All Saints' Day, Year A
November 1, 2020
“For what was, for what is, and for what will be—Thanks be to God.” You may know this short prayer, attributed to Dag Hammarskjold. I believe that it sums up our prayers on All Saints’ Day. When we celebrate the saints of God, we receive an encompassing, communal vision: of our past with God, our present with God, and our future with God. And for that abiding presence, we give thanks.
First, we give thanks for what was:
When I was a little girl, I liked to pretend that my deceased grandparents were up in heaven watching me live my life. I pictured them marveling at technological wonders like the TV set or the Apollo mission. Whenever I was lonely, I imagined that they were participating with me in the simple events of my day. I never knew my grandparents, so it wasn’t that I missed them. I was just seeking some kind of grounding in a loving connection with my past. In the same way, today I wonder what it would be like for St. Ambrose of Milan to walk with us as we go about our daily life as a Christian community. Does he observe the challenges we face in our own day? Does he support us when we stumble? Does he cheer us on when our light shines brightest? In any case, we know that those we love but see no longer surround us as a cloud of witnesses. Their love never fades away. Today, we call them by name and count them still here among us. What a comfort it is when the strength, love, and blessedness of the past can brush softly by us, touching us for a moment in the present. “For all that was, thanks be to God.”
Next, we give thanks for what is:
The present is often the tough place to be. The past is so often cast in a rosy light, and dreams of the future can be exciting. But the present is hard to hang onto. It is full of the distractions and struggles of real life in this world. We certainly have had no shortage of struggles in 2020, have we? Covid deaths, multiple natural disasters, national strife, racial violence and injustice, and increasing poverty and climate change … Can we even give thanks today for “what is?”
Christianity is often accused of a “pie in the sky” mentality. We are known for excusing the injustices of the present by claiming that everything will be made right in the next life. That’s not what Jesus does in the Beatitudes, however. Jesus uses the image of God’s future reign to bless in the present the justice and mercy, righteousness and love hidden in the hearts of his ragtag, persecuted bunch of followers. The Beatitudes come right before Jesus launches into what he expects of us in the Sermon on the Mount. Before he starts in on impossible demands--like loving our enemies and avoiding hypocrisy—he blesses us. When we read through all of the Beatitudes, as we did today, we can’t help but feel flickers of solace and hope. We hear blessings emerge in the midst of tough present reality; we see our struggles through God’s eyes.
In this year of extra suffering, it helps me to know that Jesus stands with me, blessing the present for me when I can’t utter a blessing myself. It can center us to know that we are blessed and beloved by God in our mourning, as in our joy, and in our suffering, as in our flourishing. Jesus’ blessing can push us to grow into the vision that God is laying out for us. It can remind us what it means to be, as it says in our epistle today, “children (saints!) of God.” Blessing gives me the strength to say, “For all that is, thanks be to God.”
Finally, we pray for all that will be:
Close your eyes for a minute and picture the vision in today’s reading from Revelation: a limitless number of the saints, the children of God, stretching as far and wide as the eye can see. They are not just Americans, or Episcopalians, or the people that we like to hang out with. They represent every nation, every ethnicity, speaking every language, representing every time period in the history of the universe. The 16th-century artist Albrecht Durer has a painting called the “Adoration of the Trinity” that illustrates this scene. (Show image.) At the very center of the painting, we have the Trinity: there’s a papal-looking God the Father, and a descending dove for the Holy Spirit. And then there’s Jesus on the Cross. All around the Crucified One, we see kings, popes, peasants, angels, men, women, and children all kneeling. Some worshippers are crowded into the margins of the painting and are flowing out beyond its borders, a great multitude with heads bowed, hands folded in prayer, all directed toward the crucified Lamb. They’re not playing harps on clouds or taking heavenly naps. This multitude is totally focused on Christ. (Take off image)
In Revelation, we hear that the sin of the multitudes no longer clings to them. All that they have done and left undone no longer matters. There is nothing to drag them down or keep them from God. They all wear God’s pure, white robes. The purity and whiteness of the saints’ robes are a result of cleansing blood, not of sweet piety. The saints’ robes are also not being washed by God, but they themselves are doing the work of washing. Those who conquer actively follow their crucified Lord. God can expect such costly discipleship from us because there is another plane that exists, no matter what evil assaults us, no matter what uncertainties plague our present. In God’s timeless place, there is victory: where heat and hunger, thirst and sin can no longer can claim us. It is this future that gives our lives in the present their context. “For all that will be, thanks be to God.”
Indeed, we live and move and have our being in the present moment, yet our memories of the past and our visions of the future hold us in the security of God’s embrace. Listen to T.S. Eliot, in part of the “Four Quartets:”
…To apprehend / the point of intersection of the timeless/ With time, is an occupation for the saint--/ No occupation either, but something given/ And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love, / Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender./ …These are only hints and guesses, / Hints followed by guesses; and the rest / Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action./ The gift half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation…./ Here the past and future are conquered, and reconciled.[1]
Today, let us hold onto the past and the future--but not so tightly that we lose our freedom to act right now, to live fully. We too are God’s saints, expected to take our turn in the dance: to pray, to act, and to love, no matter what. Layers and layers of saints—followers of the Crucified One—surround us, before and behind. Hatred and fear will not have the last word, even in this uncertain world, for we are surrounded by an infinitely strong net of love and communion, through which we can never fall into the abyss.
“For all that was, and all that is, and all that will be: thanks be to God.”
[1] T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages.” Found at http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/t__s__eliot/poems/15185.
No comments:
Post a Comment