All Saints Day (Matthew 5:1-12)  11/01/2014

Last weekend was my first opportunity to participate in the gathering of delegates at Diocesan Convention. The experience was a great day for me filled with wonderful opportunities: sharing stories on the ride to convention and back, meeting new people throughout the diocese, listening to the Bishop’s annual address, and doing the important work of the church. One presentation that really made an impression on me was the report of the Youth Group, introduced by the diocesan missioner for Christian Formation, The Rev. Hilary Bogart-Winkler. Several youth of the Diocese attended the Episcopal Youth Event in Philadelphia this past summer. The event is a week long gathering of youth from across the country and is held every three years. After the week long gathering, there is an opportunity to remain in the area and participate in a three day urban mission experience. The group of young adults from our diocese took up this work and were assigned to work at St. John’s Church in Norristown, PA, (an urban town northwest of Philadelphia). Soon after arriving the group discovered they had been assigned to clean up the church cemetery, which was in need of some general cleanup and care. The group was surprised to be sent out to the cemetery, thinking they would be assigned to take care of other areas more central to the mission of the church. However, after spending several hours working in the cemetery, the importance of the cemetery became more obvious and the value of their work of cleanup and care became more obvious as well. I can appreciate their story of summer mission work because during the past few years I have taken up the hobby of researching my family history, a hobby that has many twists and turns. Often times, the research requires one to leave the library and spend several hours walking through cemeteries in search of elusive family members. As I have traveled to many different cemeteries, I have discovered beautifully maintained landscapes and I have discovered places that seem to have been long since forgotten. One small cemetery in central CT is one of those “long since forgotten” places; probably selected for its once beautiful landscape of rolling hills, it now sits at the edge of an industrial park with a railroad track just feet away. As I stepped over broken branches and pushed back the overgrown weeds, I read the names of my ancestors from more than 200 years ago. I have since returned a few times to clean up the fallen branches and pull up the weeds and moss from the stones that tell the names of those that lie beneath. And as I performed that work, I was reminded that the cemetery had its own story to tell. The overgrown and forgotten state of things seemed to speak of the separation we can experience with each other, while the work of cleanup and care seemed to speak of the restoration of relationship that God hopes for us. As I did the work of cleanup in the cemetery, I read the stones and remembered their stories, their joys, their sacrifices and I felt connected to them in new  and personal ways.

Today, we celebrate the feast of All Saints and we hear Jesus’ message of God’s kingdom of heaven. Our Gospel lesson today, often called “The Beatitudes,” is a story from the early part of Jesus’ ministry. He had called the first of his disciples and had spent the past few days healing the sick and performing miracles to comfort and heal those who lived without comfort or hope. After these busy days and likely realizing there would be many more challenging and busy days ahead, Jesus sat down to teach his friends an important lesson – what is it that brings us closer to God? How are we connected to God and each other, not letting the weeds of neglect grow over us and our relationships. Jesus gave his friends a lesson of nine blessings for those in community; blessings that show a desire for God, a hope for relationship that gives us confidence that we do not stand alone. The blessings address our deepest needs and our greatest challenges, and Jesus assures us that in the midst of our great needs, in the midst of our great challenges, there, God resides with a blessing. This divine blessing is our hope of eternal presence before God.

Jeremy Taylor, a 17th century Anglican Bishop, wrote beautifully on the blessings of life as we spend time with God. Taylor’s spiritual advice, written in his book “Holy Living and Holy Dying” urges his readers to spend time in reflection every day in an effort to recognize the very particular gifts given to us each moment of our lives. Taylor thought that long periods without reflection would cause people to recognize only the big events in one’s life, while frequent periods of reflection, even if very short, would open our eyes to the many gifts present in our lives and make us ever aware of the nuance of their power and beauty. All Saints is a feast that gives us an opportunity to share our stories and begin the daily thoughtfulness that Jeremy Taylor suggests. This feast day of All Saints is a day full of particular meaning. This past Friday morning in our beautifully maintained Memorial Garden, we laid to rest our brother in Christ, Bill Bird. Bill shared many wonderful days and memories with his family and friends during his 94 years with us, and he is remembered here with great fondness. As we worship in this place, we remember he was the architect of our worship space renovation a few years ago. We remember Bill as he is no longer in our presence, but now stands in the presence of God. And just one day after celebrating Bill’s life, we had the great joy to begin the new journey in Christ of young Hannah and Sadie! Their baptisms, surrounded by their loving family and friends, is the real presence of the blessings given to us by Jesus. And so we now give thanks for all the blessings given to us by God; we give thanks for the Saints of God, the saints we see no longer in our midst, the saints that sit in our pews today, and the saints we see throughout the world…the saints of the Body of Christ! AMEN.