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Gather in, Unbind - Feast of All Saints

Isaiah 25:6-9; Psalm 24

Revelation 21:1-6a; John 11:32-44

The Rev. Cameron Partridge

November 3, 2024


Good Morning, St. Aidan’s and St. Cyprian’s, and blessings at this Feast of All Saints. Technically Friday, November 1st but celebrated today, this is one of my favorite days in the Church Year. It is the day on which we revel in the company of all the holy ones of God. We dwell in the company of those we recognize on our sanctoral calendar, such as saints Simon and Jude, Teresa of Avila, Vida Scudder, and Thérèse of Lisieux, all of whom we commemorated at Wednesday Evening Prayer this month; or Francis and Clare of Assisi in whose lives we and our animal friends gloried several Sundays ago; our own Aidan of Lindisfarne and Cyprian of Carthage a month earlier; so many others named in our litany, calling them to stand here beside us. Some of these holy ones we may feel we know well; others not at all. From all of their unique, challenging, inspiring lives we can learn as we navigate the complexities of our own. We worship in their company this morning, dwelling with them and countless others collectively as the Communion of all the saints. But today the holy net of God is cast even wider, as we combine All Saints with All Souls Day which was yesterday, November 2nd. At All Souls we commemorate all those who have gone home to God. We remember them in all their uniqueness, as we knew them in our own lives. These are our relatives, our colleagues, our friends, our neighbors. We honor their lives and struggles, their inspiration and witness this morning with mementos we will soon place on this altar, acknowledging the journey of our own grief along the way. We lift these beloveds up together with all the saints, pointing to that great net that Christ has cast, upholding us all, connecting us in the intricate web of God’s cosmos, intimate, particular, and unfathomably vast.

The image of a great web or net speaks to me as I think about this day, in part because of the ministry of Jesus who called us to the life of a certain sort of fishing. Think of all the times he interrupted a catch, or cajoled the disciples to cast the net differently, much to their annoyance. I don’t know about you, but I find it too easy to forget that I am in that net, that I was gathered in at some point, perhaps flopping around on the shore, or at the lip of a boat. God has done that with all of us, with the beloveds we have been evoking, and with countless others. God has gathered us, continues to gather us, and reminds us here and now of our union in a web that is so much larger than we know. But then further, God charges us to remind others of that connection as well, to gather together, to invite and to accept invitations, to host and be hosted. Because in gathering, we are meant to be reminded of communion: with God, with one another, with all creation. Communion is the very heartbeat of creation. The Communion of Saints – those on our sanctoral calendar and those on the calendars of our living hearts – revels in that heartbeat. That communion is and invites us to a banquet before God’s very throne, or God’s mountain, as our passage from Isaiah envisions: “a feast of rich food, of well aged wines” (Isaiah 25:6).

This holy gathering in the midst of the holy ones, our loved ones of God, is not a celebration that imagines that all in the world, all in our lives, is easy and simple. This Communion speaks directly to struggle and challenge, difficulty and grief, indeed to loss along the way. The saints certainly knew pain, and so did our beloveds who have died. This Communion, this gathering of the great net, acknowledges the reality of pain and envisions its transformation. To evoke tears being wiped from faces is also to recognize their streaking presence. To speak of a shroud being lifted from the peoples is also to point to its blanketing reality. To proclaim God’s presence with a stricken people is to acknowledge, as readings from these last several weeks have, how often we experience God’s absence.[1]

In our passage from the Gospel of John, Jesus stands precisely in that shared experience, “greatly disturbed,” weeping together with Mary, Martha and their gathered community before the tomb of their beloved Lazarus (John 11:33, 35). Regardless of stench and decay, acknowledging loss and death, he calls new life out from its very midst. This scene with its shrouded dead man hopping, is literally iconic. Icons of this scene often show a cave with a stone rolled away. Jesus standing outside it together with Mary and Martha, one or both on their knees. A crowd is often evoked by a collection of people lined up, the first row having distinctive faces, but then sometimes those behind them having rows of half-moon heads to evoke a large group. This technique is called isocephaly – literally, “same heads” – a term I memorized years ago in and Art History class by associating them with those rooms with small plastic ball you’re supposed to jump into and swim in. The isocephaly room at Marine World! I would repeat to myself as I studied. But the isocephaly room was not meant to be a mere collection of anonymous observers. The new life Jesus literally calls out from the midst of death invokes their participation, their aid. “Unbind him and let him go,” Jesus charges them (John 11:44). They are to unwind the graveclothes with which Lazarus’ body has been bound. He cannot walk free without their assistance. Not so much Jesus’, but theirs. His sisters. His community’s. All those isocephalous ones.  They all are called to get in on the act.[2] This great, collective unbinding reminds me of Jesus’ call to cast the net, to fish for people. It is almost the inverse of that action, as unbinding might appear to be the reverse of gathering in. Yet I believe somehow, paradoxically, both are true. Both our connection and our freedom in God, both our call to connect and our charge to liberate in the name of the holy one are part and parcel of one another. Their gift is a mystery imaged forth in the resurrection of Lazarus, a story and icon we might pray with today as a window onto the Communion of Saints, a rhythm of life – indeed, a walking in love as our Stewardship theme evokes – in which we are invited to rest and actively to practice out in the world.

Friends, we are at the threshold of many things right now. Creation season has come to a close and our extended observance of Advent begins next Sunday.[3] And between those things, this Tuesday, an election will take place. By this time next week we may only know some of its results. Across our country, and across this community, I know we are on the edge of our seats, making our way forward with concern, real trepidation. Life-undermining disconnection is abounding in our world on so many fronts, and real danger lies before us. Into this scene of fear and anger, our hope lies in connection, in recognizing and drawing others to recognize together our interconnection. The icon of the Communion of Saints, rendered through the raising of Lazarus offers us an image to pray with this week: acknowledge death and grief, emerge through all manner of stench and tripping footsteps into newness of life, join a crowd drawn and cajoled out of anonymity into community, called to unbind in liberation even as we are called into a shared web. May we have the courage and conviction to live that prayer together. Amen.

                   


[1] Isaiah 25:7-9

[2] Years ago the Rev. Pam Werntz, rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Boston, MA brought to my attention the deeply communal dimensions of Jesus’ call to unbind Lazarus and let him go.

[3] See the website of the Advent Project: http://www.theadventproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/rationale.pdf See also William Peterson’s further development of the idea in What Are We Waiting For? Re-Imagining Advent for Time to Come (New York: Church Publishing, 2017)

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