Missionary Zeal, 2018 Style

Sermon for the Feast of St. Andrew, transferred
Matthew 4:18-22; John 1:35-42; John 12:20-22
Nov. 25, 2018

A year ago, as we gathered to celebrate our patron saint, when we pulled into the parking lot, we saw a construction site across the street.  Over the next few months, we watched as a new structure rose out of the dirt and snow, the outward and visible sign of what we’d been talking about since our centennial in 2013 – Gather & Grow, an initiative to reach the people around us in new ways.  You generous people gave $3.6 million to help make that vision real, creating what our treasurer likes to call our “bright, shiny new toy” across the street. 

HJ's Dedication, April 15, 2018

In April, the building was done, and Greg Bentz and I ate our last Burger King breakfast sandwiches with the contractors and architect, after months of biweekly meetings in a cold trailer.  Then, on Sunday, April 15, we all gathered in the snow on the front porch of the new HJ’s to bless the building and open its doors for ministry.

April, May, and June were busy months.  We hired a new staff member, Zach Beall, to be our coordinator of HJ’s and community connection.  We promoted another staff member, Colleen Simon, to be our engagement coordinator.  We promoted Jean Long to build ministry with children, youth, families, and younger adults.  And we called Fr. Jeff Stevenson to help us build pastoral care and one-on-one connection.

But here’s what we didn’t know:  How would you respond to all this?  How would people in the community respond to all this?  We’d been talking for years about being “church” in new ways, being more intentional about reaching out and inviting folks in.  But we didn’t really know what would happen once the shiny new toy and the shiny new staff members were there.

I’ll come back to that in a minute.  First, I want us to remember the model we’ve been following as we’ve walked down this road of gathering and growing. 

No surprise – it starts with Jesus.  In the reading this morning from Matthew, we heard Jesus cast his vision as he sees Andrew and Peter casting their nets.  They were fisherman, small-business men out there earning a living.  But Jesus holds up their daily life before them and helps them see it in a new light.  Don’t just look for fish, he says.  Instead, fish for people.  You have it within you to reach people in ways you haven’t even thought about yet.

In John’s Gospel, we get a different version of Andrew’s call to follow Jesus.  In that story, the call is much more subtle.  Andrew is a follower of John the Baptist initially, and he hears John say, “Look, there’s the Lamb of God,” the one who comes to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29).  So, Andrew goes off after Jesus, and they spend the day talking.  That’s all it took.  Andrew’s heart tells him to share his excitement with someone he loves – his brother, Peter – and he says to Peter, “We have found the Messiah!” (John 1:41).  Come, and see.  Andrew’s invitation to Peter wasn’t complicated or scripted or awkward.  Andrew didn’t have all the answers to the questions Peter no doubt asked.  Andrew simply wanted to share the fact that he’d found the presence of God through a conversation with this amazing new friend – and he wanted Peter to find it, too.

Later in John’s Gospel, we get a couple more Andrew stories.  I think it’s significant what these stories don’t illustrate.  Andrew doesn’t pronounce deep theological insights.  He doesn’t heal anybody.  He doesn’t preach to large crowds. Instead, Andrew takes individuals seriously, even if he doesn’t know exactly how his actions will play out. 

For example, just after Palm Sunday, as Jesus is riding high, some outsiders come and want to meet him.  Now, these are people who don’t belong – described as “Greeks” in the story (John 12:20-22), they aren’t the folks people think Jesus has come to save.  He’s the King of the Jews, right?  He’s there to gather God’s people, the people of Israel – not the foreigners, not the outsiders, not the folks who don’t belong in church.  So, one of the other disciples brings the curious outsiders up the chain of command, to Andrew, and asks him what to do with them. 

Remember, Jesus is at the pinnacle of his popularity.  He’s just raised Lazarus from the dead and ridden into Jerusalem backed by a big crowd.  Andrew could have been polite and said to the outsiders, “It’s so nice to see you.  Please come back during office hours, and we’ll see if someone can help you then.”  But without hesitating, Andrew simply brings the outsiders to see Jesus.  Why?  Because he’s been there.  Twelve chapters earlier, Andrew was the one who was searching, lost and looking for direction.  He knows that what these outsiders need is for someone to take them seriously enough to open a door to a relationship.  So, he takes them to Jesus and changes their lives.

As we celebrate St. Andrew’s Sunday this year, we’ve got a bright, shiny new toy across the street.  We’ve got a bright, shiny set of improvements on this side of the street, too, after last year’s water damage – new floors, new lights, a renovated children’s chapel, a renovated undercroft, new drainage on the roof, all kinds of improvements.  It would be possible to pat ourselves on the back, and give thanks for the money that you generous souls have offered, and enjoy great parties in our new building, and carry on with church the way we’ve always known it. 

But this is Andrew’s church, a place where his heart is honored.  This is a place where you find something maybe unexpected in a church that folks used to call “the country club at prayer.”  Sometime, walk by the plaque on the wall just to my left, off to the side of the pulpit, and you’ll see it.

From 1956 to 1958, St. Andrew’s planted a new congregation in Red Bridge, a growing neighborhood in south Kansas City.  If you’ve been there, you can’t miss the connection; the building looks like a shrunken version of this one.  In that day, under the leadership of Dr. Earle Jewell, St. Andrew’s was thriving, the third largest Episcopal congregation in the country; and in that day, what thriving churches did was to plant new versions of themselves in new locations.  So that’s what this congregation did, planting what came to be called St. Peter’s church – because Andrew brought his brother with him to let Jesus change his life.  In thankful remembrance of that, the people of St. Peter’s put up a plaque here on our wall, honoring the people of St. Andrew’s for giving them a church home.  But the plaque recognizes more than that.  The plaque names the spiritual gift they saw in the people here – “missionary zeal.”

Today, missionary zeal doesn’t have to look like building a smaller version of us in some new neighborhood.  For us, the spiritual descendants of St. Andrew in a new day – when people don’t trust the institutional church very much, and when church buildings are being turned into restaurants, and when our sister congregations in our diocese are struggling to afford part-time clergy – for us, in a new day, missionary zeal happens in our own backyard.

Last Friday and Saturday, in our shiny new toy across the street, one of the most venerable of our parish groups, the Trinity Guild, put on the Trinity Antique Treasures Sale, a two-day event featuring antique dealers from five states, a pop-up Simply Divine Gift Shop, and wonderful sandwiches.  The event was a risk, honestly.  Trinity Guild hadn’t done that sort of thing before.  But – led by Joey Straube, Jinny Alexander, Cindy Roth, Joanna Martin, and Donna Adam – the members filled the building with antiques, and showed up to provide a warm welcome, and opened the doors … and waited to see what would happen.

Here’s what happened.  More than 400 people came through those doors last Friday and Saturday.  Trinity Guild members had a great time seeing friends and welcoming guests.  But here’s the thing:  They didn’t stop with simply being polite.  They found the outsiders, and they brought them to see Jesus.

I want to share an email I received from a St. Andrew’s member who was there and who has a keen eye for noticing the kingdom of God:  “I was helping at the welcoming table,” she wrote, “and several people came in who had no idea what was happening.  It gave us an opportunity to share the St. Andrew’s story.  One particular woman came in and asked questions.  She said, ‘I’m Catholic, but may I still take Communion at your church?  And can I bring my 24-year-old granddaughters?  And what would they find here?’  It didn’t take long for us to tell her about everything going on, including the young adults’ group.”  This interaction, and the Trinity Guild sale as a whole, was a master class in being the open-hearted community we are – creating the environment for connection, inviting people in, and bringing them to meet Jesus.  St. Andrew would be proud.

Now, it’s important to note that, on the quantitative side, God is doing wonderful things here.  Sunday attendance is up 9 percent so far in 2018.  Forty-five new households have joined the church so far this year.  Last month at HJ’s, in what wasn’t its busiest month, we had 21 meetings or events from outside groups, 14 meetings of St. Andrew’s groups, and 14 worship opportunities, including Morning Prayer three days a week and two community-oriented events combining worship and fellowship.  Thus far in 2018, bookings and other revenue from HJ’s has totaled $37,000, and we conservatively project it at $50,000 for next year.  So, the quantitative side is good, and that matters.

But to me, and I think to St. Andrew, and I think to Jesus – the relational side matters even more.  At the end of the day, our success will be measured one heart at a time.  Whether it’s the ladies from Trinity Guild welcoming an outsider, or Fr. Jeff talking with someone after Morning Prayer, or an inactive member coming back to coordinate projects at HJ’s, or a person who can’t afford wi-fi coming in for coffee and the chance to fill out job applications, or neighbors coming for worship that’s as much about brats and beer as it is about Scripture and prayer, or people coming for twice as many recovery groups as we used to host – all this is part of what church looks like now. 

This new reality is not replacing our beautiful experience here each Sunday morning; it’s coming into being alongside it.  All this, together, is church; because on both sides of the street, through all kinds of ministry, it boils down to the old saying: that church is one beggar showing another beggar where to go to find bread.  That’s missionary zeal, St. Andrew’s style – taking each individual seriously enough to say, “Hey, come with me, and let’s go find Jesus, together.”

Building the Muscles of Trust

Sermon from Sunday, Nov. 18, 2018
Mark 13:1-8

These are scary times – times when many of us feel on edge, waiting for the next shoe to drop.  Every week, it seems, what comes through social media or the news is word of shootings, and fires, and contested elections, and incivility, and mistrust, and dysfunctional government, and, and, and…. 

In the fear and anxiety, sometimes it’s hard to believe that God is in control.  We say we believe that, as we offer the Nicene Creed every Sunday, proclaiming our faith in God the “maker of heaven and earth,” the God who promises us “the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”  How do we reconcile God’s sovereignty and God’s promise of new life with each frightful failure or tragedy we see?

Well, if you think things are bad now … let me take you back to a much scarier time – the years 66 to 70 AD.  The Jewish population of Jerusalem had risen in revolt against their Roman rulers.  After some initial success, things went from bad to much worse.  The Romans weren’t known for coddling rebels, and they answered the revolt with massacre and destruction.  The ancient historian Josephus wrote of fires raging, and blood running in the streets, and the Temple in Jerusalem being utterly destroyed.¹ 

It’s hard for us to imagine the weight of that loss for the Jewish people of the time.  If we watched some foreign power destroy the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, and the National Cathedral all at once, maybe that would come close.  The Temple symbolized everything the Jewish people trusted – God’s rule in their present lives, as well as the hope that, one day, the divine king would come as God’s viceroy on earth, ruling from the Temple in Jerusalem.  Instead, now the Temple was gone, and God’s people were slaughtered and dispersed – again.

It helps to know that context to get a sense of today’s Gospel reading.  We have to hear this story both as a memory of what Jesus taught his disciples and as a reflection on what Christians decades later were experiencing.  Scholars think the Gospel of Mark was written sometime between 70 and 80 AD – in which case, the Jewish Revolt would have colored everything they remembered and all the stories they’d been told about Jesus.  Once blood had run through the streets and the Temple had been flattened, Jesus’ words about the end times would have seemed incredibly pertinent.

So, what’s he saying here – both Jesus in the story’s own time, and the Jesus whom the Gospel writer remembers 40 years later?  Listen to it again:  “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come” (Mark 13:7).  What’s more, he told his followers they’d run up against false messiahs, political leaders concerned with their own agendas and power.  Don’t let them lead you astray, Jesus said; don’t look for a quick fix for the woes that will afflict you.  In fact, don’t expect the scary times to end quickly at all.  But hang in there, for “the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Mark 13:13). 

Despite the suffering, Jesus told his friends, God’s work will yet be finished.  For Christ will return in glory, scattering all the pretenders to the throne and gathering the faithful under God’s own rule.  Even though the darkness may seem overwhelming, darkness is not the story’s end – whether you’re seeing the smoke of Jerusalem in 70 AD or the smoke of Paradise, California, in 2018.  “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs,” Jesus said – and birth pangs bring new life.

Last week, Fr. Jeff preached about the power of small acts, the cascading effect they can have in helping to realize God’s kingdom and set the world to rights.  I believe in that with all my heart.  So, I want to take a step back from that truth about small acts and look at what impels them, because I think that’s where Jesus is taking us in this dark reading today.  In the face of wars and rumors of wars; in the face of one mass shooting after another; in the face of earthquakes and fires and devastation – what’s God asking of us, deep down?

Here’s what I believe is our foundation, the ground of all our difference-making in God’s world.  That foundation is trust – trust that this is, in fact, God’s world and that God’s not done with it yet.

Trust is not easy.  And it doesn’t just happen.  So, to build our trusting muscles, I want to encourage you to do something that may seem radical in our current climate of fear and loathing.  I want you to trust “out loud,” in how you live and what you say.  And here are two outward-and-visible ways to do that.

First, I’m asking you to make a commitment of some financial support for this parish family in the coming year.  Many of you have already done that – in fact, 155 of you, and thank you very much for it.  If you haven’t yet, I hope you’ll take one of the pledge cards in front of you and fill it out today.  You can put it in the plate as it goes by this morning; or take the card home, and give it some prayer, and bring it back next week, when we celebrate St. Andrew’s Sunday.  

So, now that I’ve mentioned pledging, I imagine that, for many of you, your brains have switched into prayerful consideration where to go for brunch or how many touchdowns Patrick Mahomes will rack up tomorrow night.  Preachers say the word “pledge,” and our defenses go right up.  I get that.  I’ve been there.

Before going to seminary, Ann and I were part of the Episcopal congregation in Blue Springs, and I can remember sitting in my car in the parking lot, mad at the church.  I’d gone to a meeting about how to get involved, and it had ended with a pitch for financial pledges.  I felt like they’d pulled a bait-and-switch, and I was steaming.  Ann and I were a young couple with two little kids, and I didn’t make very much as an editor.  And now, the church was telling me I was expected to pay what I saw as a regressive tax – 10 percent from everybody, no matter how much you earned.  Well, though I reveled in righteous indignation about the unfairness of it all, we did make a pledge, but certainly not 10 percent.  And because God has a biting sense of humor sometimes, I found myself helping to lead the pledge campaign the next fall.  Pesky deity.

Soon, Ann and the kids and I were off to seminary.  By the time we were sent to our first assignment, in Springfield, Missouri, Ann was very sick, and we were loaded with debt.  We worried a lot about how we were going to manage that debt on top of the rest of life with two kids.  But we also decided we needed to step into our fear about that deep uncertainty, and we needed to tithe – not just give consistently but work toward giving 10 percent of what I earned, which is what “tithe” means.  Honestly, that sounds more faithful than it was, because part of the decision came from realizing that I couldn’t very well stand up in front of that church and ask them to work toward a tithe if I wasn’t doing it myself.  But, hey, at least a sense of professional obligation got us started.  Now, tithing has become what we do – and not just us, certainly.  There are other faithful souls in these pews this morning who do the same thing.

Giving 10 percent is the biblical standard, what scripture’s witness to God’s heart asks us to do.  But for me, the power of tithing isn’t about meeting a biblical standard.  It’s about trusting God enough to head down the road of discipleship when I can’t even see around the next corner.  That pledge of ours is an outward and visible way to remind myself not to get shaken by whatever scares the living daylights out of me in the moment.  Pledging is an exercise to build the muscles of trust.  And it can start with literally any amount.  A dollar a month?  Go for it.  It’s the commitment that builds the trust.

So, I said I’d suggest two ways to trust God “out loud.”  Pledging is the first one, and here’s the second – one that involves prayer and proclamation.  Once this sermon finally ends, the next part of our worship is saying the Nicene Creed together.  But before we do, I want to confess a liturgical sin: When I say the Nicene Creed or the Apostles’ Creed and I’m not leading worship, I change a word from what’s printed in the Prayer Book.  We’re supposed to say, “We believe in God, the Father Almighty”; and “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ”; and “We believe in the Holy Spirit.”  But I don’t say “believe” anymore.  The verb I use instead is “trust.” I trust in one God, the Father, the Almighty; I trust in one Lord, Jesus Christ; I trust in the Holy Spirt, the Lord, the giver of life. 

To me, the word matters.  Think about it in terms of a human relationship.  If I believe that Ann loves me, that’s one thing – and a very good thing.  That knowledge brings me peace and comfort and meaning that I don’t get from any other part of my life.  But if I trust that Ann loves me, it takes me one step further.  It empowers me to act – to raise kids when I never thought I’d be any good at it; to uproot our life to go off to seminary; to come to this parish where I didn’t think I’d fit in; to do a job I never saw myself doing.  Knowing love is a comfort.  Trusting love changes your life, rewiring your heart and strengthening you to step out of the darkness and await the light to come.

So, in addition to filling out that pledge card in front of you, I invite you to join me in the liturgical sin of slightly rewriting the Nicene Creed.  In fact, there’s no time like the present.  As you’re able, please stand – and consider taking the risk to start rewiring your heart by changing just one, transformative word in our statement of faith:

We trust in one God,

the Father, the Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

We trust in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made,

of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven:

by the power of the Holy Spirit

he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,

and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;

he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again

in accordance with the Scriptures;

he ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,

and his kingdom will have no end.

We trust in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son, he is worshiped and glorified.

He has spoken through the Prophets.

We trust in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

1.       Flavius Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book VI, Chap. 5, Sect. 1.  Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2850/2850-h/2850-h.htm#link62HCH0005.  Accessed Nov. 15, 2018.

What Does a Saint's Life Look Like?

Sermon for All Saints' Sunday, Nov. 4, 2018
Isaiah 25:6-9; Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44

This morning, we celebrate All Saints’ Sunday, our annual remembrance of … well … quite a lot.  To me, if you cut to the chase about this holy day, here’s what we’re remembering: that in eternal life, there’s a lot more than meets the eye, both now and later – in this life, and when we die, and when we’re raised with Christ.  All Saints Sunday seems a good time to step back and at least glimpse the fullness of heavenly life – which is an impossible task, sort of like trying to take a picture of the Grand Canyon.  Once you’re far enough away to get the shot in view, you’re miles from the beauty of the detail you wanted to capture in the first place.

But even if we can’t take in eternal life all at once, I think it’s important to try.  And today is a good day for that work not just because it’s All Saints but because of what will happen here in a few minutes.  Three small people will come to this baptismal font – representing the living waters of creation, the cleansing waters that remove our sin, the liberating waters of the Red Sea through which the children of Israel passed from slavery to new life – three small people will come to this font and become followers of Jesus Christ. 

And when they do, they will, by definition, become saints.  That word comes from a Latin word meaning “set aside for holy use,” consecrated for holy commitment.  It doesn’t mean an all-star of the faith, though it includes the all-stars.  A saint is just someone set on God’s path, committed to doing his or her best to follow what Jesus asks us to believe and to do … which we can do only “with God’s help” (BCP 304-305).

So – for the families of those three small people, and all the rest of us pilgrims – we should know what we’ve signed on for, as saints.  What’s this path all about, especially the part we can’t yet see – what we typically call “heaven”?  When we say we hope to “go to heaven,” what does our faith tell us we might expect?

To guide us on the journey, I’d invite you to open your hymnal and take a look at that hymn we just sang – “For All the Saints,” number 287.¹  It’s a really long hymn, which is why we’re breaking it up into two sections this morning.  But it also captures nothing less than the Christian hope – not bad work for eight verses.

The first five verses talk about our experience of eternal life in the here and now.  You’ve heard me say this before, and I’ll say it again:  I believe eternal life falls into three stages, and you’re living in the first one now.  When we come to this font and join the company of saints, we start living forever.  As Jesus says in the verses just before today’s Gospel story about raising Lazarus, when Martha confronts him about not showing up and letting her brother die, Jesus says to her, “I am the resurrection and the life” – present tense.  “Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25-26) – starting now.

So, these first five verses of “For All the Saints” tell us about the first stage of eternal life we’re in.  Verse 2 names trust in God as the saints’ foundation: “Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might.”  And it names Christ as their leader in a life that’s often not easy, as we well know – he is the saints’ “Captain in the well-fought fight” and “in the darkness drear, their one true light.”  The third verse prays that we might follow the saints’ example in this life and “win, with them, the victor’s crown of gold.”  It’s good stuff, strengthening us for the reality that this first stage of eternal life is no picnic.  In fact, as verse 5 puts it, “the strife is fierce, the warfare long.”  As every saint knows, deep down, eternal life is not for the faint of heart but for those “whose hearts are brave and arms are strong.”

Then, in the next three verses, the hymn teaches us truth that we often get flat wrong about what happens when we die.  We like to say we’re looking toward “life after death,” and that’s certainly true – but it’s also incomplete.  And this hymn helps us get it right.

If our life now is stage 1 of eternal life, stage 2 comes when we die.  At that point, we enter into what the tradition calls “paradise,” a time or state of perfect rest, complete healing, and surprising joy as we drink in God’s presence up close and personal.  It’s what Jesus promised to the thief dying at his side when he said, “This day, you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).  In “For All the Saints,” paradise comes in verse 6:

The golden evening brightens in the west;

Soon, soon to faithful warriors cometh rest;

Sweet is the calm of paradise the blest.

And in our church building, we can see stage 2 of eternal life in the amazing window here in the columbarium.  The angel welcomes us into a garden of unimaginable beauty and bids us to “let the peace of God rule in your hearts, and be ye thankful.”  Absolutely.  There are days when I can hardly wait.

But the amazing thing is, stage 2 isn’t the end.  As the theologian N.T. Wright puts it, we still have ahead of us “life after life after death.”²  We still have an entirely new creation to witness and inhabit.  This is what the last two verses of the hymn are about.  It’s the promise foreshadowed by Jesus raising Lazarus.  It’s what Jesus meant when he talked about his second coming.  It’s what’s going on in that stunning reading we heard from Revelation.  It’s the end of the story that’s actually the beginning, again. 

In God’s good time, “there breaks a yet more glorious day,” as verse 7 of the hymn says, when “the saints triumphant rise in bright array.”  The Revelation reading describes it like this:  God speaks the divine Word, just like in Genesis, and unites heaven and earth again, making all creation new (21:3-5).

That new creation includes us.  And it includes the lives we live.  In stage 3 of eternal life, we saints come into the fullness of what God intended for us “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1), with humankind truly, finally reflecting the image and likeness of God.  In the big picture, the last verse of the hymn tells us, that looks like “the countless host” coming “from earth’s wide bounds and ocean’s farthest coast,” streaming through gates of pearl and praising “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” 

But for each of us individual saints – then what?  If all creation is made new, if “mourning and crying and pain will be no more” and if “the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4), what might that look like in terms of what I do when I get up in the morning?  What’s the life and the work of a saint eternally?

It won’t surprise you to hear me say it in one word:  Relationship.  I don’t know, precisely, how that will play out, but we get glimpses of it all through Scripture.  It’s no accident that the next scene with Jesus in John’s Gospel, after what we heard this morning, is a sumptuous dinner he shares with his closest friends – Mary, and Martha, and the disciples, and Lazarus, the no-longer-dead man.  Isaiah describes this life of eternal connection as “a feast of rich food, … a feast of well-aged wines strained clear” (25:6).  Revelation describes it as the “marriage supper of the Lamb” (19:9).  In eternal life, I think we celebrate together, healed – in peace, in joy, in love.

But you know, along with the party, I think there will be work to do.  I wouldn’t presume to know what that might look like, but love doesn’t just happen.  Love takes effort.  Relationships take work to build – especially those we’ve managed to break in this first stage of eternal life.  Plus, there will be an eternity of new relationships to build, as we “seek and serve Christ in all persons,” loving our neighbor as ourselves (BCP 305).  There will be a kingdom of justice and peace to flesh out, in which every human being respects the dignity of every other human being (BCP 305). 

It’s a kingdom we know even now, in our best moments.  It’s the kingdom we know even now, when we love and serve one another.  It’s the kingdom we know even now, when we comfort those who mourn, and feed those who hunger, and lift the lives of the oppressed, and show mercy to those who’ve harmed us, and make peace with those we oppose, and endure persecution for the choices we make, and live pure in heart (Matthew 5:3-11).  That’s the kingdom we pledge to build when we come through those baptismal waters and step into our own sainthood.  That’s the kingdom of heaven – our kingdom – now and forever.

1.       This look at “For All the Saints” is taken from Wright, N.T.  Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.  New York: HarperCollins, 2008. 22-23.

2.       Wright, 169.