All Saints — Andy James

a sermon on 1 John 3:1-3
preached on November 2, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to appreciate several different kinds of storytelling. As a child, I tended to enjoy those stories that had a clear beginning, middle, and end, stories that began “once upon a time” and ended “happily ever after.” As satisfying as those sorts of stories can be, as I’ve grown older I’ve started to also enjoy stories that are a little less “finished,” stories that leave a bit more of the beginning and end to the imagination.

These latter kinds of stories can be a bit frustrating. Sometimes you just want to know what really happens to a character that you have come to know and love, but there’s no obvious ending in sight! However, I’ve come to realize that these stories are often the most realistic, as sometimes things aren’t quite that clear in the stories of our world and especially of our lives. As hard as we may try, we may not be able to understand how everything fits together. We may look back and look forward and still not have the whole picture of things. And we may wonder how things will end in a story—or for us, too.

Our scripture reading from 1 John this morning centers around our story with God, and it fits very well into those stories that have a clear beginning, middle, or end, those stories that leave us scratching our heads and wondering how everything will come together in the end. For the writer here, the past, present, and future of our stories will all connect, but not in ways that we will immediately understand.

The past where this story begins is almost unimportant for John. Our individual histories and stories are all wrapped up in “the love the Father has given us,” in the love that makes us children of God, but that’s about all he says about them. The present of our stories is fully wrapped up in just that, too, in our status as children of God that is very much ours here and now. And yet amidst all that confidence from the past and present, the future of our stories is a bit unclear, as “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” As much as we might have images like our bulletin cover this morning, with heavenly mansions, streets paved with gold, and reunions with loved ones, these visions are incomplete revelations of what is ahead for us. Not only do they miss the parts of our lives on earth that still lie before us, they ignore John’s reminder here that we simply don’t know what heaven will look like, what exactly will happen when we die, or when or even how our stories will end. Our human minds cannot understand these things that are beyond our knowledge and comprehension. All that is certain, John tells us, is that “when [Christ] is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” In that day, our vision will be clear. Through God’s power, our lives and our world will be made new. And as God guides us to this new life, our story will be complete.

John’s look at the stories of our lives is a wonderful way to start thinking about the multitude of stories that are on our minds today. Today on All Saints’ Sunday we remember the many stories of our sisters and brothers in the faith who have journeyed with us along the way. We especially remember the faithful witness of George Lenz and Jackie Danas, two of our own number who died over the last year after sharing a portion of their stories with us as we journeyed together in the faith, giving us wisdom and hope to walk a little further along the way together. Their two stories are only the beginning of the great cloud of witnesses who have walked before us and beside us—those who have shown us even a little something of what it means to be children of God. I suspect that each of us can point to any number of people who have been a part of the stories of our lives and have guided us to new and deeper understanding of God’s love for us.

But these stories do not stand alone. All these stories—and our own, too—are a part of God’s one big story, part of God’s divine plan not so much for each of our lives but for the life of the world, part of God’s new revelation and new creation that is coming into being through Christ. So today we also begin a time of thinking about our own stories, about the ways in which God has been at work in our lives to show us how we are God’s children now and to give us a glimpse of the things yet to come, about how our individual stories link to the larger ones around us, to the story of this congregation, our broader church, and all creation.

It’s easy to dismiss our stories as unimportant or uninteresting, but we are all God’s children now. We all bear a portion of this story in our lives. We all are a part of what God is up to in our world. Each of us has a part to play in the ongoing revelation of God’s story, and when we listen to one another’s stories, we get a little better glimpse of how we are connected to one another and to God. Over the coming weeks, starting next Sunday, we’ll be hearing the stories of some of our sisters and brothers who walk this journey of faith with us. They will tell us how God has been at work in their lives, both in this congregation and beyond. They will help us understand a bit of how they see God claiming them as God’s children here and now. And they might just give us a little glimpse of the things that are ahead for us in our common stories as we move into the days that God is preparing for us. If you’re interested in telling your story to us as part of this process, come and talk to me, or if you’re not, at least prepare yourself to hear from some others who walk with us a bit of the way as we get a better picture of how God’s story gets lived out in our midst.

As we live out God’s story here, as we embody our status as God’s children now, as we keep our eyes and hearts open to what is ahead, God’s story flows through us on the journey of faith. It is, then, our privilege and our responsibility to respond. So the last part of God’s story among us today comes as we consider our stewardship commitment for 2015. For some people, giving money to the church is like writing a check to any other charity, but I believe that what we give here is an important part of our story with God. Our gifts are our grateful response to the wonderful story that God has placed in each of our lives, and by God’s grace, our gifts too become part of God’s story in our midst. As we begin making our stewardship commitments for 2015 today, I hope and pray that you will think of how these gifts are a part of your story with God. Ultimately, our response to God’s presence in our lives is measured less by the size of our financial gifts and more by the depth and breadth of all the things that we bring to God along the way.

So may our story with this church and our story with God be broadened into this new day. May we look back to all the things that have made our story what it is before today, to all the saints who have shared a bit of it with us along the way. May we look around us now with gratitude for all the ways that we are God’s children here and now. And may we look forward to a day that has not yet been revealed and yet will be a most wonderful revelation when we will see the fullness of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

a sermon on Revelation 21:1-6a and Isaiah 25:6-9 for All Saints’ Sunday
preached on November 4, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

We’ve spent so much of this past week waiting: waiting for the storm to come, waiting for the winds to die down, waiting for the waters to recede, waiting for the lights to come back on, waiting for the bus and subway to start up again, waiting for heat, waiting for food, waiting for water, waiting for gas, waiting for word from our friends and family, waiting to get word to our friends and family, waiting for some sense of normal to return, waiting and waiting and waiting some more. In the midst of all that we have experienced this week, we’ve all spent some time waiting. To someone immersed in the life of the church like me, this is not the right time to wait—Advent, the season of waiting, is still a month away! But here we have it—Sandy made us wait, and we still have more waiting to do.

Then our texts today, two of the texts appointed in the lectionary for All Saints’ Day, also confront us with the challenge of waiting. All Saints’ Day this year comes at a perfect time—amidst everything that we’ve seen this week, a remembrance of the faithful who have died seems so very appropriate. But these texts don’t point us to a remembrance of the dead—rather, they talk about the things ahead for all of us, about the things we are all really waiting for.

They tell us of a new heaven and a new earth—not the reconstruction of a familiar place to its former glory, not the rebuilding of a flood-torn and fire-touched land, not the rebirth of a water-scarred world—but a new and different way of life and living, a changed world where God’s presence never goes away, where sorrow and pain are changed forever, where God steps in to wipe away all the tears from our eyes, where all things are made new. Our texts today tell us of a world where all people have everything that they need, where a great feast fills every emptiness, where the weariness of death and destruction itself will be destroyed, where all disgrace will be removed and every place will be made new.

But at the core of all these new things is what we have seen so well in our own world of late: waiting. There is no promise here that these things will come immediately, no guarantee that they will emerge on our timetable, no insistence that the pain at dusk today will be eased by dawn tomorrow. Instead, the promise is that the waiting will give God all the more glory!

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.

But on this All Saints’ Sunday, on this Sunday after Superstorm Sandy, we have the right to be ready to be done with our waiting. We’ve waited more than enough this past week, and we shouldn’t have to wait anymore. Those without power shouldn’t have to wait any more to get lights and heat and refrigerators and phone and television and internet. Those who haven’t been able to get to work because the trains weren’t running or work wasn’t open shouldn’t have to wait any more. Those who can’t yet get back home to see the damage and destruction of their neighborhoods shouldn’t have to wait any more. Those who don’t yet know if their friends and family survived the storm shouldn’t have to wait any more.

And yet we must wait. There’s nothing we can do at this point to get our lights on or the trains running or the islands made safe. So much of what must be done in these days is best left to those with the training, skills, and gifts to do it safely and efficiently. But even as we wait, there is something incredible going on. People are stepping up and saying that they want to help. Neighbors are stepping in to care for those in need, carrying water and fuel up many flights of stairs, opening their homes to those who have none, shouldering a bit of the burden in the midst of the storm. Women and men around the world are moved by what they have seen and want to respond—and by doing more than giving money to relief efforts. I suspect that one of the biggest unanticipated challenges for our civic leadership amidst this unprecedented disaster has been what to do with all those who are wanting to step in and help now, and I hope and pray that this spirit isn’t quashed by the necessary professional work of these days or the bureaucracy inherent in dealing with anything on a New York City scale!

But amidst the promises of something new and glorious ahead and the necessary pain and suffering of waiting, what are we to do? I think the waiting of these days calls us to do two things. First, we are called to put our trust in God, who waits with us. Not only is God preparing the new thing that is coming, God is waiting for it with us now. God is waiting with us in the presence of friends and family who listen to our complaints and hear our cries and remind us that we are not alone. God is waiting with us in neighbors who open their homes and clear the debris and share their tools and bear our burdens. God is waiting with us in strangers who show up in unexpected moments to offer us even a brief vision of grace. God is waiting with us in those who are working tirelessly to restore the networks of support that keep our community and our world running. God is waiting with us in the women and men who have gone before us and beside us and still bear witness to the way of life in faith. God is waiting with us in the communities that know us and love us and share the feast of faith with us. And so we have waited for God, with God, so that God might save us.

But also in the midst of our waiting, we are called to step up and act, to be the presence of God for others in the face of crisis, to journey with those who are also waiting, to support those who have the gifts and talents to step in all the more, to contribute to the well-being of all people who wait for the things of these days and more. The necessity of waiting, you see, is no excuse for inaction or complacency, for letting those who struggle every day struggle all the more, for allowing the usual order of things that prefers the powerful to go unquestioned, for suggesting that we can only help those who are able to help themselves.

I am glad to say that we as the church have already done some things to step up in the waiting of these days. Our church building was open this past week during the day for those who did not have power to have a warm place to sit and talk or work, charge their phones, and just get out of the house. But even before the storm, our annual offerings to the One Great Hour of Sharing collection helped pave the way for the very current response of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, who are on the ground in New York and New Jersey right now assessing the damage and planning their next steps over the long term recovery. And every Sunday this month, we’ll be receiving a special collection to assist with this important work of meeting the needs of those in greatest need and who have the most to wait for.

So in these days of waiting, may we ourselves embody the witness of the saints, trusting that God is waiting with us, giving thanks for the faithful presence of brave and heroic friends, neighbors, family, civic leaders, police officers, firefighters, paramedics, nurses, doctors, transit workers, ConEd line workers, and countless others, even as we ourselves offer the presence of God in the midst of the waiting of this recovery and the hope and promise that all things will be made new, once and for all.

May we know God’s presence in the midst of all our waiting until we share the great feast of heaven and earth with all people everywhere and the day of peace that now shines so dimly shines brightly everywhere forevermore. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Waiting for God