For All the Saints . . .

Saturday. Sofa. Coffee.

Tomorrow is All Saints' Day. Lots of folks at the church have been planning our services for a couple of months now. It has become a special tradition at Lester Memorial UMC, as it has at many United Methodist Churches, a day on which we celebrate the communion of saints, and in particular, those who have died since last All Saints' Day. Our church has suffered more than our share of loss this year. Twenty one members died in a church that averages 300 or so in worship each week.

Lester Memorial has been for me what Paul so eloquently described in Hebrews 12:1:

1Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

For a long time I identified this verse with the living congregation at my church. I still do. But the truth is that great cloud of witnesses includes those saints who have moved on from this world. In fact, that is exactly what Paul was talking about. In Chapter 11 of Hebrews he recounts the heroics of many Hebrew Scripture figures, all of whom answered their Godly calling, and yet Paul makes this observation in the last verse of that chapter:

39These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. 40God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

One pastor I know often pauses during communion liturgy when he is offering the invitation to the Lord's table. He describes a table that is set for us in this moment, but that also extends backward in time for all who have come before and forward into the future for all who will be, all feasting together at the Lord's table, miraculously at the same time, or perhaps, miraculously outside the bounds and bonds of time altogether.

Such a great cloud of witnesses. There are the famous ones . . . Augustine, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Bonhoeffer, Wesley, Nouwen. I am sure you have your own list of those well recognized heroes and heroines of the faith whose lives and perhaps writings have informed and inspired you.

But just as we all have our own list of famous saints, we each have our own list of unknown saints, at least unknown to the rest of the world. Some helped us with their wisdom, some nurtured us in our childhood, some inspired us with their art and creativity or perhaps their angelic voices, some warmed our hearts with their courage, encouragement and smiles, some taught us the strength of humility, some simply taught us, some helped us grow by taking us into uncomfortable places, and some simply loved us and lived with us.

Those saints that have gone before, famous or not, are a light to us, a light that is not extinguished by death. They no longer walk this earthly journey with us, but their light still burns brightly from the trail behind, illuminating the way ahead. They have not been on the part of the road that we are on now, no one ever has. It is new territory.

But thank God,

there is light.

The journey is now ours to take. Sometimes in our need to stand tall, all we do is cast a larger shadow. May God give us the wisdom to occasionally get out of the way and let the light of the Saints of the past shine clearly onto the path of the future.

Until hopefully, we will also be blessed to shine the light.

Thanks be to God . . .for all the Saints.

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