We celebrate All Saints Day each year on the Sunday closest to Nov 1. Elizabeth Johnson, theologian, writes, "This is the day when the church recalls the great tribe out of every nation and people, proclaims the following of Jesus according to the beatitudes, and allows the subversive memory of the friends of God and prophets of all ages and the hope of our communion with them to take center stage. This is a feast of the greatest solidarity, a fundamentally joyous day that takes note of historical suffering within the overarching theme of that the last word belongs to divine love."
Today, as we began our worship, we recalled the great tribe out of every nation. We named those who have walked this path before us, and those who walk this path with us, as we look toward those who will walk this path after we have gone. All Saints is a time when all time comes together in a single moment and we may enter the mystery of Christ particularly as a communion and a community of people who hold hands across time to witness to the ministry God calls us to.
All Saints is our day to find ourselves in the community that attests to the love that wins. It is not to find ourselves wanting because we aren't good enough or perfect enough. All Saints is our day to experience the awesomeness of those who walked this path before us, and to count ourselves as part of that great cloud of witnesses. It is an opportunity to call on this cloud of witnesses, Abraham and Aquinas, Madeleine and Marion, Perpetua and Felicity, Martin Luther King and Oscar Romero, as people who show us the way of fearless love, mercy, and compassion.
We celebrate all saints because death does not have the final word. In a culture where the greatest fear is the fear of dying, death does not win, Love wins. The work that Jesus did on the cross, and continues to do and will continue to do, wins. Rick and I saw Gravity last night. I wondered aloud about what would motivate anyone to go into space like that. But I answered my own question. No one gets out of this life alive. And the astronaut's answer was to live fully and completely without fear while you have still have life. And besides the amazing cinematography, the story is really about living without fear.
This cloud of witnesses that stand with us this day, show us how to live without fear, and die with love. They show us how to love ourselves, and to love others. They show us that love has the final word. Today we baptize Kiara Ann Wolber into this community of saints, this cloud of witnesses, this collection of people who will love her and raise her up as the child of God that she is. Today, she is marked as God's own. Amen.
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