Saturday, November 25, 2017

'Thy WIll Be Done' ... but by Whom?

Sermon for All Saints' Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017
Revelation 7:9-17; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

Today, we’re marking All Saints’ Sunday – a time we celebrate the countless faithful people who’ve loved God and loved their neighbors in this first chapter of eternal life.  A little later, we’ll remember those we’ve buried from St. Andrew’s since last All Saints’ Sunday, giving thanks for the witness of their lives and rejoicing that those lives continue in God’s heavenly country.
And today, in what may seem like an odd juxtaposition, we also celebrate the sacrament of baptism, welcoming a new child of God into the family, Ella Rose Mitchell.  It’s not just the circle of life we’re remembering with this.  The deeper, and deeply unlikely, truth is this:  As baptized people, you and I share the same call as the saints who’ve gone before, as well as the same promise of eternal blessing.  This day is about all the saints – including the one sitting next to you and the one you see in the mirror. 
That reality may be hard to accept.  But the Feast of All Saints is here to tell us the truth that our lives are more than what we see, day to day.  We got a beautiful glimpse of that reality from our readings this morning – the end game, what our faith and practice as followers of Jesus is leading us toward.  In this life, what saints experience can feel like dubious blessing – being broken in spirit, hungering for righteousness, practicing mercy, being pure in heart, struggling to make peace, even enduring others’ ridicule and disdain.  But that dubious blessedness will come to its fullness in a future chapter of eternal life, when we “hunger no more and thirst no more” as God guides us to “springs of the water of life” and “wipe[s] away every tear from our eyes” (Revelation 7:16-17).  We are ever walking a bridge between who we are and who we will be, in the fullness of God’s time – and in so doing, we have the opportunity, as saints, to evoke heaven among us and point others toward it. 
Every Sunday, even every day for many of us, we offer a prayer whose implications ought to make us stop short:  We pray, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  It’s a beautiful petition, but I wish the Gospel writers had used active voice in remembering Jesus’ words in the second clause.  “Thy will be done” … OK, by whom?  Who is it we’re imagining doing God’s will to bring about the kingdom, God’s beloved community, here on earth as it is in heaven?  Now it’s time to look in the mirror once again, because the answer will be staring you in the face. 
So, how do we saints do that?  What is God’s will, and what does it look like for us to do it on earth, as it is in heaven?
Of course, the promises of the baptismal covenant flesh out our call, and we’ll renew that covenant again this morning.  But what ties those promises together?  What’s the bottom line?  Well, it’s the Great Commandment, of course – to love God with all our heart and soul and mind strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  But given the way we use the word “love,” we can quickly hear that as a command to feel a certain way about God and our neighbors.  That’s not it.  Maybe it’s just my bias, but I don’t think God is nearly as interested in how we feel as in what we do.  Loving God and neighbor is about building relationships.  That’s the work of a saint, including the one you see in the mirror.
So, I want to tell you about some saintly relationship-building that’s happening around here.  You can see it in the work of our Vestry leaders, staff, and clergy.  You saw an example last week, as the Endowment Commission sponsored coffee hour and invited you to join the Legacy Society – just one of many commissions and groups setting up shop in the Jewell Room to help you to get involved.  Staff and parishioners have been reaching out to parents of our youth to invite them into the fun of youth ministry.  Deacon Bruce, Elaine Crider and I did a series of trainings for lay pastoral-care givers, to get more of us actively into the work of loving one another.  Mtr. Ezgi is inviting younger adults and parents into Bible study, or a young-adults group, or gatherings for recently married couples and baptismal parents.  We’ve brought back Holy Happy Hour, as well as the Happy Hour Concerts. 
And soon, you’ll receive an invitation to take a parish survey.  Part of that effort is about keeping the database as clean and useful as possible.  But many of the questions ask you to share feedback and think about how you might like to get engaged in something fun and meaningful.  I hope that, from the information we get back, we can put together several groups of people with similar interests and affiliations – dinner groups, or movie groups, or book groups, or (our collective personal favorite) wine-tasting groups.  The point is to help us do the work of saints, which is building relationships.
You can also see St. Andrew’s saints building relationships through the service they offer.  I am deeply tempted to start calling out specific people, but I also know I’d leave out more saints than I could name.  But just a few collective examples:  How about the ladies of Simply Divine?  As you know, Simply Divine will be closing soon; the last hurrah (and final sale) is next weekend.  In the shop’s decades-long run, the Simply Divine ladies have created a fun and welcoming space for parishioners to come together, and they’ve strengthened many community ministries with thousands of dollars in grants each year.  And all of that came from the hearts and hands of ladies who’ve been willing to give of themselves for the kingdom’s work, and I appreciate them very much.  Here’s another example: the choir, who offered that amazing Bach Cantata last weekend.  You can’t imagine the hours of service they give to help us grow closer to God, but they also build community together as they do it. How about the members of the Outreach Commission and the parishioners who come out to throw parties for moms and kids at Rose Brooks, or work with kids at local schools, or provide warm clothes for hundreds of people at the Free Store, or build relationships with our partners in Haiti?  All of that is kingdom work, building beloved community among our own family and with the world.
And then, there are the dollars that help make relationship-building possible.  Coming together for worship takes lights and heat and bulletins, not to mention Saint Robert Tillman and Saint Mary Sanders, here nearly every Sunday to meet your needs.  In addition, hosting book studies and prayer groups and meetings and community organizations takes a building that keeps the heat in and the water out.  You all know it takes dollars to fund the people and the infrastructure for ministry here.  And I want to tell you about the giving of a few saints whose examples inspire me.
I know staff members who give to the church that pays them, because they believe in the work we’re doing and because they love the people who are doing it.
I know one parishioner who began this year offering a generous pledge, more than mine, certainly.  For next year, it’s quadrupled.  The church has made a difference in this person’s life, and now this person will make a huge difference in our ability to bring more people together.
And I want to share with you something about our Vestry members.  This year, every Vestry member had a pledge turned in within the first couple of weeks of the pledge campaign.  That’s servant leadership – and it doesn’t stop there.  I asked the Vestry members if they would let me know whether they practiced tithing, giving 10 percent of their income toward God’s work in the world.  Five Vestry members are at or beyond that point in enabling God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. 
You don’t have to be there yet.  Not many of us are, honestly, but that’s OK.  It starts with making a pledge.
Actually, I guess there’s a step even before that:  Walk into the Narthex after worship today and simply let someone take a quick Polaroid shot of you to put up on the door to the parking lot.  That door is a growing icon of the company of saints in this place, the household of God into which we enter in baptism, the family of God we know as St. Andrew’s.  As our reading this morning puts it, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are” (1 John 3:1). From our newest saint this morning, little Ella Rose, to those of you who’ve been here across the decades, we are God’s family in this place, trying to do the will of our heavenly parent, which is to love, with flesh and bones on it.  We are St. Andrew’s, and we are here to build relationships, one saint at a time.  And as the Feast of All Saints reminds us, every saint matters.  There is no “us” without you.

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