Revelation 21.1-6a; John 11.32-44

Revelation 21.1-6a; John 11.32-44

The custom of commemorating All Saints Sunday, as we are doing today, is ancient. We’ve been doing this a long time: since the 3rd century. For Episcopalians, All Saints’ Day is so important that if the actual date, November 1, falls on a weekday, we move the feast to Sunday so we can celebrate it. We don’t even do that for Christmas!

The saints are an important part of what makes Christianity what it is. Ours is an embodied faith. It’s not merely spiritual thoughts but a way of life. Christianity is a faith that believes God entered human history through creation and covenants; that God entered the fullness of human life in the person of Jesus; and that God is seen in and through the lives of the people around us, both the living and the dead: “Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” Today we remember with thanksgiving the people who have gone before us and who have lived and loved and died in faith. We are one community in Christ, a communion, all of God’s people across space and time, in heaven and on earth.

About our lives with the saints, the New Testament letter of Hebrews says that we are “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses,” a great stadium with all the faithful in Christ cheering us on from the stands as we continue to run the race set before us. The collect, our opening prayer, gives thanks for this community of saints in life and death and says, “Almighty God, you have knit your people together in one communion in the mystical body of your Son.” If you are a knitter, you share in God’s work. God knits! Who knew?

We are knit together by God, bound together in Christ. This is a picture of assurance and security. But we also know how fragile life is. “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” says William Butler Yeats. Life as we live it doesn’t always hold together the way we desire. That’s made clear with the names of the dead in our Book of Remembrance, people dear to us in our prayers and in our hearts. They may be in the nearer presence of God, as we believe they are; yet each of us who has asked for them to be included in prayer feels the absence of each of them. There may be things to celebrate about the lives of people who have died. But there’s no denying the reality of death or the sense of loss and grief that go with it. Relationships change. Bonds that once united us come undone. Death unravels so much of what was once knit together. That is why St Paul calls death an enemy.

We sense the pain of death, and the sorrow that comes with it, at the beginning of today’s gospel. Mary speaks to Jesus with all the heartache of someone whose beloved family member has died. Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus has just died. In the verses right before today’s gospel begins, we read that Lazarus has fallen ill. So the sisters send for Jesus. By the time he arrives, however, it appears to be too late. Mary lays out all her sadness to Jesus. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” In other words, things should’ve turned out differently.

In our own troubles and grief, is there anyone who hasn’t felt this: ‘If only I could turn back the clock;’ ‘If only I had gone to the doctor;’ ‘If only I’d taken the time to say the things I meant to say.’ When we find ourselves in valleys as dark as death, questions of faith come up, too: ‘Why?’ ‘Lord, where were you when I needed you?’ All of that can be heard when Mary says to Jesus, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Bonds that once united us do come undone; life as we know it unravels. Yet God is the one who knits us together. And God will hold us secure—in life, in death, and in our sorrow. The center holds because Jesus himself is that center. We can bring all our grief and sadness, all our heartbreak and questions of faith to Jesus because he knows them firsthand. When Jesus saw how Mary and Martha’s life had come apart because their brother Lazarus had died, Jesus wept. He didn’t overlook their difficulties. He didn’t say their tears are beside the point. He didn’t rely on the platitudes we sometimes rely on when we’re at a loss for words at death: ‘He’s in a better place;’ ‘She has her angel wings.’ No. Jesus wept.

There’s nothing better than we can do in grief than to “to weep with those who weep,” to borrow a line from elsewhere in the New Testament. Jesus wept. And he is with us in our sorrow “Where have you laid him?” Jesus asks Mary and the others. “Come and see,” they say and lead him to Lazarus’ grave. “Come and see,” we might say as we lead Jesus to the place of our deepest sorrow. His life is for us even there. “When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…you, O Lord, are with me.” St Paul, in one of his letters, says he doesn’t want us to grieve like people who have no hope. But we do grieve. Even with faith and hope, grief is still grief and can be very bitter.

When Jesus raises Lazarus, all of God’s love and life are brought into focus in one place. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, that same love and life come to us. And that life begins now. Resurrection is not just God’s promise for a future day, though it is that. Resurrection is not just God’s pledge that we will be delivered from sorrow and death and that God “will wipe every tear from our eye;” though it is that, too. Resurrection is more than Jesus raised on the third day after his crucifixion; though that is central to Christianity and our faith depends on it. Resurrection is not just something Jesus does. Resurrection is who Jesus is. “I am the resurrection and the life,” he says in the verses just before we pick up the story with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” And because resurrection is who he is, Jesus gives hope to our life even now.

In 1st Corinthians, Paul talks about the power of Christ and his resurrection as a gift for our present moment. First, he looks to the future and says, “All people will be made alive in Christ.” And then, because of the pledge of this future life, Paul calls us to be people of hope and life today. “Be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain.” Your labor is not in vain and your life is not in vain. Because Christ is risen from the dead, your life is now filled with Jesus’ life.

That gives us courage and strength in the present moment. And it gives hope for the future. NT Wright says, “Every act of love, gratitude, generosity, and kindness; every work of art inspired by the love of God; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support; every prayer and every deed that spreads the gospel, that builds up the church, and that embraces holiness rather than cynicism,” is God’s work and life among us. Every deed that embraces holiness rather than cynicism is God’s work and life among us. This is the work of the saints and our calling as living saints. For that is who we are: saints. In the New Testament all God’s people are called ‘saints,’ the living and the dead. We are made saints in Christ and because of Christ even though we all remain works-in-progress. Be steadfast, immovable. Your life and your labor are not in vain.”

Life in Christ is our future hope and our present calling in acts of care and nurture, of generosity and kindness, of prayer and loving service—today remembering those who have died and comforting those who mourn. With the saints who have gone before us and the saints who live among us, we share in the work of God in the world until the day when death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, when God will wipe all tears from our eyes and all things will be made new. Until that day, we live in the sure and certain hope that belongs to all the saints. God has knit us together across space and time. We bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise. The center holds because Jesus Christ, who died and rose again, is that center. In him, our lives are held secure with all the saints, in heaven and on earth.