“For All the Saints” – Marjory Zoet Bankson

November 1, 201515 Altar Jubilee

Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

Texts:

A feast of rich food for ALL peoples … Isa 25:6-9

I saw a new heaven and a new earth … Revelation 21:1-6a

Raising of Lazarus … John 11:32-44

  we celebrate all the saints who have gone before us in the worldwide family of God. In a religious tradition that goes back at least to the 8th century, Christians have marked this day to honor those people who have made the spirit of Christ visible to others. At first, All Saints celebrated those whom the church had canonized. Later, it became a celebration of all baptized Christians, saintly or not. In predominantly Catholic countries, it is often known as the “Day of the Dead,” when families visit the graves of their loved ones with flowers and food.

A year ago today, I, too, was scrubbing the moss off of the graves of my ancestors in Lynden, Washington: first, my parents, then my grandparents, and my father’s grandparents, who had come there from Holland. While Jacqie Wallen preached here at Seekers, I was doing church differently by walking among those immigrants who left their homeland in search of a better life in America. Most never went back, even for a visit. One of the first things they did as a congregation was to buy land for a cemetery. For them, it was a singular act of freedom from state controlled burials and it claimed this land as their new home.

Jesus comes late to the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Mary and Martha are disappointed and angry that he did not get there in time to save their brother from death, and they let Jesus know how they felt. Always the practical one, Martha blurts out that her brother’s body will be a stinking mess when Jesus tells the onlookers to roll away the stone from his grave.

But if we see the Gospel of John as a well-constructed narrative of Jesus’ life and ministry which was to be read again and again in small, gathered communities like ours, then we can hear the rehearsal for Jesus’ resurrection in this story. In common, they have committed but reluctant disciples, dedicated but questioning insiders, an entombed body and anointing women, a surprising revelation of new life and a resulting directive to the hearers.

I hope you will go home and read the whole story of Mary, Martha and Lazarus in John 11 and 12, and then read the resurrection appearance to Mary Magdalene and then to the disciples in John 20. In our text for today, the story ends with the command to the surrounding community to “unbind” the still-wrapped body of Lazarus. It seems to say that God has the power to bring new life to the dead places in our own lives, but we need a community to “unbind” us from the wrappings of prejudice, habit and fear.

In the prefigured story of Jesus’ resurrection, the story ends with a statement of blessing: “Blessed are those who have NOT seen and yet have come to believe.”

So, what does it mean for us to believe what we have not witnessed directly? In other words, how do we understand the difference between the resuscitation of Lazarus, and the resurrection of Christ?

In this age of scientific inquiry and physical evidence, how are we to hold the notion that all the saints might be gathered around us like a great “cloud of witnesses,” cheering us on in this marathon of physical embodiment that we live out, day to day? And what difference does that cloud of witnesses make for us?

Of course, Peter was away for his work. I had no-one at home to talk it over with.

I paced the floor most of the night, and then decided to abandon the board meeting and pay for a full-price ticket to Seattle if I could get a flight. In those days, before the Internet, there was no way to know whether I could get a small plane flight on to Bellingham from there, but I decided to take my chances – to trust that love or God or something would make a way for me.

As you can imagine, my thoughts and prayers were filled with memories and prayers for my father. Somewhere over Kansas maybe, a single image settled in. There he was, lying in the hospital bed which I had arranged for in my last visit, in front of the large picture windows, looking out at a sunset over Puget Sound. The colors were vivid in back of his white sheeted bed. Standing at the end of his bed was his mother, dressed in her Sunday-go-to-meeting dark suit, with her hat on and purse over her arm, saying (as she stretched out her hand), “Come on August, it’s time to go.”

When I called from there, my younger sister said “He died about an hour ago, but we’ll keep his body here until you can get here. Let me know if you can get the plane to Bellingham, because it’s really foggy here.”

Then we called the mortuary, for the hearse which was to take him down to Seattle, to the medical school where his body might be useful for doctors-in-the-making.

After the bustle of removing his body, we were sitting at the dining room table, having a cup of tea, when my younger sister said, “You know, the funniest thing happened about an hour before he died. He’d been in a coma for nearly 12 hours, completely comatose. But he raised up on one elbow, and reached out, like somebody was there, talking to him.”

And so I told them about my vision of Grandma Zoet, standing there in her church clothes, holding out her hand. Barb said, “That’s exactly the way it looked – like Grandma was standing there, inviting him to come.” She said that she’d put her hand in his, and said “You can go now, dad. Everything will be all right.”

Was it real? For me, it was.

Was it true? Yes, it was.

Could we prove it? Of course not.

But I think scripture is like that, describing what we have imagination and language for. Proof comes in other ways, like telling the story or living out of love and trust, rather than fear. “Blessed are those who believe, but have not seen.”

– a time when we celebrate the lives of those who have gone before us on the path to becoming who we are, and how we are in the world. My grandmother, Flossina Zebnerdina Zylstra, took us in when we were homeless during World War II. My dad was in New Guinea, in an Army field hospital. My mom was in a TB sanitarium as a patient, down near Seattle. I was four, and my sister was two. I don’t know what would have happened to us if she hadn’t taken us in.

Let us prepare our hearts to hold the memories of the saints we are honoring today at Seekers:

  • It seems especially appropriate that we always celebrate communion on All Saints Day, because it was a meal shared by Jesus and his disciples as they prepared for his death and whatever they could comprehend about the meaning of resurrection. The bread, a reminder that our physical bodies do indeed die. And the cup, a reminder of the spiritual presence of those who have loved us into being. Around the circle, we are once again “broken and whole, all at once,” surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses.

    May this be good news for us, now and always.

    Amen.