I really don't have a whole lot to say as the lead up to this sermon. It was All Saints Sunday. Our Gospel was the unbinding of Lazarus. See what you think of where my feverish brain...with God working on me... went with this sermon.
Text: John 11: 32-44
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We’re all familiar
with the famous saints.
We know the name
Saint Peter…the rock of the church.
Saint Phillip who
baptized the Ethiopian eunuch.
Saint Stephen…the
first chosen to be a deacon in the church and who suffered a brutal death that
would lead to Saul’s conversion to be Saint Paul…one of the most influential
writers of our early church.
And naturally…Saint
Barnabas… our namesake and the Son of Encouragement.
We remember all
those saints.
But there are plenty
of names that also land in this saint category…and over time…we’ve added many
names to roll call of saints on the church calendar.
For example…today
is November third…which…if it weren’t All Saints Sunday…would be the date that
the Episcopal Church remembers Richard Hooker…an English priest of the late 16th
century…who is best known for his defense of the English Reformation under Queen
Elizabeth the First.
That reformation gave
us the Church of England of today and the First Book of Common Prayer.
Hooker was both a
parish priest and a distinguished scholar.
He described the
church as not being just an assembly…but a society.
For Hooker…an
assembly was a gathering of people who would do acts of public worship
together.
But a society went
beyond the time gathered in worship.
A society of people
not only took in the words of scriptural revelation…the ancient
traditions…applying reason and experience to all of it…
And would take
those good things back into the community…bringing their experience out…because
they had been gathered in the name of Christ.
This idea of
commemorating the saints and then—by extension all the faithful departed—dates
back to the early Middle Ages…during the times of Christian martyrs. The feast
day as we’ve come to know it in the Episcopal Church seems connected to
festivals held in Ireland and then made more general to all of Europe under
Pope Gregory the Fourth.
And while saints
were generally thought of as people of faith who did amazing and heroic things
in the name of Christ…the truth is that many of the people we remember in the
church were ordinary people...who responded to circumstances in their life and
times out faith and conviction to do what is right.
Think about our
diocesan saint Anna Alexander.
She wasn’t someone
who wrote heady tomes or did amazing works of bravery.
But what she did do
is build a school and a church in a coastal Georgia community and… despite the
obstacles put in her way due to racism and prejudice…she persisted.
And her faith kept her
going…kept her pursuing the goal to educate the children in Pennick and give
them a pathway to greater possibilities.
She did all of that
as a deaconess in the church at a time when the diocese of Georgia had
sidelined their black church members.
Or consider
Jonathan Myrick Daniels…remembered as one of the martyrs of the civil rights
movement in Alabama.
Daniels was a
seminarian and was known to be a bit of a hot head.
He graduated from
Virginia Military Institute…but he struggled to figure out the direction for
his life.
It was at an Easter
service in 1962 at Church of the Advent in Boston that he felt called to the ordained
priesthood.
While in
seminary…and listening to the Magnificat being sung at Evening Prayer…Jonathan
Daniels knew he needed to respond to Dr. Martin Luther King’s call to join the
struggle for racial equality in Alabama.
He marched… he
lived with and tutored black children…and brought their families into the
segregated Episcopal Churches of Alabama.
He
died…tragically…getting shot while defending a young black teenager named Ruby
Sales from a white gun man.
She survived that
day…but the experience left her mute for about six months.
But because she saw
the love of a white man cut down by the hate of another white man…Ruby Sales
earned a Master’s in Divinity and now teaches and lectures on the need for
redemptive healing and deliverance from a culture that is centered on
whiteness.
Not white people:
but the whiteness that keeps us so divided and deluded and refusing to
do the work that will set us all free.
Like Jesus calling
Lazarus out of the tomb and saying, “Unbind him,” we need to be free to tell
all the stories of our people…and not just the ones we want to hear.
I imagine there
will be a time when Ruby Sales passes on to the next realm that we might see
her memory honored along with Jonathan Daniels.
These are the
ordinary people who rose and are still rising to meet these times that we are
living in today and walking faithfully with God as they do the work that needs
to be done.
There are hundreds
of other stories…people who will never have their names written up in a history
book… who are doing that work Richard Hooker to be the society of the church.
Their names and
their stories…the memory of who they were and what they did to make a
difference in the lives of others…still lives on through us who knew them.
When we think about
the way their lives intersected with ours… it recalls for us their
relationship…as a friend or family member…and how they showed us something or
taught us something that helped give us a glimpse of making earth a little more
like our vision of heaven.
In a few minutes…we
will be saying aloud the names of those who have died and gone on to take their
place in the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us.
I’m going to ask
that we do something a little different than what we’ve done in the past.
There’s a custom I
have seen when I have attended Jewish services.
As they read the
roll of those who have died or are marking the anniversary of death…the family
members or friends who have an attachment to that name stand up so that the
congregation can bear witness to their grief.
It also is a visual
reminder that we don’t do this life alone when we see the others who are
standing with us.
So today…I’m going
to ask that as you hear the name of your loved one…your friend…that person you
enjoyed being with but see no more…as you hear that name…please stand and
remain standing until the prayer is finished.
Mother Teresa once
said, “God did not call me to be successful; God called me to be faithful.”
As we each strive
to walk with God as a society of believers…and not just an assembly…may we look
to those good lessons we’ve learned from the saints to do our work of making a
better world here on earth.
In the name of our
one Holy and Undivided Trinity.
