Sermon Archive

“All Saints’ Day”—a day when we remember and celebrate the myriads of people who have preceded us in professing and preserving the Christian faith and in striving to fulfill God’s will by following Jesus. Almost all of these saints were never famous, they never made the news, and yet they were faithful.

You’ve seen in your order of service today, on pp. 13–14, a list of some of those belonging to this great cloud of witnesses, whose names you’ve submitted to us, or whose ashes are interred here in our columbaria, or whose bodies are buried in the Rutgers plots at Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn. All of these are saints whose memory we lift up today for honor and celebration. Some of you have also placed a memorial flower for them in the vase sitting in the font we use during the sacrament of baptism. You’ve done this as a sign and a testament that the lives your loved ones carried out in fulfillment of their baptism have shown forth the glory of God and challenge us by example to a similar faithfulness.

Today, as an article of faith, we proclaim that these saints live! They live in our hearts and memories, and they live through the patterns in our lives that they’ve shaped and influenced. Yet even more profoundly than that, we profess, they live in their own right. Yes, these loved ones are not dead. They live! They live together with the whole company of saints who now dwell with God in glory.

Yes, “Our belief in the resurrection of the dead tells us that those who have died do not just stop, but they continue,” that death is not an end to life but just a passageway from one form of life to another. Furthermore, “Our belief in the communion of saints tells us that we [remain somehow] connected with [these living] faithful of all times and places…” [Ruthanna B. Hooke, in The Abingdon Women’s Preaching Annual, Series 3, Year C, (2003), p. 148] Indeed, I am told that when the names of the dead are read aloud among Latin American Christians, the congregation calls out, “Presente,” “Present!”

So what are some of the elements of being faithful to God?

This morning’s First Lesson from the Gospel of Luke outlines an agenda for this world, an agenda for Christians’ growth in holiness as we seek to fulfill our baptism in lives of faithfulness to Christ, as we strive to be counted among the company of saints. And the agenda presented in this lesson is quite an “anti-establishment” one at that. For it tells us that if we want to be part of God’s reign, then we must be found working in our society to reverse the systemic plight of the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, and the excluded, and we must be found trying to love our enemies, rather than retaliating against them. Fundamentally then, to use words from the Golden Rule that Jesus gives us in this passage (6:31), we fulfill our baptism by doing to others as we would have them do to us. That’s what God’s plan and intention for our lives is.

In our Second Lesson from the Gospel of Luke, we’re moved onward in time to a scene from the last week of Jesus’s life on earth. The journey of Jesus’s ministry has at last brought him from his native region of Galilee, where our First Lesson is set, to the city of Jerusalem, where his very first act has been to cleanse the temple of its moneychangers and to challenge the power and authority of the priests who preside over the temple and its rituals (Luke 19:45–47)—those known as “the Sadducees.”

The Sadducees are a theologically conservative group who believe that the concept of the dead’s being raised back to life by God, an idea current among many Jewish teachers at the time—the Sadducees held this idea to be absurd, for it is one not found in the portion of Scripture they consider to be sacred—the Torah (that is, the Five Books of Moses; the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy).

Outraged by Jesus’s overturning of the moneychanging tables, the Sadducees are intent on ridiculing Jesus and on discrediting him as a teacher. So they seize the moment to pose to him a case that they think will demonstrate to any and all listeners just how absurd this concept of resurrection, of life beyond death, really is.

The Torah calls for the next of kin of a married man who has died without children to take the wife of the deceased as his own wife, in order to beget a child who can perpetuate the dead man’s lineage. This arrangement is called “levirate marriage.”

So the Sadducees pose to Jesus an extreme case of levirate marriage, in which seven brothers, in succession, have been married to the same woman, and have now all died without ever producing a child. And the Sadducees ask Jesus, “In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be” (20:33)—which of the seven men to whom she’s been married?

Now, the Sadducees are assuming that in Jesus’s thought life beyond resurrection would replicate life this side of death, that it would have the same attributes, structures, and institutions, like marriage. But in Jesus’s response to the Sadducees, he denies their assumption. Things after resurrection will by no means be the same as before death. The conditions then will not be the ones now simply raised and refined to the nth degree. No, things after death will be quite different, for resurrection involves dramatic change and transformation.

And, says Jesus to the Sadducees, the concept of resurrection can be counted upon to be true, for the Book of Exodus, within the Torah that they hold dear, calls God (3:6) “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Now these ancestors have long been dead but for God’s name to be linked with them they must still be living, for God is not God of the dead, but is God of the living.

No one knows exactly what life beyond death will be like. But in our Second Lesson Jesus tells us ever so clearly that life beyond death will be quite different from life here on earth. What exactly it will be like is a mystery; it is one of God’s secrets. But some things about it we can know. For example, because Jesus has told us that God is love, we can be certain that whatever life beyond death may be for God’s people it will in fact be wholly good.

Eight days ago, the mother of one of the members of our congregation died—Ethel Ihming Chen, mother of Robert Chang, and grandmother of Aubrey, age 6, and Bobby, who’s almost 3.

Robert asked me to speak at her funeral service last Thursday. He asked me first to narrate some of Grandma Ethel’s life and then to try to answer for Bobby the question, “Where did grandma go?” and to try to answer for Aubrey the question, “How can grandma be alive if her dead body’s still here?”

That’s a tough assignment, as those of you know who attended last Sunday’s parents’ class, where some of these issues were discussed!

Still, at the conclusion of the funeral several of the grown-ups told me that they, too, found my remarks to the children very helpful, so I’ve decided to share those remarks with you grown-ups, too. Please note, however, that I’m making today’s presentation a bit more “adult” and “grown-up” than I did last Thursday—but not all that much! Also remember that Bobby and Aubrey, as young children, think very concretely. I expect you adults to be able to conceptualize and de-materialize matters better!

Now for background, all you need to know, I think, is that 97-year-old Grandma Ethel was born in China, accompanied her father—a Chinese diplomat—on various missions to Germany and Latin America, worked as a translator for the United Nations, and became a highly trained and proficient chart reader for three of New York City’s top stock brokerage firms. So with that introduction, here’s basically what I said.

Bobby, I’ve been told that shortly after your grandmother died, you asked your parents, “Where did grandma go?”

Well, you’ve just heard me tell people about how many places your Grandma Ethel lived during her very long life—China, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, and right here in New York City, among other places. And in a little while her ashes will be flown all the way to Argentina, where others of her family are buried.

Now Bobby, I know that you’ve never seen any of those places with your own eyes—except, of course, New York City. No, you haven’t seen those places with your very own eyes, but you can be absolutely sure that what I’ve told you is true—that your grandmother really did live in all those places—because your very own father has told me those things.

Well, now your Grandma Ethel lives in still another new place that you’ve never seen—in fact, it’s a place that none of us has ever seen. For grandma’s “with God.” Yes, she really, really is “with God”! She really was in China, and Germany, and Mexico back then, and she really is “with God” right now. And you can be absolutely sure that what I’ve told you is true, because it’s Jesus himself who has told us it’s true.

As I said, none of us has ever yet seen that place called “with God,” but still we know that Grandma Ethel is there and that it is the most beautiful and wonderful place there is. And we know that because wherever God dwells has to be the most wonderful and love-filled place there is, for it’s from God that love comes.

Now Aubrey, I want to say a few words to you, too. I want to talk with you about how it is that your grandmother can still be alive if her body’s in that casket.

You know, at one time Grandma Ethel was a young girl just your age. Then she grew up to be a smart, cultured, pretty young woman who traveled the world and spoke many languages. She got married and had a son. Later she came to New York City and was a very successful businesswoman at a time when there weren’t very many other successful businesswomen. You can be sure of all that because you’ve seen the pictures from the various parts of your grandmother’s life that your father has brought here for all of us to see today.

Earlier today, Aubrey, I saw that beautiful picture that your father took of Grandma Ethel and her dog Maurice with both you and Bobby. And I can tell just by looking at that picture that you loved your grandmother and that she loved you.

Now Aubrey, you knew Grandma Ethel only in the very last years of her life, when she was quite old—in her nineties. But from all of the pictures your dad brought, you’ve seen that Grandma Ethel was first a girl, and then a young woman, and then a middle-aged woman, and then an old woman. In all those different periods of her life she looked different, she wore different clothes, and she spoke different languages. But here’s the thing of it, no matter how different she looked at the various stages of her life, we still know that throughout all of her life she was always the very same person, no matter what she looked like.

And you know what. Now that Grandma Ethel has died and gone to live with God, she looks different again, for, would you believe it, now she doesn’t even need her old body anymore. Of course, we don’t know exactly what she does look like now, and there aren’t any photographers “with God” to send us pictures. Yes, it’s a big mystery what she looks like; it’s God’s secret. But about this we can be absolutely sure: even though Grandma Ethel certainly does look different now, she really is the very same person she’s always been, the very same person God has always loved.

So, where has Grandma Ethel gone? Indeed, where have all the saints whom we’re celebrating today gone? Well, as Christians we believe that she and they have gone to live “with God,” and that she and they will live “with God” forever, in a place where we just don’t need our old bodies anymore, in a place where there’s no more sickness, no more pain, no more trouble, no more crying, no more politics, no more war.

Wow! You know what? Since that’s the way it’s going to be, it really is a great thing to live “with God”! So we rejoice that all our departed saints are now experiencing the pure love and joy that life “with God” is. Hallelujah! Amen!

Let us pray:

Eternal God, we bless You for the great company of all those who have kept the faith, finished their race, and now rest from their labor.

Especially we praise You and give You thanks for the lives of those dear saints whom You have received into Your presence and whom we have lifted up to memory today.

O God, show now even to us Your grace, so that as we face the mystery of death we may be drawn into the light of Your eternity. And when it comes about that our days on earth are ended, enable us to die as ones who go forth to live, so that whether living here on earth or living “with You” our life may be anchored in Christ Jesus, our risen Lord.