Sermon for the Feast of All Saints

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

I have a friend with whom I graduated from seminary.  He and I process information very differently.  He can find layers of meaning in images.  But by his own admission, reading comes for him with great difficulty.  Of course, as you all have probably figured out, I love to read.  So the difference in our vocabularies is also great.  But this week, for the first time that I can remember, I too had to look up a word that I read in our Book of Common Prayer.  That word is "ineffable."  When something is ineffable, it is "beyond description."  So when we prayed that we might share the "ineffable joys" of the saints, we prayed for something that we cannot describe, something that we cannot imagine, something that we cannot see.

To pray for something "ineffable" is to pray for something that remains unknown to us until we actually see it and experience it.  And in the context of our prayer, to share the ineffable joys of the saints in heaven is to share something that we will be able to describe, to see and to know, when we also share in their physical death.  So if "ineffable joys" go hand in hand with that greatest of all unknowns in this world, how many of us are ready for those joys?

Martha and Mary were not ready for their brother Lazarus to share those joys, which to them were unknown.  And at the beginning of this story, the author of this wonderful Gospel, this Good News, wrote that Jesus "loved Martha, Mary and their brother Lazarus."  Jesus loved all the men and women whom God had made and whom Jesus was sent to save from their sin and alienation from God and each other.  But like any human being, Jesus had some relationships that were deeper than others, friends with whom he was able to open his heart more than with others because a higher level of trust had been established.  These three siblings clearly held a special place in Jesus’s heart, which in its divinity was wide enough for all humanity.  Jesus knew what Mary and Martha wanted. They wanted their brother back.  He felt their grief.  He felt their anger.  His heart ached for them, and so, "Jesus wept."

But was that really why Jesus cried?  After all, as some scholars have argued, didn't Jesus know that he was about to take away their grief?  Why weep when you already know the joy that is about to come?  I believe that even if you know that someone you love is about to know joy, your heart cannot help but break to see their present sorrow.  But the deepest reason for Jesus's aching heart: the deepest source of his sadness, I believe, is revealed to us a little later.  After Lazarus has been brought back to the life of this world, his sisters throw a great party for Jesus, which naturally attracts many people from the surrounding area, including Jerusalem.  Jesus's enemies see this great crowd coming to believe in Jesus on account of Lazarus, and according the Gospel, "they made plans to put Lazarus to death as well" as Jesus.

There is no reason to suppose that Jesus's enemies were any less efficient in disposing of Lazarus than they were with Jesus. And Jesus knew this.  Standing before that tomb, he could see his own death, and Lazarus's second death.  Jesus knew that in his Father's house there are many rooms with ineffable joys, and that Lazarus was already in his room, and that to bring him back would sentence him to a second physical death.  I suspect that having had this ineffable vision of God's purposes, Lazarus understood it as well.

We all struggle to hold on to what we know, even when the room we know has been stripped of almost all joy.  The room we know is preferable to the room we don't know.  But we can know this: John testifies in this Gospel that, “This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.”  We have a witness that Jesus Christ has power over life and death, and that we need not fear the unknown; for God himself -- in Jesus Christ -- has already passed through that that unknown and is waiting for us.  And not only is the risen Jesus waiting for us, He who was dead but is now alive forever, is right beside us.  He is with us in this Sacrament of bread and wine, in which he said, “This is my body…This is my blood.”  He is with us in the Holy Spirit, who blows through our lives like the wind and is as close to us as our breath.

Today is the feast of All Saints, those holy people chosen by God, living and dead.  The saints who have gone before us trusted in those ineffable joys.  They trusted that there was a room ready for them, and they have now gone to those joys beyond description.  So, to all the Saints in Christ Church, Albertville, Jesus says to you: I am the Resurrection and the life.  Live the gift of this life and be not afraid.  Be not afraid of the little deaths, those disappointments and failures that would suck your faith, your hope, your love.  Trust that new life, new possibilities, and resurrection happen every day as they did for Saints Martha, Mary and Lazarus; for I am with you always.  There are ineffable joys that await you every day of this life, and in the life to come. Be not afraid to share them.