Today's Sermon

 

"All Saints’ Day"

 

The quote on the cover of your bulletin is from a blessing by John O’Dohonue who was first a priest, then philosopher, then poet.  The blessing is called “On the Death of the Beloved.”

May you continue to inspire us:
To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.

            I often send this to people after a loved one has died. Today, we commemorate All Saints’ Day, an occasion created to honor faithful who have died.  We are called to honor the saints.  Listen to this passage from Ephesians.

            Ephesians 1:11-23

            15I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason 16I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

            O’Donohue, however, doesn’t simply encourage us to remember the faithful.  In this same collection, one of O’Donohue’s other blessings is called, “At the End of the Day:  A Mirror of Questions.”  He suggests questions we might ask each day: 

Where did my eyes linger today?
Where was I hurt without anyone noticing?
What did I learn today?

In it, he includes: “Did I remember the dead today.”  No moral qualification.  No saintliness requirement.  It’s worth doing.  Today is not meant to be a downer.  Rather, it can be uplifting to remember those who lifted us up, and in a strange way even those who may have put us down, revealing what we’ve overcome.  Life isn’t easy.  The dead have given shape to our lives, sometimes in complex ways.  When we honor that in fullness, we are more able to live with intention and grace.  Remember is term that contains a lot of room, so take advantage of it. 

            Today, we will invite you into a ritual of remembering.  We will pass out some squares of papers and invite you, certainly not require, to write a name of someone you want to remember and whatever you want to about them. It could be something they taught you or modeled for you or saw in you, a thanksgiving.  It could be the thing you’d wish you’d had a chance to say but never got or never took the opportunity.  It could also be something less pleasant, a hurt or harm, an unfulfilled desire.  You’ll be invited to come forward and either place it on the communion table yourself or pass it to one of us and we will do it for you.  There are also candles up here, 50 of them, for folks to light in honor of someone. 

            If you don’t want to write anything, either become no one comes to mind or because it’s too tender to share even in coded terms, then you can participate by holding others in prayer, seeing every light lit as a life that has left a mark, and a life we entrust to eternal life.  I invite you now…

--Silence—

Just behold them for a moment.  They are here, if we want them to be. 

Let us pray,

 the departed,
May your light continue to shine.
May your wounds heal.
May your lessons take root in our lives and flower.
May we live in a way that shows growth from what we’ve encountered in you.
May our souls be sturdied by a confidence that there is more than we can see in this life.
May we be unafraid to hope and unhesitant to live and love to be the kind of light we
            are called to be.

            Amen.