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The Gift of the SaintsNovember 05, 2006 All Saints Sunday A number of weeks ago I received an anonymous letter, portions of which read as follows: “I am writing to tell you how your church has made an impact on my life for the last seven years. I work not too far from the church, and would visit sometimes on my breaks or lunches. During the last seven years at this job, I have experienced some of the best times of my life such as meeting my husband to be, the birth of nieces and nephews…to some of my worst (my father’s heart attack, my grandmother dying, my mother-in-law’s breast cancer.) When I needed a safe place to think, pray, find hope, get space…I would go to your church and light a candle and look at the beautiful mosaics, or write names down on your prayer cards. “This might not seem out of the ordinary, but I am not a member of your church, or any church for that matter… I am not one for organized religion….but I do like churches…for their community aspect, their refuge, their being a gathering place for hope. I have found all those things at your church and now that I am moving on to a new chapter in my life, I wanted to say thank you and would like this anonymous donation to please be put towards candles, please….as I am sure over my time here I have lit nearly 100… “Thank you to your church for being a place of happiness, hope and solace. My dear friend also found the road to your church when she moved to New York and she and I would discuss what a special place it is, from our two different worlds, perspectives, faiths. I told her I wanted to thank your church for years now and now that I will not be here much anymore since I am moving on to a new career, its time I did it. “So there it is – a nutshell snapshot of how your church has been an important place to me and I thank you for that. I hope this donation helps bring light into other lives….” Of course, this is as much your church as it is my church. Our anonymous friend could just as easily have addressed her letter to each of you who have joined our ranks. That’s one good reason to pass on the thank you. Periodically I receive this sort of correspondence and it’s useful for you to know that if you’re a contributing member here you minister in ways you hardly suspect. This points to how Christ Church serves as a true sanctuary for the city. That’s one of its ministries—its physical presence, open and hospitable, directing all who enter into a space of both spiritual depth and transcendence. Many of you know this for yourselves. We speak of this from time to time. But I did note a common misunderstanding in our anonymous friend’s logic. It comes when she claims she is no fan of organized religion but loves what our church does for her and evidently embodies. It’s a common occurrence, of course; I regularly hear a phrase like, “the problem with organized religion is…” You probably hear it as well, maybe even said it yourself at some point along the way in exasperation. One tongue-in-cheek rejoinder goes something like this, though: “Well, I suppose you prefer disorganized religion, then.” And indeed, we’d have to agree there’s plenty of that floating around in our culture; disorganized, superficial religion, or its more common moniker today, spirituality. Nevertheless, I understand the feeling in the complaint. I’ve said it more than once: there’s certainly bad religion in the world. And there are a lot of flawed individuals practicing what is essentially good religion. In fact, the only sort of people I know practicing good religion are flawed, which makes “organized religion” subject to the full range of human potentials. Much like an organized government, hospital, PTA, hedge fund, or basketball team. It occurs to me that the Al Queda terrorists had to be organized in order to pull off the World Trade Center bombing. Had they been disorganized, they would never have had the necessary disciplined precision. Still, that’s less a condemnation of organization than it is about what their organization was designed to deliver. In other words, it was the content of their devotion that was at fault. Just a couple of Sundays ago I mentioned that surely everyone has a religion whether or not they’re aware of it. It might be organized or disorganized, but there’s no question every person has a fundamental set of core operating principles that motivates their various activities and perceptions of how the world works. Everyone has their god or gods to whom they offer daily obeisance. Our anonymous friend has hers—this was implied within her thank you. No question she was susceptible to receiving what we offer here. I can say this because what we offer is embedded within these very walls and she deeply appreciated what the enclosure of these walls afforded her. And these walls reflect an astonishingly long trajectory of human history. The story of Moses up there holding the Ten Commandments over Javier and Juliana probably dates from around 1400 BCE. That’s nearly 3500 years ago. The rest of our tradition flows forward from that. You could say so-called organized religion in various forms has produced this space we now inhabit. And that forward flow is really the product of many, many individual persons—flawed though they be—passing on what they know to a new generation. We call what has been passed on wisdom, or truth, embedded within religious language, symbols and rituals. The wisdom speaks of mystery, that is, it speaks of things that are larger than our complete comprehension. Holy things, sacred things, things that matter most of all. Things like love, for instance. When I stop to deeply consider this, this flow of history and my place here, now, I’m quite taken with the size of it, with the sheer numbers of persons who are responsible for my standing here. The church has a word for these people. We call them saints. We call them this, not because of their perfection, because surely none of them were. But because of their faithfulness despite their imperfections. Because of their willingness to give themselves and what they knew to those who would follow them. You can see, even feel that, can’t you? You may see it most clearly when you consider one or two specific persons who are most responsible for your sitting here this morning—living or dead. Persons whose authentic love for you made you available, susceptible to the overtures of the God of love. Persons who gave you a language in which to make sense of the most important things. Persons who instigated faith, hope, and love—the things we treasure most in here. And even if your life was such that no one person comes to mind, you can still sense your spiritual forebears surrounding you, can you not, giving you this place as your own? At the end of the mysterious gospel lesson of the raising of Lazarus the very last phrase Jesus utters to the crowd after Lazarus has emerged from the tomb is this: “unbind him and let him go.” That’s what the saints do for us. They unbind us and set us free. In fact, that’s the work we all share, all the saints here gathered. When we’re at our best, that’s what we’re organized to do; we unbind one another. That’s because none of us is a truly independent operator despite our devotion to rugged individualism. We need others to help us find our true freedom. God knows we get on one another’s nerves in the process, we do it imperfectly, but the true end of our attempting to love one another is our freedom to live the love that brought us into existence. Jesus loved Lazarus into life. The saints set him free. So, we have a bit of work to do this morning. It’s the work of thanksgiving for the saints. I strongly encourage you to think about those you can name most responsible for unbinding you. Some of these might be sharing your pew this morning. Many others have long since died. The work entails holding them in your heart for a good long while, through the offering and into communion where they will join you for a bit of bread and wine. Take them out with you then, into the rest of your day. Let them accompany you. Speak with them and above all, thank God for life, for love and for the gift of the saints. Previous sermon: Leading the Way • Next sermon: For Now, All We Have is the Present Moment All past sermons |
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