifted me,
Your word was a gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love,
A holy thing,
To love
What death can touch.
Your life has lived in me, your laugh once lifted me, your word was a gift to me. How those saints have gifted our lives. For me, personally, on a day such as this, of course my thoughts go immediately to Sharon, my baby sister and all the ways she touched our lives. For Sharon, it was not unusual for her to, say at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, to say, “Let’s go to Disneyland tonight.” Making reservations was just not in her radar screen and amazingly, she always found a place to stay. Sharon, hitchhiking in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere between Bisbee and Douglas, Arizona, because, once again, she’d run out of gas… for Sharon the gas gauge was just a suggestion that maybe she needed gas, never a mandate that maybe she should stop and get some. And so I rejoice and laugh at all the ways she touched my life, her children’s lives, the life of our world, committed to justice as she was. Your laugh once lifted me, your word was a gift to me.
All Saints Sunday is a day of laughter and joy, again as we think of all those who meant so much to us. But it is also a day to acknowledge that Sharon touches my life no more, at least not with her physical presence. There will be no more Thanksgiving dinners with her, no more Christmas mornings. As one man said after the death of his son, “When we’re all together, we’re not all together.” Yes, ‘tis a fearful thing to love what death can touch.
When Anna Quinlin was a teenager her mother died. Now as an adult she is a successful columnist and a successful novelist. “When does it stop hurting?” she asks and then she answers her own question: “If it ever does, I’ll let you know.”
A mother whose daughter died says that today there is room in her heart for many loves: her husband, her sons, their wives, their grandchildren, room for many loves, but one room always remains empty. I think on this All Saints Day it is important to acknowledge the grief we all carry in our hearts, all those “empty rooms” as Ellen Goodman once said. Hearts heal faster from surgery than from loss.
I don’t know, maybe it is our therapeutic culture these days, but there seems to me to be so much talk about healing and closure and getting on with life, at times, I fear almost with an accent of impatience. “Get on with it! Get over it!” I think it is important to acknowledge that we don’t just don’t “get over it”. And on this day I believe it is important to affirm the church as one place where it is still safe to express our grief, where tears need not be accompanied by apology, where our joys and sorrows come home and find their truest expression in the presence of other caring believers and the presence of God. Oh, the saints in our lives, how they have enriched us, shaped us, helped to fulfill and complete us and we do give thanks. But it is also true as Goodman reminds us that as we go through life, losses accumulate like stones in a backpack.
And so we bring it all here. We bring it here knowing we are embraced by the great promise: “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.” That is our promise. That is our hope. That is our faith. Here of all places we are free; we are free to share laughter and tears, joy and sorrow. We are free to take the risk of loving that which death can touch. “Tis a holy thing to love.” We are free because in Christ Jesus we know that finally love abides, hope abides and sorrow never has the last word.
So a day to remember and reminisce but also as I said, even as we look back it is also a day to take stock, to reflect on where we are now and where we are going as people of faith and as a church of Jesus Christ. And the good news on this All Saints Sunday is that in this process, as we struggle to figure out just what it means to be followers of Jesus, we’re not left to ourselves – we don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel here. For we have models – examples – the faithfulness of those saints who have walked the path before us.
A colleague shares this story: “A while back I heard a wonderful lecture by a distinguished professor of jazz at a nearby university when someone asked him ‘Who are your models?’, he immediately listed the names of famous pianists, saxophonists and drummers. He spoke of his mentors with such reverence, he spoke of sitting for hours at a piano bar studying nothing but the fingers of a pianist’s left hand. He said that a jazz artist must spend at least a couple of decades in rigorous imitation of others before that person can hope to be original.”
Well, can’t something very similar be said about the life of faith, the life of a church? We haven’t just been dropped in here, we are part of an on-going story. We stand on the shoulders of so many whose lives and witness have brought us to this day, who raised their voices, made bold decisions and prayed and taught the faith. And when I think of these saints, the ones who have shown us the way, our mentors in the faith, I think not only of the famous ones, Saint Paul, Saint Peter, Mary Magdalene, Martin Luther, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., our pilgrim mothers and fathers. I also think of those saints, some of them still with us, who years ago made the risky decision to buy this property and move this church here, so far away from downtown, “No one will ever go all the way out there to church!” I think of the saints from this church who actually put up money from their own pockets in order to guarantee that Burbank Heights, affordable housing for seniors would be built – and it was. I think of the saints who started the first Sunday School here, the first youth group, the saints who saw the property above the town of Cazadero and dared dream of a church camp. How ridiculous was that? I think of the saints who refused to allow the dream of Memorial Hall to die and put their time, talent and treasure on the line to make that happen and it did. And what about that person, that saint, who first taught you a Bible story or invited you to church or was a caring camp counselor or took the time to listen or in my case, invited me on a life changing high school mission trip? So many saints – everyday saints – but what a difference they made for their Lord and his church. And the torch has been passed to us.
I was talking to a church member just the other day about the number of long-time church members who have died in recent years. We have suffered many grievous losses. Each one represents the loss of years of service, faithfulness and yet, maybe not a loss. Not if we see ourselves as heirs of their service and faithfulness. I once heard it said it’s easy to get religion, it’s something else to hold on to it. Well, maybe that’s what the saints continue to do for us. By their example they show us not only how to hold on but also how to grow and build on their legacy.
And so as we reflect together at our meeting today, as we plan and discuss and set priorities, let us not forget that we are the potential saints for future generations. In the words of Mary Anderson, a Lutheran pastor, “We are the shoulders on which others will stand. Will we be ancestors who sat on their hands or ancestors who raised their hands? Sometimes we forget that we aren’t just living busy lives, we are also laying a foundation, molding a future, establishing a legacy. How’s it going?”
I wasn’t going to single out a particular saint today because there have been so many. But just the other day when some of us were cleaning out the shed in the corner and fixing it up (that was a job for saints right there), I saw a hardhat on the ground that we had found inside the shed. It was sprayed gold and on it were the words “Number One Angel.” It brought a tear to my eye. It was the hat that we had fixed up for Ed Bawden who chaired our Memorial Hall building committee, literally almost to the moment he died from cancer. He would have never called himself a saint. But Ed’s determination, his hope, his faith, his love for this church, his vision touched all of us who worked with him and indeed, touches us still. So many saints. So many others whose witness continues to guide and inform and at times, critique my ministry. I give thanks for them all. The communion of saints, the great cloud of witnesses, they are with us today. And as we remember those strong shoulders on which we stand, we are challenged to strengthen our own shoulders for we are, each of us, ancestors in the making, saints for generations yet unborn. I can hardly think of a more awesome challenge, a more awesome opportunity.