(Year B) Isaiah 25: 6-9, Rev. 21: 1-6; John 11: 32-44
Grace and peace to you on this morning, one of the great festivals of
the Church Year, and certainly for many years now around St. Andrew’s the
centerpiece of a high season of worship and music—and with thanks to Tom Octave
and all our choir and our orchestral musicians this morning for such exceptional and graceful offerings.
The weekend beginning this past Thursday evening with our own I think unique
service of All Saints Lessons and Carols and then last night with the
spectacular organ recital of our guest organist Joseph Nolan, who is Organist
and Master of the Choristers at St. George’s Cathedral in Perth, Australia, and
who before taking that position was Organist to Her Majesty’s Chapels Royal of
St. James’s Palace, in London. The position he held the last time he played
here at St. Andrew’s. And Pete Luley,
who pulls this all together somehow every year, Carrie Smith and our friends of
the Music Guild, Jen Palmer, George Knight, Joan Soulliere, Jinny Fiske and the hospitality crew, Becky Usner. As always, the list just goes on and on.
Abundant thanks, as we are truly surrounded by a Great Cloud of
Witnesses, Christian friends in this moment of our lives, loved ones, family
and friends, mentors, neighbors and heroes, who have gone on into Greater Life before us,
and I think always as well with an awareness of those who will come after us,
in this place, and in the life of the wider Church as it is called together
generation by generation by our Lord Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.
It is for us this morning when you get right down to it, when you see
right through this moment to its deepest meaning and message, the heart of
things, all about the Cross on Friday
and the Empty Tomb on Easter Sunday morning and then the great crescendo and
climax at the Mount of the Ascension, as our Risen Lord and Savior is exalted
to his eternal place at the Right Hand of the Father to judge and to rule from
henceforth and for all time past, present, and future with his perfect
gentleness and his perfect justice, his grace and peace. Cosmic.
It is for us this morning all about his great and final Victory over
Death and the Grave, the forces of Evil, the dark power of corruption and decay
that would turn us and all the created order against God. All about his Victory, both for us each of us
in our individual personhood, as we experience that victory personally in the
hope now of resurrection, in the courage and faith that give us strength to
live our lives in the comfort of a reasonable and holy hope, in the joyful
expectation of eternal life with those we love.
For us personally, but not only
for us personally, but in the assurance of the great victory and transformation
in Christ of the whole of creation. That
the miracle of that midnight in Bethlehem and all the songs of the angels echo
to the farthest corners of the most distant corner of creation. The hopes and fears of all the years. The incarnation that points us to the great
morning of St. John’s vision, in the 21st chapter of his Revelation,
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first
earth were passed away . . . . And I
saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband. And
I heard a voice out of heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with
men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself
will be with them, and be their God.’”
That is something to sing about! All the music that can be offered up in the story of our lives. The Victory of Jesus, his triumph, his
continuing presence. In our lives. In his Church. Reaching out through us to the wide world in
the power of the Spirit. What it is that
every saint and hero does for us, tells us about. The sermon every one of them
preaches from start to finish, not only with their lips, but in their lives. Talking the talk and walking the walk.
And filling our hearts with the
truest of hopes, as we pray “thy Kingdom come on earth, as it is in
heaven.” For that day, as the Prophet
said, when “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the
Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
The saints remind us of that, as they inspire in us a desire to live
holy lives. Hints and clues and
anticipations of the Kingdom coming in Christ Jesus. Our one true hope. When you hear about them, read about them,
meet them, to say, “Boy, I want some of that.”
Who are the saints like that for you?
Again, famous heroes of the faith, or a father or mother, a grandmother,
a neighbor, a friend.
All about the Victory of his love. The saints of the Red Letter Days on
the calendar, and even more, actually, the saints you meet in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in
shops, or at tea. As the song
goes. One was a soldier, and one was a priest, and one was slain by a fierce
wild beast, and there’s not any reason, no not the least, why I shouldn't be
one too.
This dramatic confrontation.
High noon. All the powers of sin
and death in their vast numbers and pervasive presence. And Jesus.
And the three words that echo against the sky and for all eternity: Lazarus, come out. And the enemy takes flight. His power disappears, as when the sun begins
to shine over the morning fog. In Jesus,
God’s victory, and our victory.
His Body is Bread for the whole world.
His blood a new promise of God’s faithfulness and love, poured out not
for the few but for the many. A great
multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and
peoples and tongues.
My prayer is that we will each one of us know that this morning. That this will be a blessing for you. A sign of our citizenship in the new
Jerusalem of God. The healing and
forgiveness, mercy and grace, of our Lord Jesus Christ. A spirit of joy and wonder. For us.
You and me. His Holy Spirit. We would kneel this morning alongside the
apostles and prophets and martyrs of every age, past, present, and those of
years and generations to come, known only to God.
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