Many Small Cabins
All Saints, What is our assurance as Christians?
A. Our assurance as Christians is that nothing, not even death, shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
You may be seated.
You may be seated.
Let us pray:
O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our prayers on behalf of those we love who have died, whom you have granted an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
I AM the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; all that believe in me, though they were dead, yet shall they live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
Jesus said “Let not your hearts be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many small cabins, many mansions, many rooms, many dwelling places, if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I AM, there ye may be also."
All Saints, What do we mean by heaven and hell?
A. heaven is kingdom life, here and hereafter, in our enjoyment of God; hell is darkness in adoration of self and rejection of God.
“While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,” writes William Butler Yeats walking the roads of London that to him were the streets of Hell, “I hear it in the deep heart’s core.” As he dreams longingly, “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree. And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made.”
In C S Lewis’ book The Great Divorce, ghosts whose center was self in life, and now self in death, endlessly wander the gray, overcast desolation of Hell in drizzling, chill rain, bitterly alone or among other selfish, bickering souls - - but
Those in heaven, not only those who had been saints on earth but especially sinners who are repentant, forgiven and redeemed, move farther up and farther in, as they increase in the knowledge and love of God.
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Death is the central pain of Time – and we would not mind the passing of time so much, except that it brings us and our loved ones ever closer to the farewells.
All Saints, Why do we pray for the dead?
A. We pray for them, because we still hold them in our hearts, in our love, and because we trust that in God's presence those who have chosen to serve him will grow in his love, until they see him as he is.
Q. What do we mean by the resurrection of the body?
A. We mean that God will raise us from death in the fullness of our being, that we may live with Christ in the Communion of Saints.
Q. What is the Communion of Saints?
A. The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise.
All Saints, What is our assurance as Christians?
A. Our assurance as Christians is that nothing, not even death, shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Observing All Saints Day this morning, we remember friends and loved ones who have gone on before, naming in our prayers those who died in the past year. In faith we pray God to love and hold them forever, as the church teaches that new life awaits us at death.
Sunday mornings this Pentecost Season, we’ve been reading First Thessalonians, which, though not in today’s lectionary, is most relevant to All Saints Day. Paul, an apocalypticist who believed the EndTime was at hand, taught that Jesus’ Return, the Second Coming, was imminent, that in Paul’s lifetime Jesus would return and establish the new Kingdom of God on Earth, ruled by Jesus as God’s regent forever. Believing that the only ones to be saved would be those whose faith was in the One True Creating God of Israel, Paul sought to convert nonJews to the Jewish faith of Christ Crucified and Risen: Paul’s ministry was to bring us pagan Gentiles under the umbrella of Jesus’ own faith, so that, at the Second Coming, we, together with God’s Chosen People the Jews, would be saved into God’s new kingdom here on earth. And not only the faithful still living, but Paul assured those whose loved ones had died, that when Jesus returns he will bring the faithful dead with him: that both living and dead would gather in the clouds to meet Jesus.
Paul’s theology of Gentiles saved into the faith of Jesus Christ, is where we are this morning, All Saints Day, remembering and celebrating those we love who have died and gone on before, as in Time shall we also - - remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Episcopalians know a Latin phrase, lex orandi lex credendi, literally “the law of praying is the law of believing.” It means that to know and experience what we Anglican Christians believe, you must worship with us; because our theology is found in our liturgy, in what we do and say and sing and pray when we gather for worship. Just so, Holy Eucharist this morning is a theological occasion, as is a funeral, our liturgy for The Burial of the Dead, a theological occasion when we claim God’s promises through Jesus.
Not entirely like Paul, Jesus spoke of what scholars call “a realized eschatology,” that the kingdom of God is at hand. Step into God’s Kingdom here and now through love, a life of lovingkindness. Though somewhat like Paul, Jesus speaks of the Son of Man (perhaps himself, perhaps the cosmic figure in Daniel 7) the Son of Man coming in the glory of his Father with the holy angels, as a near-future event: “some here will not taste death before they see, perceive, understand, realize that the Kingdom of God has come with power.”
So, preaching to Jews, as Jesus said was his mission, Jesus was followed by Paul preaching to Gentiles, and for both, their teaching was of kingdom immediacy.
With the Second Coming delayed and delayed and delayed, the NT, Paul’s later writings, and the gospels, and such as Revelation, and Church teaching, moves from anxious immediacy of The End, to patient waiting for The End, to resignation or realization that Jesus will tarry. For Paul, and for Jesus (who said he was not omniscient like the Father), for them the First Century was not an age of Hubble telescope, astronomy, exploration, discovery, and (so we think) vast knowledge of interstellar space. Scientific knowledge of the Universe that we have today, puts earth’s End Time seven billion years away when our sun becomes a red giant star, expanding across and incinerating the solar system. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, but we in the Communion of Saints this morning hold that Mystery of Faith more distant than did the ancients. We preach Jesus’ Way of the Cross, a life of love and sacrifice as “realized eschatology,” the Kingdom of God now and forever; and most Christians today embrace the church’s faith claim, not of resurrection to judgment at the End of Earth, but that at death we pass into blessed new life with God.
Mindful then, that we are Christians not of certitude but of faith (Hebrews 11:1, faith is confidence in what we hope for, assurance of what we do not see), listen to what in faith we believe God does for us. These are assurances from the Burial Office:
"Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend ourselves and those we love. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, sheep of thine own fold, lambs of thine own flock, sinners of thine own redeeming. Receive us into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light.
"Give courage and faith to those who are bereaved, that we may have strength to meet the days ahead in the comfort of a reasonable and holy hope, in the joyful expectation of eternal life with those we love."
As they hung on crosses together that day, Jesus said to the repentant thief, “this day you will be with me in paradise.” And so, at the bedside of friend, loved one or stranger, at the hour of death, my prayer is this:
Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world, in the Name of God the Father who created you, in the Name of God the Son who redeemed you, in the Name of God the Holy Spirit who sanctifies you. May your resting place be this day in the paradise of God. May your company be God’s saints and holy angels, and those waiting whom you loved and who loved you in this life. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace; this day, and throughout the ages of ages.
All Saints, What is our assurance as Christians?
A. Our assurance as Christians is that nothing, not even death, shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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Sermon in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida, Sunday, November 5, 2017, Celebration of All Saints. The Reverend Tom Weller. Never printed from pride but always and only to keep a promise.