Ruth Lewis November 6th, 2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Sermon NOV. 6 2022, <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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St.Alban\u2019s In the Octave of All Saints Day
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be now and always acceptable in your
sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week we celebrated All Saints\u2019 Day. Lots of people don\u2019t. Even we who do celebrate it have now
made it for all practical purposes a moveable feast, unlike Christmas and Easter, the other two of the
three feasts that Episcopalians were at one time expected to attend without fail every year. All Saints\u2019 is
a feast that is slipping away from us. Might we need to be resisting this trend, and ought we to value a
celebration of the saints more highly than the present age seems to do? Today\u2019s readings, chosen in
awareness that the first Sunday following Nov. 1 st would be all that many parishes would offer in the
way of a celebration of All Saints\u2019 Day, give us an opening to firm up our hold on this feast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now normally, the principal service on a major feast day would not be Morning Prayer, but Eucharist.
Today, however, Morning Prayer works to the advantage of our recapture of the feast in one very
important way: in this service we say the Apostles\u2019 Creed. We declare our belief in the communion of
saints. Reciting a creed at all in this day and age frequently involves the sort of wrestling with God our
opening hymn attributes to the saints. If we cannot honestly claim to believe, or even hope and aspire
to believe, what is stated in a creed, then maybe we had better remain silent, or even find another
group to join. Larry says he would rather sing the creed than say it. Creeds can be uncomfortable. This
creed concludes with three pairings which I see as containing paradoxes.
I believe in the Holy Spirit
The Holy catholic church,
The communion of Saints,
The forgiveness of sins,
The resurrection of the body
And the life everlasting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Holy Spirit is constantly remaking a Holy catholic church (universal, not limited to Roman or even
liturgical churches) that would otherwise just get more and more and more hidebound. People claiming
the authority of the Holy Spirit are often at odds with others claiming the authority of the Holy catholic
church. The communion of saints implies and requires the forgiveness of sins, but we so easily divide the
world into saints and sinners. A friend quoted St. Augustine on Facebook to say that there is no saint
without a past and no sinner without a future. The truth of this relies on forgiveness. We have a hard
time wrapping our minds around a combination of resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Are
these matters we believe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Sadducees in today\u2019s gospel passage did not believe. \u201cThey say there is no resurrection.\u201d I\u2019d
venture to say that theirs is the majority position on this question in Western culture today, though for
Christians it would not easily be acknowledged as their (or our) position. I personally have not ever
outright denied the resurrection, but I have lived through seasons of my life when I have asked, \u201cWhat if
there is no resurrection?\u201d I knew I would still want to remain a Christian, but I was kept permanently
unsettled by the memory of a conversation I had had with my paternal grandfather, one of my hero-
saints, in which he had quoted with approval St Paul, in First Corinthians 15, saying, \u201cIf in this life only
we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.\u201d At the time, I had my reservations about
that declaration. My sainted grandfather himself was careful to say that he was \u201cagnostic,\u201d in that he
did not know, but believed, and lived \u201cas if\u201d he knew it to be true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Science, the body of what we can claim to know, has fostered our drift away from belief in resurrection.
Now in a small way there is within science an eddy, or a small flow in the direction of reinstating our
grounds for belief. We are becoming more aware of the limits of science, aware of the impossibility that
science will ever deliver to us omniscience. Greater and greater levels of confidence, perhaps, regarding
those things capable of being studied by the methods of science, but never absolute certainty, and no
knowledge at all regarding matters science cannot study, like the nature of consciousness, for instance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As in the case of the Webb telescope, where more and more wondrous worlds are made visible in more
detail, but how they came into existence remains a mystery, so also in the book After, which I regard as
the best example of the eddy of science in the direction of supporting our grounds for belief, we learn
about phenomena that are likely the experiences on which religious convictions are built, yet we cannot
even hope to know our way into the mysteries of life beyond this life while we are in this life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus would seem to be the exception, or the closest we have to an exception, in that he speaks with
authority about things heavenly. What can we glean from Jesus\u2019 answer to the Sadducees, read in the
light of information from several sources, one of them the book After?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Sadducees pose their \u201cgotcha\u201d question hoping to demonstrate the extreme awkwardness of a
belief in resurrection which they do not hold. \u201cIn the resurrection, whose wife will she be?\u201d This
happens to be a stupid question. If you, like me, like to tell people that there are no stupid questions,
understand that \u201cgotcha\u201d questions can be stupid questions. There are no stupid honest questions. To
the Sadducees, entering the resurrection is like, say, going to another earthly location, but as we read in
canticle 10 this morning, \u201cyour thoughts are not my thoughts, says the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All three synoptic gospels tell this story of the Sadducees\u2019 confusion, but Mark and Matthew show Jesus
calling them out in bluntly confrontational terms: \u201cYe err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of
God.\u201d Luke calls them out more subtly: he fits them into the pattern of the closing verses or Psalm 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deliver me, O Lord, by your hand
From those whose portion in life is this world;<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whose bellies you fill with your treasure,
Who are well supplied with children
And leave their wealth to their little ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But at my vindication I shall see your face;
When I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus said to them, \u201cThose who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are
considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are
given in marriage.\u201d The concept of worthiness is introduced by Luke, even extreme worthiness as is
indicated by the Greek in this instance, not to exclude most of us from the age to come, but to needle
the Sadducees. They collectively held a place in what Jesus called \u201cthis age,\u201d a place of wealth and
privilege and power, controlling the Temple, cooperating with the Roman occupiers, and considering
themselves the worthiest of the worthy. We know how Luke regarded that mind-set. He made it clear in
the Magnificat and in his version of the Beatitudes. Jesus is implying that others will be considered
worthy of a place in \u201cthat age and the resurrection from the dead,\u201d not the Sadducees who say there is
no such thing and look down on those Jesus finds worthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But back to marriage: In heaven what would be the point? Those in heaven do not produce more
children, as they cannot die and need no heirs. Not for the husband to rule the wife, as they are both
\u201clike angels, children of God,\u201d and each directly connected and related to God. Not for companionship
in adversity, since they have no more adversity. And Heaven supplies all the bliss anyone can
experience. I can imagine this hypothetical family in heaven possibly sharing happy memories they may
have brought with them freely among all of them, but companionable sharing of heaven does not
require marriage. Marriage defends exclusivity. Heaven, as far as I can tell, resists exclusivity.
Marriage, so important to human societies while we are in this perishable body that I regard it as my
calling, has nothing further to contribute to heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus finishes off the Sadducees in Luke\u2019s version in an argument almost word for word the same as that
used by Matthew and Mark, which Luke finds demonstrates the Sadducees error clearly enough by
itself, without further comment. The Sadducees accepted only the first five books of our present Bible
(called the books of Moses, and thought at that time to have been written by Moses) as having the
authority of scripture, so Jesus defeats them using their chosen authority, and using an account of an
experience of dialog with God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where
he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not
of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All religions grow out of experiences of interaction with mystery. Jesus cinches his argument by
reporting Moses\u2019 experience. The book After is filled with a harvest of forty years spent collecting and
categorizing accounts of experiences many, even most of them, describable as dialogs with God, or
maybe I should say indescribable as such dialogs tend to be. The people who have had these near-death
experiences are none of them especially saintly going in to the experience, and perhaps a few become
saintly as a result of their experiences, but what this book presents is in my view a God and a Heaven far
more generous to us human beings than we are to one another. Dr Bruce Greyson does not casually
toss around words like God and Heaven; their presence here is my interpretation. Having read this
book, I am more comfortable around Jesus\u2019 pronouncements concerning heaven, and more comfortable
reciting the Apostles\u2019 Creed. I find the Communion of Saints to be a society we all belong in, where we
have a great cloud of witnesses, not judging but cheering for us, some of them our hero saints and
others more like nobody special. They are from every tribe, people, language, nation and religion or
philosophy. Their lives may overlap with ours on earth, or not, but their help to us never ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember trying to tell my medical school mentor, a secular scientist, that she was beloved of God,
and having her ask, how would her life change if she became a believer? She seemed to me to be
outstandingly virtuous already, so I was momentarily stumped. I told her that she would have more
awareness of receiving help. She took that in and pondered it. She has gone on to the next life, where I
like to think she mentors me still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, there you have it, my friends, beloved of God, my argument in favor of giving All Saints\u2019 Day back its
honored place in the church year, supported by a set of readings, the gospel insisting on the reality of
life to come, Job and Ephesians encouraging us to be steadfast, for \u201cat the last\u201d we will be vindicated ,
see God face to face, and join the vast throng of saints for whom love of God and neighbor has become
unending bliss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ruth Lewis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ruth Lewis November 6th, 2022 Sermon NOV. 6 2022, St.Alban\u2019s In the Octave of All Saints DayMay the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be now and always acceptable in yoursight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Last week we celebrated All Saints\u2019 Day. Lots of people don\u2019t. Even we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3684"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3688,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions\/3688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stalbansbolivar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}