This past Monday was All Saints’ Day and as you know, we transferred the celebration to today. As you probably know All Saint’s Day is the principal feast day that the church sets aside to remember the saints who have died before. On Monday we had Scott Carpenter’s funeral. Often a family has preferences for scripture passages for a funeral, but this time, even though the son is an Episcopal priest, they did not, other than adding a passage from Ecclesiastes. I can say that it is interesting that the scripture lessons for All Saints’ Day are also choices in the Episcopal Burial Rite for the Dead, or in the case for the Gospel, it is a passage very nearby. Suffice it to say that I have been stewing on these passages for a while now. The overlapping of the readings is not accidental.
The reading from Isaiah and the Revelation of St. John are intricately similar. In both, God wipes away tears, and God makes things better. There is a projection of end-times, and throughout all, God ensures that we know we belong to God. As much as many people attempt to read a scary future into the Revelation of St. John, it is the flavor of consolation that it gives to the present that speaks volumes. In both passages, there is Salvation from God and in both that is good news, but in Revelation, the consolation and comfort of knowing that in Christ there is no second death, this is the characteristic Gospel Good News of Jesus Christ. Consolation, comfort— they are very much needed especially for people in grief at funerals, but they are also for All Saints, because life is not easy. Losing the Saints in our lives is not easy, no matter how much time has passed. But we can all rest knowing that those who die in Christ never taste the second death, they are never separated from God. God is our God, we are God’s children, and this extends beyond physical death.
This hope we have, of deeper life with God, is the promise of God in Jesus Christ. Just prior to our gospel passage for today Jesus and Martha have an interchange. Jesus says to Martha, in HER grief: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Jesus brings Martha to that point. And in her answer, Martha makes the profoundest statement of faith in all of the Gospel of John. “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
After this interchange we have today’s Gospel, which honestly happens to be rather confusing. For the synoptic Gospels, it is the turning over the tables that gets Jesus in trouble, but for the Gospel of John, it is Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life. I have to say scholars are all over the map on this story. You too may be all over the map. Jesus actually tarries so that there are four days until he arrives. He is confronted with Mary’s accusations that if he had been there, Lazarus would not have died. What do we do with Jesus bringing back a person to life for the glory of God? And what about Jesus being moved to tears in the same breath? (Does an all-knowing person, God in Jesus Christ, feel grief when they know the cause of the grief will be reversed?) The word for “disturbed” in the passage usually means “angry” in Greek; who is Jesus angry with? The Jews? The doubters in his midst? All in all, there is confusion and disconnection here, stuff to which I don’t have magical answers. And still, whether or not Jesus knows the outcome here doesn’t matter to me, what matters is that Jesus and therefore God, know what grief is about, even if they may not “feel” it in the same way.
And so, once we know that God knows what we suffer and once we claim Jesus is the Messiah, then all of life, and therefore also death, takes on a new look. We are accompanied and there is some certainty. What it means is that those who are in Christ are no longer in a state of anxiety wondering what the last day will be like. In Christ, the last day has already begun. We, like Martha claim Jesus as Lord, and we can rest in the certainty that we are forever saints, forever gathered into a deeper life with God, a life in which we are united, the living and dead, all of us saints, singing Alleluia. And this is why All Saints Day is one of my favorite days in the church.
We are all gathered into the larger life, the deeper life of God. There is a reason that All Saints Day is a joyous occasion. And it is the same reason that New Orleans brass bands play at funerals. When we think of being united with God, our answer should not be “Jesus is coming, look busy,” instead, the words of our response should be akin to the words of When the Saints go Marching ….
Oh, when the saints go marching in,
Oh, when the sun begins to shine
Oh, when the trumpet sounds its call
Oh, when the new world is revealed
Oh, when the drums begin to bang
Oh, when the stars fall from the sky
Oh, when the saints go marching in…
Oh, when the saints go marching in…
Lord, I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in.
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44