November 5th, 2006
I had only been here maybe six weeks when the diocese of Washington’s annual clergy conference was held. This is one of those events at which clergy presence is required, so I and all of the other priests of the diocese made the trek out to Shrinemont, somewhere several hours to the west of here. At dinner the first night the people at my table – none of whom I knew – were asking each other what church we were connected with and how long we’d each been in the diocese. When I said six weeks, one guy at my table said something to me which summed up how I felt perfectly: Oh, he said knowingly. So for you it must feel like you’re here at somebody else’s family reunion. And that was it exactly. That was my experience of my first clergy conference in this diocese: like being at someone else’s family reunion.
Today, we have much to celebrate. Today is our celebration of All Saints’ Day, the church’s annual family reunion. Thankfully, for me here today with you it doesn’t feel like I’m at someone else’s family reunion. I know I’m at my own family reunion and you are at yours too; we at our family reunion. First with all of us here, the people of St. George’s. But also with our wider family, with what our church calls the ‘communion of saints.’ We can see some family pictures on the walls – mostly but not exclusively in icon form– all over our church. There are lots of pictures of our ancestor St. George, slaying his dragons. But there are also a number of pictures of our other family members. There’s a beautiful picture in the narthex of two of our foremothers, Mary and Elizabeth – Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Elizabeth, her cousin, the mother of John the Baptist, in a lovely image of the Visitation I invite you to look at again. Out in the hallway by the cry room you can see pictures of our ancestors St. Francis and St. Clare, and in the church office there are pictures of Catharine of Siena and Absolom Jones – he the first African-American priest in the Episcopal Church, ordained in 1802. In the parish hall you can find more saints in the communion, with the picture of Ben and Addie Miller, former parishioners for whom Miller Hall is named. And if you were to flip through this book, Lesser Feasts and Fasts, a collection of small-s saints our church recognizes, you would note that we celebrate and count as our ancestors in faith such diverse people as Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr., Mary Magdelene and Florence Nightengale, Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Harriet Ross Tubman – these last four named as ‘liberators and prophets.’ You might also take note of the names of our forefathers such as William Tyndale, who was killed 1536 for translating the Bible into English, and Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was the chief architect of the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. Other members of the family include Thomas Gallaudet, the priest who really began ministry to the deaf in the Episcopal Church, and Henry Winter Syle, the first deaf priest of our church, ordained in 1876. On Wednesday night we prayed for hundreds of saints who are here at our family reunion today, some buried in our cemetery and others who are friends and relatives of yours, some of whom may have died this past year.
So welcome to our celebration of All Saints’ Day. Each year on November 1 or the Sunday following, we gather in worship to remember and honor all of those followers of Jesus Christ, past, present, and yet to come. We gather to share the history of those who have gone before us, and to remember those who have died. We gather to welcome new members into the communion of Saints by baptism, and to renew our own baptismal covenant, remembering what it is that connects us with all of these ancestors of the faith.
Here’s what our church says about what we are doing here today, from the pages of Lesser Feasts and Fasts: “The Church is ‘the communion of Saints,’ that is, a people made holy through their mutual participation in the mystery of Christ. This communion exists through history, exists now, and endures beyond ‘the grave and gate of death’ into heaven. For ‘God is not a God of the dead but of the living,’ and those still on their earthly pilgrimage continue to have fellowship ‘with those whose work is done.’ The pilgrim Church and the Church at rest join in watching and praying for that great day when Christ shall come again to change and make perfect our common humanity in the image of Christ’s risen glory.”
So we have an enormous amount to celebrate here with each other today. We celebrate that we are “a people made holy through our mutual participation in the mystery of Christ.” We celebrate the wider family of faith through time. We celebrate our own church community, St. George’s. We welcome those new to this community, those who have chosen to call this place home. We celebrate that we have this beautiful church to call home. We celebrate the abundance of God’s love and gifts to each one of us, as you and I bring our pledge cards of money and time, committing back to this community which has already committed to us. We celebrate the abundance of God’s love for us as seen by the promise of today’s story from the gospel of John. “I am resurrection and I am life,” Jesus promises us. “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and those who live and believe in me will never die.” These words open every funeral in our church, and they also precede the exchange we see in today’s lesson from the gospel of John. That exchange expresses the faith of Martha and of Mary that their friend Jesus loved them and loved their brother Lazarus enough that he would not let Lazarus stay where he was. They know that Jesus had enough love in him to bring Lazarus back; and we see that love on display as Jesus, foreshadowing his own resurrection, raises Lazarus from the dead. We have that to celebrate today also, that for us as Christians, who center our faith in the resurrection, death is not the end. For us, ‘life is changed, not ended.’ We are promised eternal life with God and reunion with those we love. That is something to celebrate.
We celebrate the abundance of God’s love as seen in the lesson from the Revelation to John, in the vision of a new heaven and a new earth; in the promise that God will dwell with us; in the promise that death will be no more, and that mourning and crying and pain will be no more. We celebrate the abundance of God’s love in that promise that all who are thirsty will be given the water of life, as a gift, freely given to all. We celebrate that we have a God who promises that all things are being made new – not that things were once made new, but that God promises this making new as a continuing and continual promise. So that we can know that the difficulties of our lives are not permanent; that the way things are now is not the way they will be forever. And that our God both loves us just as we are, and also loves us too much for us to stay this way, and so promises that if we join in following Jesus the Christ that we too can experience new life, transformation, resurrection.
Are you ready to celebrate yet? I am. I am inviting us all to join in the celebration of today’s family reunion. Shortly we will renew our baptismal vows, mirroring what is happening in Episcopal churches all over the country today. And after that we will welcome to St. George’s a half a dozen people who want to join in this raucous, quirky, slightly off-center family that we know as St. George’s Episcopal Church, the Diocese of Washington, the Episcopal Church of the United States of America. And I know that you who love this church and have chosen to call it home will also generously support it with your gifts and skills, with your time, and with your financial pledges as we celebrate God’s abundance and generosity with generosity of our own. We have so much to celebrate. I know I do. I think about last year at this time: entering my final six months at St. Paul’s, a place I loved dearly but after six years as the associate was definitely outgrowing, but the future was uncertain. Though I was hopeful that this church in someplace I had never heard of – Glenn Dale, Maryland – might think about calling me as their rector. And I look back and thank God for all of the divine guidance and grace that has brought me to this place to be with you. I hope you feel like you have much to celebrate too, in your personal lives and also in your spiritual lives, and in the journey that we have undertaken to follow Jesus whom we know as Christ in this place St. George’s. I hope that whenever you are here at St. George’s that you never, ever feel like you are at someone else’s family reunion but that this community is where you absolutely belong. And I hope that you know that your picture goes on the walls here too, as each of us takes our place among that glorious communion of saints.
Amen. Alleluia. Thanks be to God.