The Rev. Carol Wedell
November 1, 2009

Today is All Saints' Day - a day that is a bit foreign to those of us who grew up Protestant.  Candidly, I don't remember learning much, if anything about it even in seminary.  We know of St. Patrick and St. Francis - or at least we've heard of them.  So why are we, good Presbyterians that we are, interested in All Saints' Day?

Because celebrating All Saints' Day is an ancient tradition and is not owned by any one branch of Christianity.  All we have to do is open the New Testament and see that the word "saint" is not merely about deceased individuals who have been canonized by the Pope!  Philippians begins, "To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons" and concludes, "Greet every saint in Christ Jesus.  The friends who are with me greet you.  All the saints greet you, especially those of the emperor's household." 

Simply put, saints are simply those people who choose to follow Jesus.  This doesn't mean we're perfect - far from it! We are just regular folks, trying to be faithful.  Today we celebrate saints both living and deceased, and the communion -the connection --we have with all of them. We remember and celebrate those people who have helped us follow Jesus, who have shown us in their lives what it means to be a disciple.

The story of the raising of Lazarus gives us an important insight into a part of what it means to be a saint, to follow Jesus.  Lazarus, a man whom Jesus loved has died.  And Jesus arrives too late to stop that from occurring.  The gospel writer makes sure that we know that Lazarus is really dead:  four days in the tomb, a nasty smell.  The reality of death is before them. Facing this reality, Jesus doesn't stand there like an outside observer, but weeps for his beloved friend.

The story doesn't end there. Jesus commands them to roll the stone in front of the tomb away and after praying, calls to Lazarus, "Come out!"  And out he comes.  But he is still wrapped in burial cloths. 

And here is where the saints, the followers of Jesus come in.  Jesus brings life, but there is a role for us to play.  "Unbind him and let him go."  The community of faith is to help people shed themselves of the trappings of death.  Jesus' followers were to take those binding grave clothes off of Lazarus and allow him the freedom of the new life to which Jesus has called him.  Lazarus can't do this for himself.  Like all of us, he is dependent upon others to do this for him. 

Saints, then, followers of Jesus have a critical role to play in helping to make the new life that Jesus brings a reality:   we are those who help people out of their grave clothes.  As we gather this All Saints' Day, we gather aware that there are those around us who may be wrapped in funeral clothing, those who may need our help.  Undoubtedly, we too are carrying around the vestiges of death.

What might some of us need to have unbound?  What keeps us locked into a life that is far from alive?  Perhaps the cloth of self-sufficiency, that denies a need for God or any one else.  Maybe we are trapped in a preoccupation with self, and eyes that are closed to the needs of others.  I suspect that many of us need a lot of help being unbound from excessive busyness so that we might take time to be quiet, to pray and to listen for God's leading.

Others may need to be freed of the load of self-imposed obligations, our ties to things that really aren't all that important, or our love for "things," so that we might experience those things which are essential, spiritual.  Some of us may need to have the cloth of apathy and ignorance pulled off our heads and hearts, that we might see with new eyes the plight of the poor. 

To be sure there are folks here this morning - perhaps sitting near by you, who need you to unbind them from hopelessness and skepticism, and to be reminded that we because we belong to God, we also belong to one another.  We are not alone.

How about worry ---as if any of our worrying actually did any good?  We need to be set free from the shackles of anxiety so that we might place ourselves in the love and care of God, who is with us no matter what, in life or in death.

And around every one of us, I believe, is a tight burial cloth of fear:  fear of the future, fear of the past, fear of what others think of us, fear of financial insecurity, fear of pain - emotional or physical and ultimately, fear of death, of the unknown, of that which we cannot control.

Life lived in fear - no matter which one, is a life that doesn't really belong to us.  Fear keeps us from loving because we can't bear the thought of rejection.  When we are afraid, we will not dance and laugh because we fear nobody will dance and laugh with us.  We won't dream, for fear that we'll be disappointed.  And friends, when churches are afraid, when they don't dream or reach out or let themselves be changed by the spirit of God among them, they die.

Yes, indeed, there is a role for the church to play:  we must help one another take off the cloths that keep us from the fullness of life Jesus longs to give us.  Playwright Eugene O'Neill wrote a play entitled, Lazarus Laughed, which picks up about where our scripture reading stopped.  It is a window, I believe into the kind of life God's saints are invited to live.

In O'Neill's play, a crowd has gathered at Lazarus' house in Bethany to hear the remarkable story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. The person who was telling the story said Lazarus emerged from the tomb and "began to laugh softly like a man in love with God?" Then Lazarus, in serene acceptance of all he saw around him, uttered his first word, "Yes!" As never before, Lazarus affirmed all he saw around him in a way he never had before.

Of course, after the first wave of emotion passed, the expected questions began to be asked. "Well, Lazarus, what was it like to die? What did you see? What did you experience?" Once again, Lazarus began to laugh the laughter of pure joy. Then Lazarus said, "There is only life. There is only laughter, the laughter of God. It soars to the heights; it resounds to the depths. There is no death, really. It is not what it looks like from this side. Death is not an abyss or entrance into nothingness or chaos or punishment. Death is a portal, a passageway into deeper and brighter life, eternal change, everlasting growth. That is what lies out ahead of us in death. We were born of the laughter of God and we move toward the laughter of God. There is only life.

"Therefore, we must learn to live, to celebrate, to love, to accept, to affirm. We must learn to participate in God's love of life-to feel about this existence of ours the way God feels when God looks at creation and God's own heart is filled with ecstasy. There is only life, my brothers and sisters. This is the challenge, not Death. The grave is not what you think. It is an empty space, a doorway into more, not less." (As told in Lectionary Homiletics, http://www.gooodpreacher.com/).

That's the life that Jesus invites us to:  more, not less.  Not life played safe, but life lived fully.  Not life with a list of "I wish I had" but rather, "Wasn't it wonderful when..."Life spent open and aware and engaged and connected.  Because to unbind one another we have to risk getting close, close enough so that people actually know us and connect with us.  The communion of saints!  Jesus calls us life unafraid of change, aware of each and every moment, filled with gratitude and love.

An online colleague of mine, Thom Shuman tells a wonderful story about his mother, a saint, I believe who embodied something of what that new life might look like.  He writes, 

My mother turned 89 last Friday, and how did she celebrate this special day?  She became a member of Facebook!  Yep, she joined that ubiquitous, perhaps insidious, social network that allows you to connect with long-lost friends, past neighbors, high school and  college classmates and become friends with folks all over the world.  And knowing my Mom, she will soon have more FB friends than I could ever hope for.

It really shouldn't surprise me that this is how my mother celebrated her birthday.  After all, she has always been trying out new things, learning new ways, meeting new people, discovering new places. When she remarried in her mid-50's, she took up golf, and became an addict.  She divides her baseball loyalties between the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Cubs, wearing out remotes switching from game to game.  She became adept at computer skills, surfing the Net like a 14-year-old. She was ordained an elder in the Presbyterian Church the same year I was ordained as a pastor.  A lifelong Anglophile, she headed over to  Britain in her 70's.

She is a constant reminder to me of the Biblical truth that when it comes to God's job description for being a child of God, there is no retirement age, no gold watch handed out, no rocking chair on the front porch.  God is always challenging folks, of whatever age, to go to new places, meet new folks, take on new challenges, learn new ways of being and doing, discovering that gift-seed that God planted so long ago and is now ready to blossom.

From Abe and Sarah leaving the retirement center in Haran to travel to Canaan, to Moses turning in his resignation to his  father-in-law to return to Egypt, to Hannah, Hosea, Deborah, Paul, Phoebe, Barnabas, John on Patmos, and down through all the centuries,

God keeps prodding us, nudging us, encouraging us, asking us to grow,  to blossom, to serve, to live as God's beloved children.  My mother is that living example of one who continues to step out in faith, in new and exciting ways.  But if she starts Twittering . . . (c) 2009  Thom M. Shuman

Saints of God can you imagine your life unbound - set free? Free to step out in faith, to take risks, to follow Jesus wherever that may take us?  Can you imagine this congregation (or the congregation to which you belong) as a place where we knew each other well enough to dare to begin the task of unbinding?

As we gather around the table this morning with all the saints of every time and place, we get a glimpse of what that life might be.  Presbyterian pastor and author, Cynthia Jarvis puts it this way, "The miracle is just this:  that united in Christ's death by his grace, you may awake from the death that is life without him and live unbound, now and eternally, to God's glory."  (Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol 4, p. 240).

May it be so for all of God's saints!