All Saints 2021

 We are gathered here today to celebrate the lives of our dearly departed and to give thanks to God for them.  These are strange times.  We cannot follow our usual patterns and rituals for surrounding someone who is sick and dying and their family.  We haven’t been able to pray and sing them into the arms of Jesus.  We haven’t been able to bring food to the family.  We haven’t been able to even hug, comfort someone, hold them in our arms in their grief, in our grief.  We haven’t been able to gather and sing their favorite songs and tell stories that make us laugh.  We haven’t been able to gather with others who loved them and consider together the meaning of their life, the meaning of their death, and what their legacy is, their lasting impact on all of us.  Furthermore, many more people have died than usual as Covid-19 takes from us friends and family members, younger people, mothers and fathers, siblings, even sons and daughters.  And others have died of other causes waiting for hospital beds.  Sometimes it feels like too much to bear.  We have waited to mourn them to celebrate them, hoping around each corner it will be safe enough to do so, and not finding that opening or feeling like that ship has sailed and people have moved on.

                Today we have a vision from Revelation of what will be.  There will be no more crying or pain.  Death will be no more.  Heaven will come to earth and make all things new.  This is the trajectory that God is moving toward.  This of course is not the reality we live in now.  This vision is meant to give us hope and carry us through these difficult days as it did for the early Christians, persecuted, arrested, and martyred. 

The reading from Isaiah this morning is a similar vision.  The shroud that is cast over all people will be destroyed by God and all people will feast together on rich food.  God will swallow up death forever.  Here, death refers to physical death, but it also refers to slavery, to exile, to war and separation.  This shroud has to do with hunger, disease, and selfishness.  God is promising abundant life and not just to some.  All people will feast.  All people will be God’s people.  Every last one of us is included in this vision, this promise that God offers to give us hope to get through our time of sorrow and difficulty.

Our Gospel today is John’s version of the Garden of Gethsemane.  Jesus is weeping here as in the garden.  Jesus’ disciples and friends aren’t getting it in this Gospel as well as in the garden.  Jesus foreshadows in this Gospel story, his own death and resurrection with the tomb and the stone and the three days and with the strips of cloth and the women gathered there and finally with the raising of Lazarus.  This is the last straw, Jesus’ last act which so upsets the religious authorities that become united in their mission to have Jesus arrested and do away with him.  If Jesus can raise the dead, he is a threat to every other power that exists.  If death has no power anymore, then the authorities know people will stop following them and start following Jesus and people will be emboldened to fight the existing power structures that make these priests rich and powerful.  If Jesus’ followers aren’t afraid to die, who knows what they might do to change the world into one more hospitable to undesirable people and less hospitable to comfortable people like themselves.  This story leads directly to Jesus death.

There is a lot of emotion in this story and in all our readings today.  Every one of our readings today has weeping.  In the Gospel there is a lot of weeping.  Mary weeps.  Jesus weeps.  The crowd weeps.  Jesus is greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.  This translation glosses over the original language that actually says that Jesus is angry here.  Maybe we gloss over it because we don’t like to think of Jesus being angry, or maybe it’s because we’re not sure why he’s angry.  Maybe he’s angry because he’s accused and blamed for not coming in time or using his power the way people think he should.  Maybe he’s angry at death itself.  The truth is that anger is part of grief.  Maybe we feel anger that our loved one didn’t take better care of him or herself or that a caregiver didn’t do all they could.  Maybe we feel anger that people spread misinformation about Covid-19 or exposed our loved one.  Maybe we feel anger directed ourselves—something we wish we had done but we didn’t or couldn’t.  Anger is a perfectly reasonable emotion to feel.  It gives us information about what we see as most important and how we want the world to be different.  Anger can motivate to do things differently and change ourselves or systems around us that don’t serve as they should.  However you are feeling today, sad, angry, joyful, numb, confused, that’s all normal.  God is with us in all our emotions.

Our friends and family members have died.  We might be asking Jesus where he was and why he didn’t do something about it.  Some of us might be angry at God.  God can take our anger and our questions.  But what we find today is Jesus who is right there with us in our anger and our blaming.  We find Jesus weeping with us in our sorrow.  We find Jesus raising us to eternal abundant life. 

I didn’t know any of the Trinity people that we celebrate today.  I do however come to know them through you.  We all get to enjoy what they built and left behind in their ministry and service here, which I imagine would make them happy.  I hope you will continue to tell me about them and continue sharing their story.  They live on in the effect they have had on you and others and those effects continue to be felt.  I give thanks to God for their life and work here at Trinity and in our world.

We find Jesus today opening the tomb.  There are all kinds of tombs we lock away our fears, our secrets, things that are decaying, things that stink, things we are ashamed of.  But Jesus isn’t afraid to roll away the stone and expose all that we hide to the light of day.  The people we loved were not perfect.  Trinity is not perfect.  We all have flaws and things we’d rather hide.  But Jesus encourages us to roll away the stone, expose the emotions, stories, and shame to the light of God’s love and forgiveness and find peace.

The other place we find peace is in community.  At the beginning of the Gospel, all the people are scattered, but when Jesus comes to Bethany, Martha can air her grievance and irritation with Jesus’ timing, and people can gather there and console each other.  Whether we come together in person or over the amazing technology we have, we can share stories, express our varied emotions, and find comfort and peace and ways to use our anger and sadness to make changes to our neighborhoods and world.  Jesus calls us to new life, but it is the community that is commanded to unbind those who are emerging from the tomb.  Everyone in the story is bound, Lazarus in bands of cloth and in death, his sisters bound by their “if only”s, the authorities in their need to be in power.  Jesus comes to unbind us.  We also are bound.  We are bound in sin.  We are bound in prejudice.  We are bound in our own expectations.  We are bound by the idols we worship.  Jesus calls us each and every one out of death into new life, but it is the community that unbinds us, lets go of expectations, receives us back, interacts with us in forgiveness and hope, and works together with us to build the Kingdom.  Jesus speaks Lazarus’ name in the Gospel today.  We speak the names of our loved ones who have died.  That is part of our unbinding to hear their names and know that God has called them by name to the other side.

When I think of Lazarus stepping into the light, I think it must be like when our loved ones entered their eternal rest.  I imagine them stepping from a cold, dim tomb into blazing sun and warmth and peace.  I imagine them a little confused at first, but then the realization dawns on them that they have life, they have forgiveness, they joy, and that they are home.