a tale that is told
For the upcoming Sunday, 3 November, we have lectionary options: EITHER the Propers for the Sunday closest to November 2, Proper 26 Year B, OR those for All Saints Day Year B, November 1. It's the priest's choice, but seeing that All Saints Day is one of the seven principal feast days of the church year, we might expect All Saints to be celebrated, including singing memorable hymns for the occasion.
Both possibilities are out there, though, so I looked at the gospel readings for both, Jesus raising Lazarus at John 11:32f (scroll down), and Jesus affirming the two great commandments at Mark 12:28f (scroll down).
Focusing more on All Saints Day, the John reading is singularly significant, all of chapter 11. This includes the event that immediately follows, John 11:45-53, where the temple leaders resolve to put Jesus to death because his raising Lazarus has caused many of the faithful to shift their allegiance from them to Jesus (mind, Gospel John's story is different from the synoptics in almost every subtly conceivable way, including the sequence of events: in the synoptics the drummed-up reason for Jesus' death sentence is his blasphemy, at the very end of Mark, Matthew, and Luke).
Also, Gospel John has the temple elders conversing; and Caiaphas, unwittingly, in a conversation that Gospel John would have us understand theologically, prophecies that Jesus' will die for the nation and to unite the dispersed people of God.
It is also noticeable that John has the temple elders call what Jesus does, not "a miracle (dynamis, a work of power)," but "semeion," a sign. Unique again to Gospel John, the "semeia," the signs, are not "incidental" or happenstance as in the synoptics when Jesus just happens upon a situation of dire human need, but Jesus' deliberate acts that show and tell (signs) Gospel John's audience (then and now) who and what Jesus is.
Further, as more than just "an aside," to many scholars, the Lazarus story identifies Lazarus, rather than the disciple John, as "the disciple Jesus loved." And the controversial Secret Gospel of Mark serves to enforce that. But the point is All Saints Day, so I'll not go there.
Except maybe to wonder, Why is there no St. Lazarus Episcopal Church? And maybe, Is there an Episcopal Church of St. Martha & St. Mary?
What is the All Saints significance of the designated All Saints gospel reading? At HNEC we can count on an excellent sermon opening this up for us. In the meantime, perhaps the raising of Lazarus signifies that the power of God, working through the Logos as in the beginning of creation, can bring life out of the nothingness that is death, for us as well.
It is a fact, though, that, whereas we like to cling to Luke 23:43 where Jesus tells the repentant thief, "Today you will be with me in paradise," the vision and promise is actually not about Heaven somewhere spiritual, but about being physically raised into the new kingdom of God on earth, where the Son of Man will rule as God's regent. That comes at "the End of Days," "the Day of the Lord," the Eschaton, the End of Time (and in Christian terms the Second Coming); and the other All Saints readings, Wisdom, Isaiah, the Psalm, and Revelation, are of that line. Two thousand years ago, Paul taught that it was imminent in his own lifetime: Paul was wrong.
In thinking anything is "imminent," we need to abandon our own human three-score-and-ten lifetime perspective in favor of the divine perspective expressed in Psalm 90, from the KJV:
Psalm 90
1 Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.
3 Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.
4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
5 Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.
6 In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
7 For we are consumed by thy wrathful indignation, and by thy wrath are we troubled.
8 Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
9 For all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.
10 The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.
11 Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.
12 So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
The psalm is perfect: when all is said and done and we are dead and gone, we are but a tale that is told. A Jewish theology holds that we live on through the stories of those who remember us.
The idea of Not Being is an impossibly difficult thing for a sentient human being to grasp, so difficult that over Time the faith of the church has shifted from Paul's theology of the General Resurrection, our being raised and saved into the coming kingdom of God on earth at the End of Days, to belief that "salvation" is in passing through death directly into a heavenly afterlife. The notion of oblivion, non-being that is not even darkness, but nothing whatsoever, is impossible for us to know and understand, much less accept as the destiny of all living things; and so belief, faith, evolves to accommodate what we hope.
asleep in Jesus until the trumpet sounds. IDK. Neither do you.
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It was my initial intent to comment also on the Mark 12 gospel reading for Proper 26B, but I'll let that go.
RSF&PTL
T89&c
John 11:32-44
When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go.”
Mark 12:28-34
One of the scribes came near and heard the Sadducees disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ —this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question.
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Here are the supporting Propers for the All Saints Day gospel, Year B:
Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
The other readings for All Saints Day, Year B:
Old Testament: Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9
The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them.
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster,
and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.
For though in the sight of others they were punished, their hope is full of immortality.
Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself;
like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them.
In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble.
They will govern nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them forever.
Those who trust in him will understand truth, and the faithful will abide with him in love,
because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones, and he watches over his elect.
or
Old Testament: Isaiah 25:6-9
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.
The Psalm: Psalm 24
1 The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, * the world and all who dwell therein.
2 For it is he who founded it upon the seas * and made it firm upon the rivers of the deep.
3 "Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? * and who can stand in his holy place?"
4 "Those who have clean hands and a pure heart, * who have not pledged themselves to falsehood, nor sworn by what is a fraud.
5 They shall receive a blessing from the Lord * and a just reward from the God of their salvation."
6 Such is the generation of those who seek him, * of those who seek your face, O God of Jacob.
7 Lift up your heads, O gates; lift them high, O everlasting doors; * and the King of glory shall come in.
8 "Who is this King of glory?" * "The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle."
9 Lift up your heads, O gates; lift them high, O everlasting doors; * and the King of glory shall come in.
10 "Who is he, this King of glory?" * "The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory."
The Epistle: Revelation 21:1-6a
I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
"See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."
And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true." Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end."