November 3, 2024 – All Saints Sunday – Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
Kahu Gary Percespe
Today is All Saints Sunday, that time of the church’s year when we think about the saints, all of them—all those baptized who have lived this faith, who walked the path of discipleship before us, and who now rest from their labors.
In other words, it’s just another day when Christians talk to the dead and listen to those who have passed this way before and continue to speak to us.
Have you noticed that not only on this Sunday, but on every Sunday, we communicate with the dead? What have we done before this sermon? We have opened the scriptures, we have read from the testimony of those who have been dead for many centuries, including the testimony of the beloved disciple John. All through the Christian year, and not just on this Sunday, we act as though these ancient people with names like Isaiah, John, Lazarus, and Mary & Martha know something more about God than we do. We sit at their feet. We believe they have something to teach us that we could not learn in any other way.
Among the traits of true discipleship is this willingness to listen to history, to historical figures, even to the testimony of the dead, and to give them a privileged place in our conversation.
In today’s gospel passage, Jesus visits a family in grief. After a short illness, Lazarus has died. His sisters, Mary and Martha, have already had the funeral and buried him. Jesus is deeply grieved by the death of his friend. Yet he comes out to the cemetery and, with a loud voice, commands him to rise. We are correct to hear in John’s story an echo of Easter. Jesus is the lord of life. Whenever he comes among the dead, even on the first Sunday of November, the dead begin to rise.
Modern people are trained to reject these stories. We live in two worlds simultaneously, the natural world, where the dead remain dead, and the world of Christian word and sacrament, where anything can happen! One world is narrow and restricted, the other wide open and free. One world contains ironclad laws of nature and no surprises, the other is full of surprises! One world is strictly deterministic, the other is free. What we forget is that God is the Creator of what we call the natural world, and its laws do not apply to God. This is why, dear friends, we are free to hope. This is why we are free to pray and to know that our prayers may be answered. Hope is the ethical aspect of freedom, and for freedom God has made us free.
When we read these words in John, the natural world comes to a dead end, we have reached the end of the story: Lazarus is dead. What can be done about it? Nothing. Give up our hope and accept our fate, and all the other ways that we reconcile our way to death.
But Jesus is sovereign over death itself. Here comes John and his gospel, and Mary and Martha, to tell us of their brother Lazarus, and how Jesus brought him back to life. Now that Jesus is here, loose in the world, things are not as fixed and final as we once thought. Sometimes, by the strong work of Jesus, there is a way when we thought there was no way. Sometimes, even though it’s November, and November in an American election year to boot, Jesus can make it seem like Easter.
We wouldn’t have known this truth had not John, Mary, and Martha and all the other saints transmitted this testimony to us, and other stories like it. And we believe their testimony is true. We ourselves would not have known the good news except for the fact that our kupuna in the faith told us that it is so, and by the grace of God we believed their testimony! Almost two hundred years ago, the kupuna of this church gathered on this sacred ground to start a church in the strong name of Jesus, the Risen Christ, and against all odds it is still here today, continuing to teach people the Way. None of us would be here this morning if not for the saints who have marched here before us. The saints among us. How blessed we are to be in that number. Amene.