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Sunday November 8, 2009 "Perfected for All Time" |
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Location: Blogs Brad's Blog |
 | | Posted by: Brad Miller | 11/10/2009 1:45 PM | All Saints Day is a bittersweet celebration.
Bitter because we recognize that so many people we have loved and still love, are no longer with us. People who shared some part of our journey. People who helped us. People who set the standard for how we are to act. People who introduced us to God and helped sustain us in our faith walk. People who shaped and guided and admonished and praised and disciplined and simply, loved us.
These are the people who are never far from our thoughts. People who we want to share things with, even if they have been gone a long time. I bet some of you have had this experience: something good has happened – a promotion at work, a special recognition for a child, the sun is shining beautifully – and you reach for the phone to call someone to share it with when you suddenly realize that they are no longer here. My mother has been gone over 11 years and my father has been gone almost 4 years, and a week hardly goes by where I don’t have that feeling.
But All Saints day is also a sweet time. Sweet because it gives us pause to remember that those people were in our lives and that has meant everything to us. Sweet because it helps to focus not on our loss but on memories of the time we spent together. Sweet because we can celebrate that they are seated at God’s heavenly banquet table and we will one day be reunited.
That’s what All Saints Day is really about: celebration. Celebration that we are where we are because of what those who have gone before us have done.
There is a uniquely American myth that says we can do it all on our own. I’m not even talking “we” as in a group of people. I am talking about the myth of the rugged individual that can overcome all obstacles simply through perseverance and personal reserves of strength: the myth of the completely independent individual. But it’s all a fiction, based on a John Wayne depiction of the American spirit. There is no such thing as the completely independent individual. It is a heroic fantasy based on the denial of our own vulnerability.
When I was in graduate school at the University of Kentucky, I shared an apartment with a fellow doctoral student named Jim. We were both the recipients of fellowships that paid our tuition as well as a pretty decent salary. One day we each got a letter from the university development office detailing a new program to help fund student scholarships and asking if we would like to make a donation through payroll deduction. Jim fairly well exploded. He ranted about all this begging that went on, trying to make us feel guilty, when we had nothing to feel guilty about. He worked for his money, he said. No one helped him, he said. He wasn’t about to contribute money to give away money to people who should be smart and resourceful enough to find a way to finance their education.
I was more than a little taken aback. We had shared the apartment for about a year and I knew a little about him. His parents had paid for his undergraduate education. Federal work study funds had paid for his Master’s degree. And both of us were the recipients of generous fellowships partially underwritten by the taxpayers of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
Did Jim really think he had done it all on his own? I was afraid to ask what he thought about the non-financial support he had received over the years!
But it did prompt me to think about the various ways that people had supported and nurtured me over the years. My parents who gave their all to provide for the spiritual and physical well being of their children; the people in the neighborhood and the folks at my church who had participated in various ways to teaching me, to raising me, to watching out for me; the many and varied teachers in Sunday school, in public school, in college. Mentors who had taken me under their wing in the workplace. Friends who had simply been there, no matter what, no matter when.
Jim operated under the delusion that he was completely independent. I also noticed something else about Jim: he was a lonely and unhappy man. Maybe because he had bought into that myth of the completely independent individual; living in denial of his own vulnerability.
All Saints Day helps us to own up to that vulnerability and celebrate the fact that so many have contributed to helping us become who we are today.
I want you to take just a moment to close your eyes, and think about those people who have paved the way for you being here today.
Who are you seeing? Parents? Friends? Spiritual mentors? Teachers? Siblings? Leaders of the church?
What did they do? Teach you? Guide you? Discipline and correct? Lay a foundation upon which you could build? Love you?
How did they do it? By giving of themselves? By sacrificing some of their time and resources to assist you in whatever way they could? (You can open your eyes now.)
Now, some of you may say, “Not every act of nurture and support is a sacrifice.” But I disagree – whenever anyone takes the time and effort to be there for someone else, it is a sacrifice. This is not to say that it is always unpleasant. But in being available to me my mentors and parents and friends sacrificed being able to do something else. The sacrifice may have been done willingly and lovingly, but it was through their giving of themselves, in whatever form, that they made a difference in my life.
Some sacrifices are easy to see.
Parents who put their own desires on hold to make sure their children are safe and comfortable. Teachers who give extra time away from the classroom to help nurture a student. Friends who go out of their way to comfort a friend who is down. Folks who volunteer their time, time that could be spent in any number of ways, so that a person in need might have some companionship and help. People who give out of their own pocket so that unseen generations in the future might have an opportunity to gather in fellowship and worship.
In the church we are especially aware of what sacrifices were made that we might sit in this room and be together today. It started with those folks who had the vision to start Brookhaven Christian Church in a little house on Colonial Drive. Do we remember the names of those 20 charter members: Bickers, Oliver, Cain, Matthews, Sweeney, Renee, Cooper, Monroe, Hays, Johnson, Stephens and Donohoe?
Some of those names might not sound familiar to many of us, but there is no denying that what they started is worthy of our thanks and celebration.
And there have been more over the years. Folks who loved God, loved the church and sacrificed to make sure this building was built, that this building was expanded and updated, that the ministry of Jesus Christ was made available to the people of North Atlanta. People who now are gone, yet left a mark on all of us. Just in the eight years I have been here, the names of some of those who are now with God and for whom we give thanks, is substantial: Clark, Carr, Renner, Carman, Cantrell, Duke, Woodward, Travis, Helms, King, Shafer, Smith.
These are all people who were fed by this church and who in turn, fed us. These are representatives of the saints that we celebrate today. Those who sacrificed for us, in ways small and big. Those who, whether they would claim it or not, exhibited Christlike actions so that we might in turn come to know God.
This notion of sacrifice is central to a lot of what we do in the church. Usually, however, we use metaphorical sacrifice language. But the sacrifice that those who have gone before us, those who loved us individually, those who loved the church, is literal and it is real. And it all stems from the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.
In the Hebrews passage that we heard this morning, the author is concluding a lesson on the religious rituals that were practiced by our Hebrew ancestors. Prior to what we heard, the author is recounting an overview of the sacrificial system where offerings of grain and animals are made on God’s holy altar, so that the worshippers might atone for their sins. This sacrificial atonement ritual was at the heart of the temple and tabernacle worship of the day. Something tangible was sacrificed. Something useful and real was let go.
But, the author tells us, that is nothing compared to the sacrifice that Jesus made.
Christ made the perfect sacrifice…no goats or calves or wheat or grain…he made the ultimate sacrifice; himself. And through that sacrifice, we are a blessed people. Near the end of the passage the writer asks, if the Hebrews sacrificial system could sanctify an unclean person, how much more would Christ’s sacrifice do to bless those who die in him?
And that is why today is firmly and finally, a celebration. Because those saints we honor today may have left our presence, but we truly celebrate that they are home, perfected for all time. Those people who lived lives that touched us in one way or another, those who guided us by their example, those who loved us and sacrificed for us as Christlike examples, are well and safely with God.
It is a comforting part of our orthodox Christian experience that we will one day be reunited with those who have gone before us. But until that glorious day of reunion, there is still at least one more question to be dealt with: looking to our personal and communal examples of faith and perseverance, how are we to best respond?
What do you think those who we honor today thought about their actions? Did they see them as heroic? Did they see them as duties to be performed out of a sense of obligation and guilt? Or did they simply see those acts as a recognition and celebration of all that they had been given by those who had gone before them? Did they freely sacrifice of themselves because of the grace and love they had been shown by God? Did they celebrate the great gift of Christ’s sacrifice by doing their best to follow Christ’s example?
We don’t know for sure what motivates anyone. But the fact is, the saints who have gone before us stand as memorable testimony to the power of sacrificial love in our lives. And the question still in front of us, how are we to respond?
I want you to close your eyes again for just a moment. I want you to visualize what you would like this community of faith to look like in 5 years? What do you want it to look like in 10 years? What would you like it to look like in 50 years?
You know what I see? Still unborn children running and laughing and learning and celebrating the goodness of life. As yet unknown friends gathered in fellowship and worship and prayer and service. Untold numbers of folks who walk through the doors long after we are gone, finding comfort and giving thanks for the goodness of God’s grace and mercy and bounty. (You may open your eyes.)
So, how do we make sure that those wonderful pictures come to life? What do we need to do in order to connect today’s reality with the dreams of tomorrow?
We begin by honoring those who have brought us this far. We live our lives in thanksgiving for those who have been important to us as individuals, and those who have been important to this community of faith.
We begin by simply and joyfully following their example.
Every day.
Every way.
Let us pray:
Eternal God, help us this day to remember the unseen cloud of witnesses who are all about us:
Those who in every age and generation witnessed to their faith in life and in death;
Those who by their courage and the sacrifice won for us the freedom and liberty we enjoy.
Those who served their sisters and brothers at the cost of pain, of persecution and of death;
Those for whom all the trumpets sounded as they passed to the other side;
Those whom we have loved, those who loved us and who have gone to be with you, and whose names are written on our hearts.
Help us to walk in honor of those in whose unseen presence life is lived.
Help us to have in our lives:
Their courage in danger;
Their steadfastness in trial;
Their perseverance in difficulty;
Their loyalty when loyalty is costly;
The love which nothing can change;
Their joy which nothing can take away.
Grant to us in your good time to share with them the blessedness of your nearer presence, that we also may come to that life,
Where are all the questions are answered;
Where all the tears are wiped away;
Where all shall meet again, never to be separated from those whom we have loved and lost for awhile;
Where we shall be forever with our Lord and God.
Grant to us in this life never to forget those who have gone before, so that in the days to come we may emulate their example and ourselves become the strong foundation for generations to come. This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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