Homily
by The Rev. Marcia McRae
St.
Francis Episcopal Church, Goldsboro, NC; All Saints Sunday, 5 Nov.
2017
Year
A RCL: Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm
34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12
Jesus
says:
“Blessed are those who mourn,
for
they will be comforted.”
As
we celebrate All Saints Sunday, we may mourn special people in our
lives who have died. A tug of sadness & sense of loss can arise
unexpectedly, even years after the death.
Yet
we can celebrate with joy & wonder God's great love for us, which
guides us by the gift of the Holy Spirit, & we get a taste of at
this Holy Table, & we see in many ways, including as Jesus dies
for us on the cross.
As
the
meek,
we are not
doormats who let ourselves be abused. We are like our Lord Jesus, who
shows us how to be gentle & humble &
strong
enough to follow God’s law of love. We soften “what is rigid
inside” which would resist God’s will, as
Neil Douglas-Klotz says in Prayers
of the Cosmos.1
Hungering
&
thirsting for righteousness,
we long for the harmony God intends for all God’s creation.2 We resist the unnatural state of the world – its injustices...3
Jesus’
words at the end of the Beatitudes give
us a reality check of our life as children of God: Being among the
blessed family who know Jesus as Lord & Savior does not
give us a life of ease.
We can
expect difficulty
& discouragement,4
which
can
remind
us we are
in process, on a journey with God & our family of brothers &
sisters in Christ.
As
we hear in our lesson from 1st John: “Beloved, we are
God's children now. What we will
be has not yet been revealed.” When it
is
revealed, we will see
with joy & wonder.
Like
John's words & Jesus' words, our lesson from Revelation offers us
hope & comfort: The Lamb will be our shepherd & will guide us
to the water of life.
Even
in the face of loss & mourning, today we celebrate with joy &
wonder God’s family in which we are
children [whatever our age]. Our family extends throughout the world, throughout time &
includes saints on earth & saints in heaven.
We
remember those who have gone before us: saints we have known &
saints we haven't known, including capital letter Saints, such as our
patron Francis. [We can learn
about them in many books.]
Among
the newest saints in heaven I didn't know is the nephew of a friend &
former colleague. This young, hard-working, diligent man, [the
age of my son], was a loving husband & father of 2 young
children. He was murdered Nov. 1st by a shotgun blast in
an incomprehensible road rage incident when the young shooter ran a
stop sign & slightly
damaged the deceased man’s car.
As my
friend says: we know God is with us always, yet we grieve.
Beloved
Brothers & Sisters, the pain of loss we feel is real. Notice our Gospel says: mourners
will be comforted.
One
author notes: in Jesus' day the death of a loved one could bring
serious life challenges to a widow or an orphan; to lose a
bread-winner son “could easily mean starving & becoming
homeless...”5
The
Beatitudes remind us God is in charge despite life's challenges, &
God gives us resources, within ourselves, within the human family &
within all God's creation.
We
can learn how we
can be blessings when life gets tough for our brothers & sisters
AND for ourselves.
One
author says we can learn
from geese, which
“best
represent the communion of saints.”6
The
author says: Geese depend on each other & work together. Although the lead goose
works the most, when it's tired it goes to the back & another
goose leads.
“To
be able to rely on others is a deep trust that does not come easily.7
“The
geese fly in the wake of one another's wings. They literally get a
lift from [each other]...”8
[I have seen you lift each other through the hard work of preparation & presentation of our annual 2-day fund-raiser, Christmas in the Forest, which ended yesterday.]
Notice
how we fly together
in this Body of Christ.
Bibliography
Brussat, Frederic and Mary
Ann. Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in
Everyday Life.
New York: A Touchstone Book. Simon & Schuster. 1998.
Douglas-Klotz, Neil. Prayers
of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’s
Words. New York: HarperOne. 1990.
Harper’s Bible
Commentary. General Ed.: James. L. Mays. San
Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988.
Holy Bible with the
Apocrypha. New Revised Standard Version. New
York: Oxford University Press. 1989.
Jewish Study Bible:
Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation.
New York: Oxford University Press. 2004.
New American Bible for
Catholics. South Bend, IN: Greenlawn Press.
1970.
New Oxford Annotated
Bible with the Apocrypha. Eds.: Herbert G.
May, Bruce M. Metzger. New York: Oxford University Press,
Incorporated, 1977.
Ruden,
Sarah. The
Face of Water: A Translatior on Beauty & Meaning in the Bible,
New York: Pantheon Books. 2017.
2
Ibid. Pp. 56-57.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid. P. 74.
6
Brussat, Frederic & Mary Ann. Spiritual
Literacy.
P. 174 quoting Gunilla Norris' “Journeying in Place”.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
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