November 1, 2009
All Saints’ Day
The Very Rev. Mark B. Pendleton
Christ Church Cathedral

All Saints’ -- All Things New

Timing was one my side this morning:  setting our clocks back one hour on the night after hundreds of trick-or-treaters arrived to our front door at the deanery -- giving me an extra hour to work on this, my first sermon in four months.   It is really good to be back among you after my time away on my sabbatical leave.  It was a truly rich and productive time, where I had the opportunity to disconnect for a while from the daily routine, to travel and see new places, to read, to pray, to teach myself how to bake bread and cook a few dishes, to study some of the poetry of Wallace Stevens.  I found bread baking far more satisfying than Mr. Stevens.   I am grateful for having had the time away and I feel energized and committed as I return to my work with you to build up and strengthen the many ministries of this cathedral. 

So today is a natural reentry day for me and a visible transition day for all of us due to the annual time change – falling back one hour.  Later today we will notice more clearly how the days are getting shorter and the nights longer. 

In ancient times, there was of course no need for daylight’s saving time or clocks for that matter. People awoke with the rising of the sun, and huddled in the darkness and slept as night shrouded the land.   The ancient Celts who lived in present-day Ireland and Britain celebrated their New Year’s on this day.   On the Eve of their New Year, they marked the waning of summer and the coming of winter by building great bonfires.   The fires were kindled as a way to beg the sun not to desert the people for the upcoming long, dark and cold winter.    This was also the time of the year when it was believed that the dead would return to the earth and walk among the living and visit their loved ones.    

These are many roots of the feast we celebrate today.   All Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween – which still carries an air of eeriness and other-worldliness – is followed by All Saints’.  Later in the day we will have a requiem Eucharist to commemorate All Soul’s Day – a time to hold up the memory all of all of the faithful departed.   There is a lot going on today.   But at its heart, this day is about remembering the vast and interconnected community of souls both living and dead that form and sustain us.  It is about exploring and entering and renewing and re-imaging a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and it is about seeing how God makes all things new. 

I’ve always found it interesting how deeply embedded the desire to remember past generations is in our collective spiritual D.N.A.  Cultures throughout history share this need and practice, forming bridges from the past, to the present and into the future.  

Remembering the dead, the fallen, the forgotten, the beloved, grounds our lives in memory and meaning.  I for one was heartened to see the pictures of the President this past week meeting the military transport plane at Dover Airforce base that carried the flag-draped coffins of those who were recently killed in Afghanistan.   This war, that will soon be our longest war in our nation’s history, is taking a terrible toll on the men and women who have been sent to fight and protect civilians and monitor elections, eradicate opium in this most impenetrable and unforgiving country.  To some it may have appeared a timely presidential photo-op, to others a long over due public gesture and reminder of the extreme and ultimate sacrifice that men and women in uniform are making around the world.
In mourning, remembering, and celebrating lives of saints, parents and friends we turn to words of scripture:  The Wisdom of Solomon speaks of the souls of the righteous as “beyond torment” and placed “in the hand of God” and “are at peace.”   How many of us have imagined heaven or eternity as a place when we will rest in the hands of God forever, where we’re whole again, and when, in the words of Job (19:26) we will see God for ourselves and not as a stranger.   A place where we are reunited in some way with those we have loved.   That is the abiding hope of our lives.
I think of the Rev. Robert Lowry’s beloved hymn “Shall We Gather at the River”, written in the midst of an epidemic in 1864 in New York, where he wondered if the faithful would indeed meet again.   Lowry’s deep faith imagined a river, where angel feet have trod, washing up with silver spray, where every burden would be laid down, when we will welcomed by a smiling Christ, where our pilgrimage would cease and our hearts will be happy.

His words have brought peace and comfort to many in times of loss and doubt: “Yes, we’ll gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river; Gather with the saints at the river, that flows by the throne of God. 

But lest we think All Saints’ and All Souls’ is limited to the past.  It is fully about today and tomorrow, about creation and renewal and newness.  As a sign of this newness we set apart his day for baptism. 
Today we baptize Austin, son of daughter of Carrie and Aaron Fisher, who were married here in the Cathedral just a few years ago.

I find baptisms a perfect moment to prompt us to summarize and own what it means to be a Christian.   What is it that we believe in?   In whom do we put our ultimate trust?   What do we most care about?  Who do we pray to or talk to in the middle of the night or in the midst of our most profound fears?  Who do we thank?  If we had one minute to explain the Christian faith to a stranger, what would we say? 

Bishop John Shelby Spong, the internationally known preacher and writer who will be our preacher in two weeks, and who receive this year’s Canon Jones Award, explores these many issues in his new book Eternal Life: A New Vision.   Bishop Spong speaks in personal terms of looking anew at the life of Jesus of Nazareth.    This Jesus, who we read in today’s gospel wept openly as Mary grieved the death of her brother Lazarus, the bishop writes that “I see in him (Jesus) what I can be – a life at one with God, at one with myself and a part of eternity.” (pg. 208-9)  The Christ path becomes a path that “is always opening to something more.  It is a human path that all people in all times and in places can walk – it is a sign that the doorway into God is always the same as the doorway into our own humanity.”   
Part of what I faced in my first week back to the office after these four months away was the overwhelming sense of sameness that met me.   I drove in the alleyway and saw the same scaffolding that encased the Cathedral House as I left.  (I had hoped that it would magically been completed)  I learned that the boiler had cracked and that we had no heat across the way. I sat down at my desk, and began sorting through four months of emails and trying to remember where I had filed things.   

But in the face of the sameness that pervades our lives – the same routine, a constant circle of family and friends, we must never miss the newness that God invites.  The newness promised to us is expressed for all eternity in John’s Revelation:   When he sees a new heaven and a new earth, a new Jerusalem.   God says: “See, I am making all things new.” 

As many of you know by now, last week we elected Dr. Ian Douglas to be our next bishop.   It was something of a historic election, in that we reached beyond our diocese – all be it 100 miles away to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to elect a new leader.    When reached by telephone soon after the results of the ballot results were announced, our bishop-elect said that Bishop Smith, Curry and other current leaders have brought the diocese "to a place of new energy, new commitment."  As for his place in history – being the first priest in 224 years to be elected beyond Connecticut (we after all are the “land of steady habits”) Ian Douglas said:  "I would take it as a sign of newness."

That is what I hope we learn on this day of remembering and celebrating the saints and souls of the past.   God is always working with us and through us to remake the world, our communities, and our relationships, our interior conversation with ourselves.  Let us take our place among the communion of the saints – drawing inspiration from holy lives, living fully each day with grateful hearts and for what we’ve been given – open minds for new understanding and a compassionate soul for the needs of the world.  Looking into the future with hope.