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November 2, 2008 sermon

In the Company of Saints
(Matthew 22:34-40)

Reverend Minister Sally Harris

God as the One who calls us to love, grant us courage to venture into the depth of Your love that can never be found totally as individuals but opens slowly before the shared pain, struggle and hope of Your people. Amen

More than any other day of the year, today is family reunion day for the church. The Sunday after All Saint’s Day is the day for pulling out the old family photograph albums and remembering where we came from. Open one and you may find Saint Francis, standing barefoot in the snow, with birds on his shoulders and his pet wolf by his side. Or maybe you will turn to Saint Joan of Arc, who led men, twice her size into battle. She preferred armor to petticoats and puzzled everyone by dressing like a man, but the voices of her critics were nothing compared to the voice of God in her head. If you keep turning the pages, you may come across Saint Christopher, hiking through a swollen river with his tunic hitched up around his knees, his right hand on his staff and his left around the feet of the child he is carrying on his back. These are some of our more famous ancestors, but if you keep looking you will find others, not as well known but no less intriguing. There is Saint Maximilian, the first conscientious objector, who was drafted by the Roman army but refused to serve. His only loyalty, he said, was to the army of God. This was a great shame and sadness to his father, a veteran, who knew that his son’s decision meant death. At his beheading, Maximilian noticed the shabby clothing of the executioner and, calling to his father in the crowd, asked that his own new clothes be taken off and given to his executioner.

Yet when you start to move beyond the snapshots, when you start meeting these saints, one discovers that they were not, well, saints. Legend has it that Saint Francis rolled naked in the snow to defend himself against his lusty thoughts and Saint Mary of Egypt was a prostitute for seventeen years before she became a desert mother for the next fifty. Generally speaking, the saints are not distinguished by their perfect behavior. They are distinguished by their extravagant love of God, which shines brighter than anything else about them.

We all have an idea of what loving is and what unloving looks like. But I suspect love doesn't compartmentalize that neatly. In a sense, love is like sound. We hear a lot and a little at the same time. At any given moment, we love family, pets, jobs, games, homes, cappuccino, hot showers and Beethoven. Or we don't love parts of our lives and wish we did. We give love or hold it back, but our heart's desire is to love and to be loved. Sometimes our loves swirl together in a lively, if noisy, stew. Sometimes our loves collide or lead us into troubling contradictions. Sometimes love is a skill traversing dangerous ground. Sometimes love challenges the way we usually think, sometimes it is tough love.

I don't think Jesus meant for us to set aside all loves in order to follow the "first and great commandment." I don't see Jesus as a severe or grim, rigid kind of person. I see him as engaged fully in life, as drawn no less to the banquet than to solitary prayer. No less to confrontation than to peace loving. No less to debate as to healing. In saying that we should love God above all else, I think Jesus was saying that all creation is born of God. In quoting the ancient "Shema," he was saying we should listen for God in life, both for the still small voice and for the child's laugh, both the beggar's cry and the warrior's savage yell, for there is something of God in all things, perhaps a sign of grace abundant, perhaps a sign of what is missing and yet yearned for, perhaps a sign of passion, of clarity, of letting go and of midwifing that which is to be born anew. "Love God" isn't a call to deny all else. It is a call to live fully and to trust in God as the center of life.

To find God everywhere. To acknowledge God in everything. To bring God into all things. You see it is a mistake to assume that one needs to be dead to be a saint. Unfortunately that is one of the requirements for canonization in the Roman Catholic Church, but the truth is that there are living saints all over the place. Think of those people who have touched your life and shaped your way of living and loving. On All Saints’ Sunday, we make the very bold claim that all these people, the famous saints, the unknown saints, all these people are our relatives. We are surrounded by them and held within their strong and eternal embrace. We just need to remember that we do not have to be famous, or perfect, or dead. We just need to remember we are not alone in our doing and our being, our loving and our living. We have all this company – all these saints sitting right here whom we can see plus those we cannot. Can you hear this company of saints egging us on, calling our name and shouting themselves hoarse with encouragement? Because we are a part of them and they are a part of us and all of us are knit together in the communion of saints… for the love of God.
[resource: B.B.Taylor]

Praying as a Community
And so for the love of God… for the communion of saints - our prayers of the people will be a time of gratitude and remembrance as we prayerfully light the world with their love and ours by coming to light a candle for someone past or present, a saint known or unknown –

Choral Response

EARTH SONG by Frank Ticheli

Sing, Be, Live, See...........
This dark stormy hour, the wind, it stirs.
The scorched earth cries out in vain, in vain:
Oh war and power, you blind and blur.
The torn heart cries out in pain, in pain.
But music and singing have been my refuge,
And music and singing shall be my light.
A light of song, shining strong:
Alleluia, alleluia.
Through darkness and pain and strife, I’ll sing,
I’ll Be, Live See..........Peace.
Peace.

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