Sermon of the Week:
Jesus’ Teaching and the Saints of God
An online sermon preached with The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on November 1, 2020.
Thirty First Sunday in Ordinary Time
Keywords: Halloween, Allhallowtide, Saints, St Patrick Breastplate. #pcusa
Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Psalm 34:1-10, 12
and Matthew 5:1-12
Permission to podcast / stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-733469. All rights reserved.
So, Halloween was yesterday,
and, at least for our family, it felt so subdued,
another casualty of the COVID pandemic.
I know the kids love Halloween, and quite a few of my adult friends love it too.
Candy. Costumes and cosplay.
An excuse to dress your puppy up in a matching epidemiologist outfit.
I saw it all over my social media.
And I get it. It’s a good excuse to escape all the actual horror going on in our world
if only for an evening of pumpkin carving and
a little neighborhood get-together on your block
and setting up a socially-distanced candy table
outside by the street.
For some reason, I’ve never fully gotten into Halloween.
It’s never really been my thing.
Don’t get me wrong: I like all those things,
and I LOVE seeing kids fall in love with it,
for instance, taking little steps of bravery towards a spooky skeleton, to see if its real or not.
Our three-year-old neighbor, who dressed up as a rocket-ship-to-the-moon this year
came over every single day for a few weeks
just to check out the witch hat and her witch feet
which were really just some old shoes and socks stuffed with leaves
that we kept in our yard…
and he was just enthralled by it.
I love all of that. Still, I don’t seem to get as engrossed in all of it as others do.
That’s ok. To each their own.
I’ll work on a costume from time to time.
One year I was a dreaded oak mite.
I think I was voted scariest costume that year.
Halloween in America evolved from All Hallows Eve,
which has many parallels with la dia de los Muertos, or the day of the dead
in many Latin American countries,
a day of celebrating and remembering ancestors.
For most Americans, our observance of the holiday has become separated from all of that.
It has become a day for fun size candy and Styrofoam tombstones in the front yard
but traditionally All Hallows Eve
is the beginning of three days of this recognition of the dearly departed,
along with All Saints Day and all Souls Day.
Together, those three days are called Allhallowtide,
a Christian observance established way back in the eighth century.
While some years I feel a bit disconnected from Halloween,
I have come to really love All Saints Day every time it comes around.
It can sometimes be quite sweet, a time of celebration and joy
where we remember loved ones who have gone before with happy hearts.
It might also be a day where we shed tears,
which can be a good thing,
because those tears express a range of feelings
that can’t quite be captured in words,
awe, gratitude, grief, regret, loneliness, responsibility.
It is really important for us to honor all of our memories as well as these sorts of feelings.
In the business of our everyday life, it is easy to forget that we are part of a lineage of love.
And it is so personal, for each of us.
These people we remember might be parents, or partners, or children sometimes,
friends, teachers, neighbors, respected rivals…
People who have nurtured, taught, comforted, inspired us,
people who are now a part of who we are…
and naming that, remembering that, helps us claim an important part of ourselves.
No man is an Island, wrote John Donne.
We are, all of us, interconnected with the people who shaped us,
just as we have a hand in shaping the lives of those around us.
///
Over time, here in the Presbyterian corner of the Christian church,
we have tended to focus our attention on All Saints Day, November First,
as a day for us to do all of this,
to lift up the everyday people who were instrumental in making us who we are.
Other parts of the church reserve this All Saints Day for Saint saints, particular Christians
formally recognized by the church as being a super awesome Christian,
or at least quite above average.
They reserve that other day, All Souls Day, for a more general observance.
We Presbyterians don’t tend to focus on Saint saints,
lifting up an “upper tier” group of people like that,
but I know that many of those people have facilitated moments of personal inspiration and support
during times of stress or trial or growth.
Saint Christopher, patron saint of travel, helps many people bravely step onto an airplane
or to venture that first step in a journey they need to undertake…
Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and animal lovers,
inspires many to care for their companion pets and creatures.
Saint Patrick is famous for his breastplate, and the prayer of humble piety it contained:
I bind myself today to the power of God to guide me
the might of God to uphold me
the wisdom of God to teach me
The eye of God to watch over me
the ear of God to hear me…
Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ beneath me, Christ within me…
Christ in the heart of every[one] who thinks of me
Christ in the mouth of every[one] who speaks to me…
You can see how these examples can be quite moving,
and even though our tradition doesn’t observe these saints as Saint saints,
there’s nothing wrong in being grateful for them too.
It’s just that, in our way of thinking about it,
we ALL have the opportunity to be saints to one another,
to share God’s love and God’s light in this world.
Saints are not just people through whom some supernatural miracle happens.
They’re not people who live unrealistically pure lives,
not even sneaking a fun size Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup from the candy stash
when their kid is done trick-or-treating for the night.
Instead, we believe that saints are regular people
who show us the miraculous that happens everyday…
like those moments when genuine compassion triumphs over petty tribalism,
when people choose hope over fear and division,
when people dare to stand up to injustice
and take steps toward ending the root causes of brokenness in our world.
Saints embody God’s welcome for all.
They are people who show us that we are loved,
that we are worthy of love,
because they themselves love us.
And actually, this happens all the time,
Everyday saints, ordinary people, through whom we see a bit of the love and compassion of God,
in whom we experience God’s welcome and God’s affirmation that we matter, that we belong.
///
It is interesting to me that people who plan these things recommend that we turn to the beatitudes
when we observe All Saints Sunday.
That’s what we call this section in Matthew that we read this morning. [Read more…]
