All Saints Sunday -- 04 November, 2007
St Paul Lutheran Church, ABQ NM -- The Rev. J. W. Korthauer
Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Psalm 149; Ehesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31
Grace and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ and may the Holy Spirit stir in your heart in remembrance of the Baptism that we all share. Amen.
How many of you are familiar with a phone service that gives special privileges to what they call a circle of friends? There are a series of commercials out and perhaps even different providers that offer similar programs but they usually limit the service in a couple of ways, it is either that you have to call the same brand of service or that you have a limit of your top 5 that are always free to call or text.
The commercials go on to relate in them that there is one group that doesn’t limit you like the other groups and it is illustrated in a number of funny ways everything from cheerleaders choosing the program that was more inclusive to all kinds of bad things happening to the ones that weren’t as inclusive.
In review the group that was the most inclusive is the one that the commercials label as the best and the one that is limiting on your freedom to include different brands or more than a certain number of people were left to have second thoughts about what they chose but also in the commercial have difficult problems to deal with like anger against them from outside and unexpected injuries.
It is perhaps fitting then that today we celebrate All Saints Day, Stewardship and Confirmation by affirmation of Baptism. It is a day to reflect on our “circle of friends” that we call the body of Christ. Today we enter the fray of mystery and the center of hope and reflect on the true freedom we have been granted by virtue of the sacrifice of our Lord and the adoption we received at baptism.
All Saints, we remember those that have newly entered the light of salvation and eternal life over the past year, perhaps over the past several years and we recall that they are for us still in our circle still on our call list, and still with us as we come to the table to celebrate a foretaste of the wedding feast which has no end.
Our Scriptures tell us that they holy ones shall receive the kingdom and possess it forever. (Dan) In Christ we have obtained our inheritance,
It is often the case that we take this time to celebrate those who have gone before us and their contributions here at this little corner of the in breaking of the kingdom, to celebrate what we have done in this place, but there are many rooms which God has prepared and far beyond the stretch of just St. Paul Lutheran.
What then we really are noting then is more than a celebration of the lives of the saints, the ones from here and the ones from far and the ones from all time, but we are celebrating thanksgiving of our privilege of participating in the mission of God in Christ Jesus
This passed weekend I had the opportunity to be a part of the 3rd Annual Consultation on the Missional Church held by and at Luther Seminary where I am Doctoral Student. The Consultation is an effort of a part of the church to become more whole by describing what it means to be the church in this time in history. It is seeking not just to answer the secular criticism that Christendom is over, that the so called mainline Protestants are in irreversible decline and that we are hopelessly aging, but to find out how to be the church not just to do church.
The conference and the movement work with a lot of givens but the one most important for our situation here is that it operates under the belief that God is in mission to continue reconciling the creation to God's self and that that mission is going to be accomplished according to who God is, Do we want to be a part of it.
Stewardship, in all of the images that it conjures up we are called to expand that understanding today too by the scriptures. It involves not just pocketbooks and treasure, by time, effort, our acceptance our love for each other.
Christ tells us the way to be, who are the poor among us, around us, in our city, in our country and in our world. Who have we left out of the conversation, the worship service who has been excluded, because God wants them? Have your laughing now, but do not forget those who weep.
Christ describes a world in the Gospels that quite a bit more harsh than even the evening news portrays, if you are struck on the cheek, offer the other, if they take your coat give also you shirt. Systems of injustice are all around us and participated in by us and they have the potential to kill us…but we have been freed. By the death of Christ we have been freed, since the death of Christ we have been freed to no longer to fear any other kind of death since we have died in Christ and been raised to newness of life in baptism.
Not only God’s created people are to be beneficiaries of our stewardship, but also God’s creation and animals and plants and air.
One might think of those two subjects as past and present and of confirmation as our future. I beg to differ I commend that you reconsider these students these confirmands as a fulfillment of our past promises and the church of now.
Their statements of faith no only cover the basics but dive deep to the heart of community, the essence of what makes us Christ’s people and they are filled with hope, that we are called here together not as a community that worships a God of a future kingdom, but one that has come near like Christ proclaimed and is being ushered in. They want to be a part of the kingdom now, to help usher it in.
The understand the world has lost some hope, that many are cynical, they know the promise of Jesus was not just to those in this room, but to the whole world, they can describe there relationship to God in terms like friendship/but not quite they know faith is about action and not simple affirmation, they have seen the poor and reached out and empathized. They have done all this and still they want to become even closer to God.
In baptism they were marked with the cross of Christ forever, claimed gathered and sent for the sake of not just this place, not just to increase our bottom line to add to our roles, but for the sake of the world.
Christ has called them to affirm this day that they will strive for peace and justice in all the world and will wrestle on the side of a welcoming God in a world bent on making war, suffering from exclusion and hunger, and starved for jus t a little bit of hope.
There is another way, Christ has shown it, these confirmands have seen it and I invite you to join me in standing by them as they now fully join the mission of God for the world as adult members in Christ’s church.