November 6, 2011 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. | All Saints’ Sunday

Keeping Company

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 34:1–10
Hebrews 12:1–2
Matthew 5:1–12

May you continue to inspire us . . . until we see your beautiful face again in that land where there is no separation, where all tears will be wiped from our mind.
John O’Donohue

Today we are celebrating All Saints’ Sunday. Each year on this day, a friend of mine sends me an email that simply says “Thinking of you on All Saints’ Day.” It’s not because I exhibit saintly behavior. It’s because she loves to rib me about a particular incident that occurred in the church I once served where she is a member. On All Saints’ Sunday my first year, we invited all members of the congregation to light a tapered candle to honor a particular departed person of faith—whether a figure in history or in one’s personal life—who had influenced them in important ways. It was a beautiful ritual as each person came forward and placed their candle in one of the two boxes of sand at the front of the sanctuary. That is until the heat from the close proximity of the candles started melting them together, creating larger flames, so that I had to take the glass of water from behind the pulpit to douse them out! And my friend won’t let me forget it.

I value the tradition at Fourth Church when we celebrate All Saints’ Sunday by reading aloud the names of all our church members who have died in the past year. The act of remembering them in their earthly life, their death, and eternal life brings them close to us and helps us know that they continue to keep us company. The words of Hebrews 12 proclaim that we are “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.” We keep company with generations of Christians who have been our mentors and role models, whether figures from the Bible or people we knew firsthand. They have demonstrated what it means to live the life of faith. They have encouraged us and even now pray for us. It is as if we are on the track in a huge sports arena, taking the baton from those who completed their laps, and are surrounded by a crowd of witnesses cheering us on as we take our turn to run the race Jesus set before us.

Every Sunday when we recite the Apostles’ Creed, we say that we believe in “the communion of saints.” When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the Communion liturgy often includes the phrase, “With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, we worship and adore thy glorious name.” What does this ancient language really mean? It is an affirmation of our mystical union with all believers of Christ, whether on earth or in heaven, both the living and the dead. Frederick Buechner wrote, “Angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim and all the company of heaven . . . means everybody we ever loved and lost, including the ones we didn’t know we loved until we lost them, or didn’t love at all.”

A helpful metaphor for the communion of saints is “The Balcony.” Carlyle Marney used to say that the human personality is like a house: a fairly complex, elaborate structure with a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, bedrooms. And a basement where the plumbing is and we keep the trash. Sometimes we live in the living room, sometimes in the bedroom; sometimes we’re down in the basement. But if you step out onto the front lawn, you see something you didn’t even know was there: a balcony. And on the balcony are some people. Those balcony people are the good and strong and healthy influences in your life. Your parents may be there, perhaps grandparents, teachers, coaches, friends, old neighbors, and people you never met but who influenced you, like Martin Luther King Jr. or Moses, Mary and Elizabeth. Your great-great-grandparents are up there. You can look up and see who’s there for you, name them, wave to them, keep their company.

Who is on your balcony? One of the persons on my balcony is Gertrude Bartlett. Gertrude was an older woman in the Presbyterian congregation where I grew up in the small, rural town of Fairbury, Illinois. She never married, lived alone, and wore men’s clothing because it was more comfortable for her than women’s styles. She was short and would be easily missed in a crowd. When she smiled, it seemed like her face split in two with a grin from ear to ear. She always paid her bills on time, walking her payment to the post office the same day she received the bill. I hardly noticed her until my pastor told me that she planned to leave $10,000 in her will to me to help pay for my seminary education. That was a lot of money thirty-five years ago. Why did she choose to do that? Because she felt that I would do in my life what she would like to do in hers if she could live a lot longer. It was only later, after she died, that I learned that she was the first woman to be licensed in Illinois as a physical therapist and that she had written one of the first exams for others to get licensed. She was a pioneer and inspires me to be a pioneer, too.

Another person on my balcony may be on yours too, and that is Dana Ferguson, our former Executive Associate Pastor, who died three years ago. Dana’s last day at work was my first day on the job, so she and I never really got acquainted. But whenever I wear colorful or patterned stockings, you tell me that reminds you of Dana. This black robe I am wearing was her robe. And the role I fill as Associate Pastor for Mission was one she once filled; much of the vision for mission that Dana had for this church blazed the trail for mission I now live into. She keeps me company, and I am encouraged by her presence on my balcony.

Who are the saints on your balcony? Saints are not such because of any particularly great achievement. We are all saints because we belong to Christ. Barbara Brown Taylor wrote, “The one thing that truly makes a saint . . . is the love of God, . . . membership in the body of Christ, which is what all of us, living and dead, remembered and forgotten, great souls and small, have in common. The title of saint is one that has been given to us all by virtue of our baptisms” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Weavings).

I knew a young, vibrant preacher in Cleveland, Ohio, who was frequently asked to be the guest preacher at other churches. She always greeted every congregation with the words, “Good morning, saints!” I always wondered if her repeat invitations came because of her vitality or because she called everyone by their true names, the names we were given in our baptism: saints.

We are all called to live into our vocation as saints. Saints are not models of perfection but rather people who open themselves to the ways that God seeks to work in and through their particular lives and gifts. We are invited not to copy the lives of other saints, but to draw encouragement from them as we seek to let God do this same work in our own particular lives. We may seem unlikely characters for God to choose and use, but anyone familiar with the biblical story knows that’s pretty typical for how God works.

One of the scripture passages typically read on All Saints’ Sunday is the Beatitudes, the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. It is so familiar that even the Monty Python movie, Life of Brian, could reference it and viewers got the joke. There’s a funny scene in that movie, in which Jesus is teaching the Beatitudes but those at a distance have a hard time hearing him. They hear “Blessed are the Greeks” instead of “Blessed are the meek,” and Jesus’ teaching “Blessed are the peacemakers” was heard as “Blessed are the cheesemakers.” It’s tempting to think that in the Beatitudes Jesus is declaring blessed specific groups of people, as if somewhere in the wide world there is a group who are the peacemakers and God really likes them. And then there is another group of unnamed people out there who are the “poor in spirit,” and they’re pretty tight with God too. As if what Jesus is saying here is akin to “Blessed are members of Rotary” or “Blessed are those who give to Greenpeace.”

But this is not the case. The only discernible group that Jesus is referring to here is his followers, Christians. The Beatitudes are a blueprint of action, a plan for behavior, and a reorientation of life for the followers of Jesus, who are blessed lovers of God. The Beatitudes are a litany of characteristics describing the citizens of heaven—the redeemed, the saved, the saints of God (Rick Morley).

Priest Rick Morley wrote,

What Jesus taught is that we are meant to be the poor in spirit, full of humility and wonder (and aware of our dependence on God). We are to be willingly, emotionally exposed and open enough to fully mourn, mourning the state of the world, the failures and losses of our brothers and sisters, and the loss of our own innocence. We are the ones who are to be meek, not seeking power by dominating others but attaining true power, which is only found in the weakness and vulnerability of the cross of Christ. We are to hunger and thirst for righteousness, yearning for what is right, holy, and good from the deepest part of our souls. We are to be merciful not ruthless, pure in heart not corrupted, peacemakers not instigators, the persecuted instead of the persecutors, and reviled and despised not honored and exalted.

This is the picture of what the church is supposed to look like in full Technicolor. Jesus was teaching what God is all about, what he himself is all about, and what he wants us and every person on the face of the planet to be about. And what becomes of such people who live by such attitude and manner? What accompanies the blessings?

The blessing is the kingdom of God, in heaven and on earth. The blessing is keeping company with God and with the communion of saints, those for whom, as is beautifully stated in the Book of Revelation, “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

We are not alone, not now or ever. There are times when we are called to some measure of solitude in order to pray and to discern what God wants to bring forth in our lives. But All Saints’ Sunday invites us to remember that we never live out our faith entirely alone. We are sustained by those who have gone before and who are with us now, whose lives provide inspiration for us who follow on the path.

This is why we can go out and face the challenges set before us—because we know that God accompanies us into this world and promises to use us, to live through us, like those before us, to further God’s purposes.

We can face the loss of our loved ones we remember on this day because we know that God has loved and still loves each one of them and each one of us. God brings the faithful through the gateway of death to new and abundant life with God and all the saints triumphant. “Death cannot sever our connections with loved ones. Whatever is loved lives on forever not only in our hearts but in God’s healing memory and everlasting creativity” (Bruce Epperley).

The veil between this life and the next is often quite thin. Our prayers radiate beyond this lifetime, bringing greater light to the post-mortem journeys of our loved ones. Conversely, the prayers and energies of our deceased beloved and of the apostles and martyrs of the faith support us on our earthly pilgrimages.

So where are you finding inspiration these days? Who provides encouragement on your path? How have you seen the Spirit work through the gifts of another in a way that helps you trust that the Spirit will work through your own gifts? Who helps you remember you are not alone? Who are the folks, living or dead, who linger close in these days? Who is on your balcony, strengthening and inspiring you?

Praise God for the communion of saints, and keep their company. With them may you find yourself in a thin, thin place where heaven and earth meet and you receive what you need for the race that Jesus has set before you.

Let us pray:

“God of the generations, when we set our hands to labor, thinking we work alone, remind us that we carry on our lips the words of prophets, in our veins the blood of martyrs, in our eyes the mystics’ visions, in our hands the strength of thousands. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”
(Jan Richardson)

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church