I remember very well my visit to NYC in the winter of 1973/1974 as a young college student. Of course, at the top of my sight-seeing list was the brand new World Trade Center Tower. I had never been up so high and my ears popped as the elevator seemed to ascend endlessly to the top of the tower. After all the publicity I was tremendously impressed to personally visit these grand icons representing humanity’s zenith of ability to use steel and ingenuity. They stood for world trade, commerce, capitalism at its finest, and making profits and lots of money. I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams that they would ever come down in such shocking tragedy and mayhem within my lifetime. Their tragic fate would simply be inconceivable to me and to everyone else – they represented stability and prosperity more than anything. When they were destroyed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 we watched them tumble in utter shock and disbelief.
As the disciples of Jesus looked at the great Temple in Jerusalem, they could not help but remark at the grandeur of the place and its certain eternal quality that made its demise inconceivable, much like I considered the World Trade Center when I first saw it. But was the Temple really eternal? In our Gospel lesson today Jesus says it is not – in fact, it would come to an end with not one stone left upon another – which indeed happened in the year 70 AD after the unsuccessful Jewish revolt against Rome. We can only guess at the disciples’ reaction, but it is recorded that they were anxious to know when that would happen.
You know there is always a great deal of emotion in anticipation of “the day”, whether that be a wedding day, the first day of vacation, the opening day of your favorite sport, or beginning a new venture – to name but a few. In such cases, not only is the day enjoyed for itself; it also promises many more wonderful days in the future. On the other hand, there are some days that we approach with fear and dread in our hearts, such as the day we lose a job, or the day a loved one dies – these days thrust us into sadness and we often struggle with them in the darkness.
The Day of the Lord was always a day of anticipation for the people of ancient Israel. Originally it was perceived as a day of fulfillment. It was the moment in history when all of the promises made by God would come to completion, and the people of God would enjoy them forever – promises of peace and prosperity, of contentment and harmony. Many of the prophets looked forward to that day and described it in terms that are reminiscent of the Garden of Eden. Jesus claimed that this long-awaited day was dawning as he inaugurated the reign of God. But the shortcomings and sinfulness of the people required that there first be a period of purging and preparation before that fulfillment could come to pass. For this reason, some of the prophets warned that the Day of the Lord would first be a day of suffering. In fact, they even compared such an event to the pangs that precede birth, a symbol of new life coming out of suffering – the “birth pangs of the messiah” they called it.
Like all the Bible’s depictions of the future, these descriptions are symbolic in nature. Therefore, these readings leave most Episcopalians ill at ease and puzzled and they relegate such messages to fundamentalist televangelists ranting about the end of the world. End of time predictions over the years have constantly had to be revised, whether they originated in televangelists or other sources. Remember all the hype over the Y2K bug that was supposed to crash our infrastructure and bring all commerce and society as we know it to an end leading to chaos and mayhem? Many waited with baited breath when the clock struck 12 on January 1st 2000 – and then… nothing. Now we have the supposed 2012 Mayan doomsday prophecy… and when that passes uneventfully I’m sure there will be another.
But thankfully, such end of time obsession has never been a part of mainstream Anglican thought, rather we acknowledge that we live between times, not focused on the end of time. Indeed, we as a nation may be living with a sense of fear and anxiety. We have seen the devastating effects of hurricanes, terrorist attacks and threats, oil spills, volcanoes, foreign wars, and the worst economy since the Great Depression. We look desperately to make some sense out of these catastrophes, but fear must not lead us to those false prophets Jesus warns us about.
Jesus word to his disciples and to us is that we need only listen to and trust him and him alone. But we, like them, want more – we want to know the exact signs when the Day of Fulfillment will come. But Jesus tells us that the signs of his final coming will be obvious – we don’t have to delve into esoteric or mysterious means to perceive them. We don’t have to read the tea leaves or get out the Ouija boards, or decipher Mayan inscriptions to look for signs when the end is near – he says, “Trust me, you’ll know it when it comes.” We don’t have to act like the little kid on the long road trip who keeps asking every 10 minutes, “Are we there yet?” In a sense, it is always near, and when we get there we’ll know.
The kingdom is near, and we must live like it’s coming with all its fullness soon. We are not so much looking for signs, as we are the signs. We are the signs before the signs. We live the heavenly life here on earth, pointing to God’s good future and final victory. We are the people who have read the Book to the end: we know how the story ends. We know God wins. We don’t wait for the world to change – we can go ahead and be changed now.
Amen.
November 4, 2012 - Father Mark D. Stuart
Our Gospel lesson today leads us in an ostensibly somber direction this All Saints’ Sunday. We are thrust into the sad a grieving household of Mary and Martha of Bethany whose brother Lazarus has just died. It is difficult, if not nearly impossible; to convey in words the experience of the profound loss of someone you are very close to and love very much. Those of us who have been compelled to journey this dark path can feel genuine empathy with Mary and Martha as they greet Jesus. Grieving is an exhausting, confusing jumble of emotions not to be analyzed or explained and confounding even the most rational and stable persons among us.
Lazarus was Jesus’ friend, as were Mary and Martha; so their accusation to him that their brother would not have died had Jesus come earlier, affected him deeply. In one of the most poignant scenes in the Bible we see the Son of God weep. Jesus loved Lazarus and he weeps at the grave of his friend. Yes, this is understandable in Jesus’ humanity, but if anyone believed in the resurrection, it would have been Jesus. “Jesus wept.” This shows that grief is not unchristian.
Christ wept at the death of his friend. We too weep over the graves of those we love. On this All Saints’ Sunday as we remember not just the great Saints of the Church, but also the saints in our own lives, and we remember those we love who have died. The remembrance is bittersweet, full of the joy of the memories and the sorrow for the empty place in our lives from the loss. It is a sorrow that does not go away. Grief is bitter and traumatic and eventually it grows into mourning, but it is real and stays with you. The loss remains and so does the sorrow. We pray for the unbearable sense of loss to be changed into a sorrow and mourning we can at least bear. In this, as Christians, we are significantly aided by the truth of the resurrection.
Just prior to where our lesson from St. John’s Gospel begins Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus knew people would continue to die; the mortality rate is 100%. He taught that not only do we find death in the midst of life, but we find life in the midst of death. There really is no death, only passage to new wonders. Or to quote James Barrie’s Peter Pan, “To die will be such an awfully big adventure!” This is why Christians praise God even at the graveside of a beloved.
Still, this is not to deny the pain of separation. But we praise a God who truly knows our pain and our grief. We praise a God present in Jesus Christ who himself experienced loss and grief, who himself wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus, even knowing full well he was going to raise him. Death was no stranger to Jesus who also lost his father Joseph, and undoubtedly many others he knew, as we all have. In becoming human, God was and is with us in Jesus in a way that caused him to experience the depths of human emotions, especially pain and loss. Through my own experience I have come to recognize that grief and love are close companions and that grief is the measure of your love: if you didn’t love deeply, then you wouldn’t grieve deeply. It is a difficult price to pay, but one that is worth paying, because love is our greatest gift from the Creator. If God is love as Scripture tells us, then God knows grief.
God is not distant and reserved – God is close, caring, and compassionate. We are told in Scripture that the time is coming when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and the world will be so transformed that we will never have to live through physical death and grief. Yet in the here and now there are many tragedies, personal, and national, and international which may cause people to question their faith. In these cases people may plead, “Where is God?” The answer is, “With us.” God is there in the midst of suffering, present with those in pain, as one who learned the depths of human suffering while living among us. Realizing that Christ knows how it feels to experience the death of a loved one, we can perhaps realize that we have an empathetic God.
Jesus calls, “Come out!” Come out from the grave. Grief is real, but loss is not the end. Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go” to those around Lazarus, and he says the same to us. We are to be unbound, set free from the power of death. This is why All Saints’ Day is a joyful celebration with white vestments, triumphant music, and splendid prayers. The Saints we honor this day, that vast, innumerable, great cloud of witnesses were people of joy who acknowledged death but knew death had no power over them. They aren’t afraid to live with both the tragic and the glorious. They are not embarrassed to struggle with the dichotomy of life and death, good and evil, heaven and hell. The Saints are those who accept an adventuresome risk and know the great therapy for fear: to take God seriously. They are called forth into the dark unknown to reach a triumphant goal, the place of delight, free from fear’s control. Perhaps you have known some saints. Perhaps you know some now. Perhaps you are one of these saints, dwelling at least in part in that world of peaceful delight.
On this Feast of All Saints’ we remember those who have gone before and pray that we may be blessed to follow them. The Saints assembled in their glorious ranks are a promise of our happy return home, with hearts glad and eyes open to the wonder of God – and that is indeed something to celebrate, today and always!
Amen.
Lazarus was Jesus’ friend, as were Mary and Martha; so their accusation to him that their brother would not have died had Jesus come earlier, affected him deeply. In one of the most poignant scenes in the Bible we see the Son of God weep. Jesus loved Lazarus and he weeps at the grave of his friend. Yes, this is understandable in Jesus’ humanity, but if anyone believed in the resurrection, it would have been Jesus. “Jesus wept.” This shows that grief is not unchristian.
Christ wept at the death of his friend. We too weep over the graves of those we love. On this All Saints’ Sunday as we remember not just the great Saints of the Church, but also the saints in our own lives, and we remember those we love who have died. The remembrance is bittersweet, full of the joy of the memories and the sorrow for the empty place in our lives from the loss. It is a sorrow that does not go away. Grief is bitter and traumatic and eventually it grows into mourning, but it is real and stays with you. The loss remains and so does the sorrow. We pray for the unbearable sense of loss to be changed into a sorrow and mourning we can at least bear. In this, as Christians, we are significantly aided by the truth of the resurrection.
Just prior to where our lesson from St. John’s Gospel begins Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Jesus knew people would continue to die; the mortality rate is 100%. He taught that not only do we find death in the midst of life, but we find life in the midst of death. There really is no death, only passage to new wonders. Or to quote James Barrie’s Peter Pan, “To die will be such an awfully big adventure!” This is why Christians praise God even at the graveside of a beloved.
Still, this is not to deny the pain of separation. But we praise a God who truly knows our pain and our grief. We praise a God present in Jesus Christ who himself experienced loss and grief, who himself wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus, even knowing full well he was going to raise him. Death was no stranger to Jesus who also lost his father Joseph, and undoubtedly many others he knew, as we all have. In becoming human, God was and is with us in Jesus in a way that caused him to experience the depths of human emotions, especially pain and loss. Through my own experience I have come to recognize that grief and love are close companions and that grief is the measure of your love: if you didn’t love deeply, then you wouldn’t grieve deeply. It is a difficult price to pay, but one that is worth paying, because love is our greatest gift from the Creator. If God is love as Scripture tells us, then God knows grief.
God is not distant and reserved – God is close, caring, and compassionate. We are told in Scripture that the time is coming when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and the world will be so transformed that we will never have to live through physical death and grief. Yet in the here and now there are many tragedies, personal, and national, and international which may cause people to question their faith. In these cases people may plead, “Where is God?” The answer is, “With us.” God is there in the midst of suffering, present with those in pain, as one who learned the depths of human suffering while living among us. Realizing that Christ knows how it feels to experience the death of a loved one, we can perhaps realize that we have an empathetic God.
Jesus calls, “Come out!” Come out from the grave. Grief is real, but loss is not the end. Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go” to those around Lazarus, and he says the same to us. We are to be unbound, set free from the power of death. This is why All Saints’ Day is a joyful celebration with white vestments, triumphant music, and splendid prayers. The Saints we honor this day, that vast, innumerable, great cloud of witnesses were people of joy who acknowledged death but knew death had no power over them. They aren’t afraid to live with both the tragic and the glorious. They are not embarrassed to struggle with the dichotomy of life and death, good and evil, heaven and hell. The Saints are those who accept an adventuresome risk and know the great therapy for fear: to take God seriously. They are called forth into the dark unknown to reach a triumphant goal, the place of delight, free from fear’s control. Perhaps you have known some saints. Perhaps you know some now. Perhaps you are one of these saints, dwelling at least in part in that world of peaceful delight.
On this Feast of All Saints’ we remember those who have gone before and pray that we may be blessed to follow them. The Saints assembled in their glorious ranks are a promise of our happy return home, with hearts glad and eyes open to the wonder of God – and that is indeed something to celebrate, today and always!
Amen.
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