All Saints, Year B

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”
~John 11:39a
 
It is no accident that this All Saints Sunday comes to us in the fall in the northern hemisphere. Daylight wanes. Animals are busy preparing for winter. A season is ending. But as the trees drop their leaves, the harvest is in full motion. Seeds for a spring that seems far in the future, are gathered and planted. Sorrow and joy are so often such close companions. It is no less true for Jesus who weeps for Lazarus only breaths before he raises him to life. Death and new life are intricately linked. They are chapters in our same story of God-with-us.
 
On the eve of a consequential election, it is good for us to remember—to remember our stories and the people who shaped them in their own time. It informs our own way of being in our time. Our confidence, our sense of agency going forward is so deeply dependent on our memory of God with us throughout time and space, in and out of season. It is good to remember that God is not just God when things go well, but that, indeed, our faith is built equally well for difficulty and uncertainty as celebration.
 
What stories do you need to mark, remember, unearth, mourn, and celebrate this year? This Sunday we will again take time to remember and bless those who have gone before us. Bring pictures or a token of remembrance with you as we remember the saints of our own and our collective stories and lean in once again to holiness of all life.
 
Enter into worship.
 
Readings: Isaiah 25:6-9 † Psalm 24 † Revelation 21:1-6a † John 11:32-44
 
About the Art: Mural of Christ's tears over the bombs of war, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55059 [retrieved October 21, 2024]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/69705352@N04/6335749211/.

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