All Saints
Sunday
November 4, 2007
Sermon by Pastor
The
Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (Luke
6:20-31)
Then
Jesus looked up at his disciples and said:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the
“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
“Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they
exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely
your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the
prophets.
“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your
consolation.
“Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
“Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.
“Woe to you when all speak well of you,
for that is what their ancestors did to the false
prophets.
“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do
good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse
you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek,
offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold
even your shirt. Give to everyone who
begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them
again. Do to others as you would have
them do to you.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
All of the lessons for this All
Saints or All Souls Sunday make us gratefully aware of God’s saints, but also
remind us of the struggle of the saints.
The walk with God from birth to eternal life is not all sunshine and
roses, but a mysterious mixture of joy and sorrow, beauty and brutality,
struggle and hope, light shining often through darkness. Daniel’s vision sees the saints opposed by
four beasts. The psalmist, surrounded by
enemies, nevertheless trusts in God. In
Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, Jesus pronounces both blessings and woes. The Bible is not blind to the immensity of
evil in the world.
One way that the ancients dealt with
evil was to make fun of it. At this time
of year, the veil separating this world from other worldly realities was
thought to be at its most permeable. All
Hallows Eve on October 31—or Halloween as we call it—means literally “hallowed”
or “holy” evening, established as the eve before All Saints or All Souls Day by
the pope as early as the seven hundreds.
I personally always love the chance
every year to get out the old witch’s hat and wait on the front step amidst
lit-up pumpkins and scream things for the neighborhood kids to come. This year, there was a Dracula, a rapper, a
princess, a Harry Potter, a toddler in a lion outfit, a Cookie Monster from
Sesame Street, another princess, another Harry Potter, another rapper, a
she-devil, a glamorous, enchantingly evil something or other, another princess,
another Harry Potter; and on and on it went.
My favorite this year was a little girl who came up the sidewalk and
said, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
“Oh, I’m a very good witch,” I said, not looking like Glenda at
all. “And you let me guess,” looking at
her white crisp coat and the stethoscope around her neck, and the little black
bag she was carrying, and the light that was right up here, I said, “You must
be a doctor.” “No, ma’am,” she said, “I
am a cardiologist.” “And a very
articulate cardiologist at that,” I said.
“How old are you?” “Six.” And then I asked the same routine question I
asked all of the children: “And what’s your favorite thing about
Halloween?” “Let’s just cut to the
chase, Lady,” she said. “I’m here for
that Snickers in the bowl.”
All Hallows Eve helps us to make
light of the seriousness of life, this life that is such a mixture of good and
evil, joy and sorrow, beauty and brutality, struggle and hope. The noted saints of history not only made
light of it, they seldom accepted it.
They did not resign themselves to it.
Looking evil straight in the face, they struggled for the good.
“There are people who struggle for a
day and they are good,” the philosopher Bertolt Brecht once remarked. “There are others who struggle for many
years, and they are very good. Then
there are those who struggle all their lives—these are the indispensable ones,”
the saints; those alive enough to give their lives to a purpose; those alive
enough to show mercy; those alive enough to work for beauty, and truth, and
justice. And when the going gets rough,
they even argue with God.
Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement, when the
going got rough, loved to tell the story of Saint Teresa of Avila, an ancient
saint who was known for her feisty disposition and frequent arguments with
God. Once, when traveling from one part
of
Yet today, in spite of the struggle,
Christians the world over, whether Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, with
sing, as we did, “For all the saints, who
from their labors rest.” They will
recall what it means to be part of the great procession of the saints through
time; what it means to be a part of the mystical communion of saints, in spite
of, even in the midst of, the struggle; remembering the saints not so much for
their pious plaster-of-Paris quality, but for their courage in the face of
hardship, some extraordinary act of kindness, someone who never lost sight of
life’s beauty in the midst of brutality; the good over against evil, who never
gave in to the forces of evil against all evidence to the contrary.
On Wednesday this past week I
traveled first to Lake View Hospital in Stillwater to see George Koerner, only
to learn from Pete Peterson and Lewie Dohman when I got into the hospital room
that a police chase from Hudson had ended in the parking lot of that very
hospital, where a robber took his own life in that very parking lot where I had
just parked not more than two hours before.
I then got back into my car and
traveled the alternate route, of course, from Highway 36 to 280, to 94, to 100,
and south to Christ Presbyterian Church in
The occasion was an incomprehensible mixture of
celebration and grief over a young person just 24 years old who had been full
of life and humor, a graduate of St. Olaf, talented actress and singer, world
traveler, Spanish-speaking, with a dream to study Turkish. On a Facebook.com page reprinted on the back
of the bulletin, Katherine had listed hobbies ranging from yoga to theater, to
“standing on my head,” to reading The New York Times, to eating natural peanut butter.
As I listened to her friends and family rally to
capture her essence in a moment of shock and grief, for her sake I am sure, I
was waiting also for someone to name the happening for what it was. The preacher, friend of the family, Pastor
Tom Koelln of Zimmerman, did. “We should
not be here today,” he began the homily, “but evil reared its ugly head. The evil one has taken another life. Not everything that happens is the will of
God. God did not need another angel in
heaven. We do not believe in a cruel and
capricious God. We may never know the
why of Katherine’s death, but we do know God was there to hear her cry. God was the first to cry with Katherine and
the first to receive her home.”
I was struck by the themes of light
and comfort in the midst of deep darkness.
There was Psalm 30, “Weeping may
last for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” There was Psalm 84, “How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts.” There was John, Chapter 1, Verse 5, “The light shines in the darkness, and the
darkness does not overcome it.” And
I noticed more than ever before how frequent in our Lutheran liturgy and
prayers are references to the “communion of saints.”
For whatever the struggle, however
long or short, we are part of a great procession of those who have taken the
walk with God, the one who loves and sustains us in the mysterious mixture that
we cannot always understand.
Before heading over to King of Kings
for the synod ministerium on Thursday morning, I took my usual morning walk
early with Marcella Rose along the parkway— not many cars out yet—hoping to see
or hear something predictable, like a cardinal against the dawn of the
morning. Instead, my gaze caught a
solitary autumn leaf falling from a tree up ahead, yet floating this way and
that on its final descent to the ground.
I was struck by the brevity and finality of life; the destiny of one
glorious yet solitary autumn leaf that just months before had been a tiny bud
on that tree, then a tiny shoot, a pastel glow in spring, a full lush green in
summer; but now in autumn, turning colors and dropping to its final resting
place—but not really alone, for it floated on the wind that upheld and carried
it this way, then that, carrying it in its final moments down to be received by
our Mother Earth, where it will be a source of renewal and regeneration of life
to begin again.
What distinguishes the saint from
the rest is not more or less tragedy, not more or less struggle, but the
courage from within, or maybe just the grace from above, to stay on the path,
on the walk with God, trusting on the winds of the Spirit to carry us along.
We pray in our own Lutheran liturgy,
“God
of all grace, the generations rise and pass away before you. You are the strength of those who labor; you
are the rest of the blessed dead. We
rejoice in the company of your saints.
We remember all who have lived in faith, all who have peacefully died,
and especially those most dear to us who rest in you. Give us in time our portion with those who
have trusted in you and have striven to do your holy will. To your name, with the church on earth and the
church in heaven, we ascribe all honor and glory, now and forever.”
Amen.