A WORD FOR TODAY, October 30, 2024
Peggy Hoppes
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Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, October 30, 2024
Lectionary Scriptures for November 3, 2024, Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost or All Saints’ Sunday: Deuteronomy 6:1–9; Psalm 119:1–8; Hebrews 9:11–14 (15–22); Mark 12:28–37 or Revelation 7:(2-8) 9-17; Psalm 149; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12
Death is a fact of life. Since the day that Adam and Eve chose to believe the word of the serpent and eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we have been cast out into the world where there is suffering and death. Everyone will die, even those who do everything humanly possible to ward off illness and the end of life. This is a fact, but it does not make death any easier. We suffer the ravages of old age, the sting of dis-ease, and the danger in this imperfect world. Death comes in too many ways to list; it comes quickly in the night or lingers for years. Death is often the consequence of our own behavior, but it can also come from others who by accident or choice have taken life into their own hands.
We do not celebrate when death comes knocking on our door; we experience grief and an incredible sense of loss when someone we love dies. We are exhausted by it, especially if death took a long time coming. We are shocked when it comes by an accident or by violence. We are often afraid of what will happen after the death of someone we love, especially if the dearly departed is someone who provided support for us. We do not celebrate these deaths, although we do find the strength and courage to celebrate their lives. When we die, we tell our loved ones not to cry for us, but to go on with their lives. No matter how much we insist on joy, death will always bring sorrow.
That’s ok because God never intended for death to be a fact of life. Adam and Eve made a choice, and that choice separated all humankind from the intimate relationship that they had with God in the Garden of Eden. However, even while death became the problem, God was already working on the solution. He knew from the day of Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden that He would make it possible for mankind to have the eternal life He intended. He planned for the Christ to pay the price that would free God’s people from death, guaranteeing those who believe will have eternal life. As Christians we know there is a reason to celebrate the death of one of God’s people: they aren’t really dead. They continue to live on in the Kingdom; they no longer have to rely on hope or faith because they walk in the Garden again with their Father the Creator.
As Christians, each year we celebrate the lives of those saints who have moved from this world to the next on All Saints Day, November 1st. We don’t really think of this as a multiple day celebration, but it actually begins on October 31st and ends on November 2nd, a triduum honoring the dead. October 31st is All Hallow’s Eve, a vigil service which can include a prayer for light and readings from the scriptures. Halloween has become something much different, as houses are covered with graveyards and fake body parts covered in blood, children young and old dress as zombies or fictional murderers as they go door to door begging for sweets.
I have a love/hate relationship with Halloween for this very reason. I have changed my view on Halloween a dozen different times in the last few decades. Sometimes I have looked at it from the point of view as good clean fun. As a matter of fact, there was a time when Halloween was one of my favorite holidays. I had such fun dressing up in costume, over-decorating the house, and giving candy to the multitudes of children that visited our home. At other times I have taken a less positive perspective. There are things about Halloween that is not acceptable in our Christian life.
Trick-or-Treat is tomorrow and I still have not decided if we are going to participate. We are thinking that we should just turn off as many lights as possible in our house and lay low for the evening. Our neighborhood hosts a lot of children, with a traffic jam at our corner as parents from distant places drop off their kids because they think we are rich. Our neighbor counts the number of children that visit their home, and they usually give to over three hundred children. I might still go get candy and turn on our lights, but after nearly two months of no rain we might have severe weather in the evening.
I struggle with the whole idea of Halloween, not because some Christians suggest that it has pagan roots and its focus on the scary supernatural characters, but because the worst vices of which we are guilty are in full array on Halloween. Besides the obvious vice of sorcery, there are several that are particularly appropriate to discuss on Halloween. I can’t imagine our children behaving sexually or with drunkenness, although too many costumes these days are “sexy” this or that, even costumes for little ones.
How about gluttony? The children stuff their faces with candy. Greed? “Just one more house, Mom, please?” Pride? “My costume is better than yours.” I like to have fun and to pretend, but as Christians we are expected to uphold a certain standard every day of the year, including Halloween. We are meant to live a different sort of life, which we can see in some of the children who were taught to say “please” and “thank you” and to be considerate to the others who are there to have fun. Those children make Halloween fun for me.
This talk of Halloween seems to have nothing to do with the topic of this week’s Midweek Oasis. Yet, it has everything to do with it. Halloween has become a holiday about death with ghosts and zombies, but All Hallow’s Eve leads us into All Saints’ Day which is a time when we remember the saints who have passed through this life into life eternal. Unfortunately, the world has added the icons of evil and death and has made this a holiday that brings out the worst in people. As we recall the memories of those we love, let us make this night about fun, laughter and sharing instead.
Christianity is a religion of light. Jesus Christ is the light of the world. The All Hallows Eve vigil liturgy and scripture is meant to point us to the light that is Christ who overcame death and darkness. The Vigil is followed by All Saints Day which commemorates the Saints known and unknown. In older times, the Saints honored were local martyrs with ties to specific places. As the Saints became known from parish to parish, the day began to focus on the body of Saints, all those who were beatified. They are the ones who have achieved that life that God intended, who have been restored to Him through grace and who lived as God intended. They give us an example of the Christian life, the willingness to follow Christ anywhere, and the courage to face even the most difficult times for His sake. We teach that the saints are not just those who are remembered by name throughout the year, but all those who believe in Jesus. You are a saint. I am a saint. We are saints.
All Souls Day is the third day which completes the triduum; it is a day of prayer for the dead. Prayer for the dead has been practiced in the Jewish as well as Christian faiths for at least a millennium, but most Christians reject the idea of purgatory and question the practice of praying for the dead, and so the triduum of the dearly departed has been condensed into All Saints Day. All three days of the triduum is meant to teach us something important, however. All Soul’s Day reminds us of the dead who did not die in faith. It is a reminder to us that there are many in this world who still need to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that they can believe and become one of the saints that will spend eternity in the heavenly Zion.
We have melded all the ideas of this triduum, but the celebration of All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day focuses on the promise of the Light overcoming darkness. Death is destroyed for the sake of God’s people, and we find comfort in the reality that those who have passed from this world are not dead but live in God’s eternal kingdom. In the triduum, we see the light; we still live on earth and still rely on the hope that we are children of God and someday we will join those who have gone before us to dwell in God’s presence forever.
There are too many who do not have the assurance of God’s promises or the expectation of eternal life. They are frightened by death and do whatever they can to avoid it. While we should take care of our bodies, we do so not because we are afraid of death but because we know God has work for us to do. The greatest work, of course, is to introduce others to our Lord Jesus Christ. We will mourn because death is a part of this fallen and broken world, but we are comforted by the Word of God that tells us this life is only a momentary journey on our way to eternity in the heavenly Zion. We believe and we are blessed. We find comfort in the promise that our mourning will one day come to an end forever as God Himself wipes away our tears. This is what All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day commemorates.
We celebrate All Saints on Sunday, but it is important to note that our celebration is about more than remembering our beloved dead. It is indeed a time to thank God for their witness. We were brought into the fellowship of believers by those we love who shared the Gospel with us. We are called to live as they lived, as witnesses so that those who are yet to come will have the opportunity to hear God’s Word and believe. We are saints and that means something. It means we are God’s children called to a life of worship and praise, of service and justice, of love and peace and joy. Though the life that awaits us after death is greater than anything we can experience in this world, we still have work to do here and now.
The promise of God is not that we’ll be saved from suffering at the hands of our enemies. By His grace we have been saved from the greatest enemy: death. We have the promise of eternal life, an inheritance beyond anything we can imagine. How much more should we praise God for His grace and mercy? We are called to live a daily life of thanksgiving and praise to God for everything. Jesus Christ has made it possible for us to dwell now in the Kingdom of Heaven even as we wait longingly to join those who are already singing the eternal doxology of praise at the foot of God’s throne in robes made whiter than we can even imagine.
People die. Injustice exists. Too many people are willing to step on others to get ahead which is sometimes quite visible in the festivities of Halloween. We will suffer. We would like to think that the promises found in the beatitudes will be fulfilled in this life; they sometimes are. I have found comfort in the love of my family and friends. I have experienced mercy. I’ve known the presence of God and seen His face in the faces of my brothers and sisters in Christ. I've shared in the waters of life and God has indeed wiped away my tears. Yet, I know that I will still feel hunger and thirst. I will cry again before I pass into life eternal.
Still, we have to live in this world until we are called into the next. Moses wrote in Deuteronomy, “These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart; 7 and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.” We are to introduce Jesus to others, particularly our children, so that the Word of God will be written on their hearts. When the Word dwells within us, we walk in the light and live according to God’s good and perfect Law.
The Law was not given to oppress or burden the people, but to protect them. God’s Law is not a bunch of rules that we have to keep, it is a sign, a gift. The Law was given so that the people would remember God and look to Him always. Whenever they turned away, disobedient to the Law and their God, they suffered the consequences of a broken relationship. When they observed the commandments, they enjoyed the blessed life that God promised. The commandments are instructions about relationships, how to keep them strong – first with God, then with each other. They also affect our relationship with ourselves. When these relationships are broken, we have no peace or joy.
Many parents give their children the freedom to come to faith on their own. They don’t want to drag a child to church only to have them reject it when they are older. Instead, they let the children choose if they want to be Christian or whatever. The problem with this practice is that faith comes from hearing. How will they know if they never hear God’s Word spoken? Are you forcing faith when you take a child to Sunday school and worship during their childhood? It is not bondage; it is a gift. We are called as parents to give to our children the same opportunity to know Jesus as we were given. If we don’t, they won’t. We have a responsibility to not only to teach others about Jesus, but to help them become disciples of Christ throughout their lives.
The Law will never make someone a Christian, and following the Law will never make someone righteous. We can’t do it on our own. But even as Adam and Eve believed the word of the serpent over the word of God, God had a plan to make everything right. Human beings have always tried to accomplish reconciliation with God by our own power. Even the scriptures give us temporary solutions to the problem. Priests offered sacrifices to atone for the sins of the people. Even though they tried to live according to the Law, there was always something that was not right. The blood of goats and sheep poured on the altar for the sake of the people was never permanent. That type of sacrifice would never make everything right. Sin was too great for mankind to overcome.
The writer of Hebrews makes it clear: the old ways were not good enough. The blood of goats and sheep could not do the job. Only the blood of Jesus would bring us the assurance of the promises of God. The reality of what will be came with His willingness to be obedient to what God intended. Nothing we can do can change that. We are made holy by His holiness, and in that holiness are freed and empowered to live as God intends for us to live: loving Him and our neighbor with our entire being.
A scribe approached Jesus when He was in the middle of a debate with the Sadducees. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, and so were arguing with Jesus about what would happen to a woman who had married seven brothers, all of whom died without an heir. “Whose wife will she be?” they asked. Jesus answered that the new life after resurrection is different, that there is no marriage. He also reminded them that God referred to Israel’s patriarchs in the present tense to Moses, despite their being dead for generations, proving that God is the God of the living, not the dead.
The scribe wasn’t as an aggressive adversary like the others, trying to prove Jesus wrong. He had a sincere desire to talk and learn. The teacher of the law liked what he heard, and asked Jesus which commandment was the most important one. Jesus quoted two Old Testament passages, including a verse from our Old Testament passage for the day. “Hear, 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..” Then He quoted Leviticus 19 which gave a second command. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The man answered, “Truly, teacher, you have said well that he is one, and there is none other but he, 33 and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” He accepted Jesus’ authority as a teacher and expounded upon the lesson, thus showing himself an authority, also.
No one asked Jesus any more questions. This was a turning point in His ministry. He had already been triumphantly welcomed into Jerusalem. The Jewish leaders tried to catch him in every type of foible: social, religious, and political. There were no questions left to ask, but Jesus still has something to say.
It seems that at least a few of the leaders were beginning to understand and believe in Jesus. But the rest knew they had to find a way to stop Him. Jesus did nothing to ease their fears. Jesus did not fear what would come because He knew that it was the way it must be. The time He spent with the disciples and His followers was wonderful, but the cross was the reason He was born. The cross was the answer to our failure in the Garden of Eden. The forgiveness promised to God’s people would only come after Jesus completed His work in this world. Hope for the future would never be found at the end of a debate over law or in the opinions of men. It would be found only in the blood of the Savior, shed on the cross.
When the scribe agreed that Jesus had spoken well about the two great laws, Jesus answered, “You are not far from God’s Kingdom.” Those words are given to us, too. We are not far from the kingdom of God. It might seem like we are, particularly when our world is as confused and upset as it is, particularly when we have to deal with the deaths of those we love. People might go to church on a regular basis, but do they know why they believe? Do they understand the tenets of faith? Do they care about God’s Word with a passion that can’t be silenced? People still live by fear. They still try to earn their way into heaven. They still offer sacrifices (though usually not blood) to appease the gods.
We are part of the community of saints from the moment we are baptized into Christ, having heard the saving word of forgiveness and welcomed into the loving embrace of our Father. We are saints, just as those who have already passed through death into eternal life are saints, and this day is also for us. I know it is difficult to believe. After all, we continue to fail to live up to the expectations of the Law. We continue to break the relationships that God has given to us. We try to love God and our neighbor, but we can’t; we sin in thought, word, and deed, by what we do and what we don’t do.
And yet we, like the scribe in the Gospel lesson, are not far from the kingdom of God. We are made saints not by our own faith or works. Those we celebrate during the triduum are saints and so are we because Jesus became the perfect sacrifice and died for us. His blood was not temporary like the sacrifices we make on the altars where we worship. His blood is so much greater because it was shed by God to restore us to Him as He promised Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. His plan to make things right was finished on the cross.
We live in the hope of what will come, but we live today, too. While we will continue to fail, we are called to be the best we can be. The Law, which once made us see how much human beings need Jesus, is a gift that keeps on giving because it helps us to live in faith. As the psalmist wrote, “Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to Yahweh’s law. Blessed are those who keep his statutes, who seek him with their whole heart.”
Blameless? That word is sometimes translated “perfect.” I’ll never be perfect, but I can look to God to help me live as He wants me to live, beginning with loving God. As we love God, will we strive to know Him, to understand His Word and to make it our own. When the Word dwells within us, we walk in the light and live according to God’s Word, obedient like Jesus by His grace and for His glory.
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