Five days ago, Hurricane Sandy roared out of the Caribbean and up the east coast of the United States causing horrific destruction from Haiti to the Lake Erie shore. Still devastated by the earthquake that struck in January 2010, Haiti yet again experienced the destruction of homes, schools, businesses, and healthcare facilities. As the hurricane charged up the east coast, making landfall in New Jersey, millions of people suffered loss of electric power. Over eighty people died. Transportation networks were destroyed. Great cities were shut down. Even our own state, on the Lake Erie shore felt the hurricane’s effects. Right now, the economic impact of the hurricane is unfathomable, and it will be years before those affected by it fully recover.
Of course we in southern Ohio are no strangers to destructive weather, having suffered our own prolonged loss of power in this past summer’s derecho. Perhaps some of you lost food and trees or sweltered in the late June heat. In August 2011 Hurricane Irene visited destruction on, of course, the Caribbean. However, after making landfall in southern New Jersey, it turned inward, causing cyclonic winds and flooded rivers in Vermont and New Hampshire, areas mostly immune to the dangers of hurricanes. And who can forget the destruction brought about in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005?
We could go on and on with hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados, cyclones, and tsunamis. To so-called “natural disasters” we can easily add those caused by human folly. Who can forget the BP Gulf oil spill or that of the Exxon Valdez? Add to them, on the macro level famine, war, ethnic cleansing, and violent political dictatorships, and, on the micro level, rape, illness, addiction, domestic abuse, and accidents. In the face of so much human need, our elected officials often seem to be handcuffed by extreme partisanship and totally unable to reach agreement on even the smallest steps. No wonder some of us want to cry out, “Where are you, God? What are you doing about our messy, broken, sinful world? Are you totally disconnected from all these disasters?”
And yet, we are also people of faith. We trust that there is more to human destiny than one disaster after another. Our Scriptures, so full of God’s promises, tell a different story than that of the daily news. Today’s Scripture readings in particular give us an assurance, a “blessed assurance,” that God is with us in all the disasters that crash in on our lives. What is more important, in the midst of these disasters, God offers us hope for the future, for a restoration of creation, and for life lived on a new plane. Addressing a people in exile, the writer of the first part of the book of Isaiah assures his readers that God knows their plight and sorrows with them. Although their world had been turned upside down, in much the same way as for those now suffering from the hurricanes, Isaiah suggests that God will ultimately bring about a different future for the exiles. Can you picture that heavenly banquet? All the wonderful food and the best wine? Wouldn’t you be comforted to hear that God will perfect creation, and that a future without death, of joyful abundance, and open to all, is part of God’s plan?
Our Gospel reading puts “skin” on Isaiah’s vision, so to speak. Do you have any doubts that God knows our pain? Jesus’ visit to Bethany is the last of the signs that John’s Gospel offers us that Jesus is the Word made flesh, that Jesus is sent by God to be God in our midst. And what does God with us do? He weeps! He knows our pain and loss and grieves with us – then and now. And then, pointing forward to his own resurrection, he releases his friend Lazarus from the bonds of death and assures the crowd, the gospel readers, and us, that eventually all of us will be set free from the bonds of death, that all of us will, with the readers of Isaiah, feast at God’s great banquet.
Surely the writer of the book of Revelation also understood God’s promises of restoration and wholeness. Writing to Jewish Christian communities that had suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Roman Empire, he used different images to capture his vision of God’s future. In the image of the new Jerusalem, he gives us a wonderful symbol for perfected creation. Can you picture that perfect city, so different from any known on earth? Shining, sparkling, gem-encrusted, perfect in its dimensions, a place where all is new, where death has been banished, where the gates are open to all? And more: in this newly perfected Jerusalem, the compassionate God who comforted the exiles and wept over Lazarus knows all of God’s people intimately. And lest we think all this is a vain hope, John declares that, “It is done!” God has already acted decisively, and, despite our doubts, God is even now bringing God’s plans to fruition.
At this point you might be asking, “Wait, isn’t this All Saints Sunday? Aren’t we celebrating all those saints ‘who from their labors rest?’ Why do we hear all these readings outlining God’s compassion for us and God’s promises of a restored creation? What about all those holy women and men?” Here’s the answer. To begin with, by saints we do not mean only holy people who lived centuries ago and are now enshrined in icons and stained glass windows. The true saints, both those on the official calendars, and those known only to a few friends and relatives, are those who have caught the vision. The true saints are those who have experienced God at work in their own lives and who trust God’s promises. The true saints are those who can see past the grief and pain of this life and can glimpse God’s future with their own eyes. The true saints are those who, seeing this future in their mind’s eyes, have accepted God’s invitation to help bring nearer the day when God’s future will be fully realized.
The saints do indeed constitute a “great cloud of witnesses” for us. Certainly the saints of history, those ancient martyrs in whose memory this feast day began, are among their number. So too are those like Francis and Clare of Assisi, who turned their backs on wealth and adopted a life of service to the poor. Who can forget the scholars among them, Dominic, Thomas Aquinas, or Catherine of Siena? Or the mystics, Hildegard of Bingen or Julian of Norwich? Or Brother Lawrence, who knew God’s presence with him in the pots and pans of a monastery kitchen? More contemporary saints are also alive in that “cloud:” people like Philander Chase, the founder of the Episcopal Church in Ohio, Julia Chester Emery, the founder of the United Thank Offering, Mother Ruth, the founder of the Community of the Holy Spirit, Thomas Merton, Trappist monk and teacher of mysticism to all of us, or Martin Luther King, Jr., whose martyrdom helped break down the walls separating the races. And then there are the saints known only to you: those relatives, friends, and teachers, who shared their vision of God with you and led you to trust in God’s promises. Truly the saints are beyond number.
And what of ourselves? What is our call on All Saints Day? Certainly, we are called to remember the saints with gratitude, to give thanks to God for the courage they showed in their day in sharing their visions of God. And are we among the saints? When our time is past, will we be among that “cloud of witnesses?” You and I could not stop Hurricane Sandy in its tracks. We cannot solely by our own individual efforts stop war and erase poverty. But can we too catch the vision? Can we deepen our relationship with God? Can we see ahead to God’s future and accept God’s invitation to join in bringing that future nearer? Lane Denson reminds us that in our readings from Mark’s Gospel this fall we have been called to be servant leaders. On All Saints Sunday, we are charged with accepting that call and falling in with all the rest of the saints, with the apostles, martyrs, and mystics, all the founders of communities, all those who have gone to the aid of those suffering in disasters, all those who gave their lives for racial and ethnic justice, all those who care for God’s creation, and all those who seek to eliminate poverty and injustice. On All Saints Sunday we too are called to proclaim the good news and to “walk the talk.” We too are called to see beyond the limitations of this life in the present, beyond the disasters, beyond the social inequity and racial discrimation, beyond the abuse and destruction that we have visited on nature. With the saints we too are called to claim the promise of God’s reign now and forever.
O blest communion, fellowship divine! God grant that we may know ourselves to be numbered among them!
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