All Saints’ Day

All Saints’ Day: The Dead

November 5, 2017 by Cam Miller

Primary Text: The dead, our lives
Nominal Text: Matthew 22:34-46

The dead rise up out of our lives
like mist ascending off water at dawn.
Up they rise from the work of our hands and heart,
animate the travel of our feet, and
fill the corpuscles of memory.

The dead are proof that no one is self-made.

The dead are proof
that we have come this way before
and learned from the experience.

The dead are proof
we are not alone and never have been.

Ghosts, spirits, or not
they haunt and bless our lives as do the living,
yet our awareness of them thins in their absence
and so they parade invisibly
through the din of our busy-ness.

But here they are, the dead,
having had a hand in building us
one cell at a time.
There is not a single strand of DNA
or thought
or action
or value
or belief
or idea
or hope
that does not have the dead written upon it.
We are a composite of them,
and we are the living dead.

There is nothing spooky or morose
or even grievous about it.

We are an amalgam and extension
of those who came before
and simple humility begs us know it.

Often we recall how the dead wounded us
or infected us with lame ideas,
or were old fashioned
and never learned new math,
or some other thing that the dead never were.
But WE are what the dead were, and then some:
a dash of this
and a tablespoon of that,
a 1/4 teaspoon more here
and a whole piece with the skin left on it over there.
All baked by time
until it ends up as a dish like us.

So All Saints’ Day comes along
and it is thanksgiving:
thanksgiving for ALL the saints.
ALL the saints –
the ones with a capital “S”
and the billions more that were saints
with only a little “s.”

It is worth remembering
that in The Episcopal Church
the only dead we award the title of saint,
with capital “S,”
are Biblical characters.
Even the really big dead, like
Francis or
Theresa or
Julian or
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
are only small “s” saints,
just like you and I will one day be saints with a little “s.”

The dead may not be remembered equally
but all the dead are equal.
So today is thanksgiving with a small “t.”
A day we set aside to give thanks
for ALL the saints, and equally important,
to remember that we are a composite of the dead
and very little else.

We are not self-made,
we are not the masters of our own destiny,
and we are not a radically new creation.
We are the living dead
and we will go on living after we are dead,
through the living.

It’s a pretty cool system.

Another pretty cool thing is that Jesus announces
those we think of as wretched,
are blessed.

It shouldn’t be all that surprising, really.
But because we commoditize everything,
including God,
we often assume that anyone
who does not have the good stuff
and is suffering from the bad stuff
is missing out on the blessing.

To our way of thinking,
there are those who are blessed
and those who are not –
as if the economy of God
operates on the principle of scarcity
instead of abundance.

Blessings are a scarce commodity
the way we talk about them.
Either you’re blessed or you’re not,
and if you are not blessed
then you are probably one of the wretched,
or at the very least, the very boring.

But the economy of God
is guided by the invisible hand of abundance
unlike our economy,
which operates on the principle of scarcity.
In God’s economy there is only blessing.

Think of the story of manna in the wilderness.
It was after Moses and the ex-slaves
escaped Pharaoh’s army,
and they end up hungry in the desert.
According to the story, there were thousands of them
and the only food they had
was what they could carry with them in a hurry.
It wasn’t long before that food ran out
and there they were in the wilderness.

So God gives them a hand.
God rains down upon the earth in the morning dew
a substance called “manna.”
And manna had special properties, very special properties – holy properties.

God tells them there is enough for everyone,
and everyone gets enough.

Then God instructs them
to take only enough for each day.
No hoarding, God says.
Of course some do try to hoard it
and they discover another property of manna:
it only lasts one day before it gets wormy and gross.

Manna is not only a sacrament in the economy of God,
it is a metaphor for how to manage abundance.

There is always enough to go around
and everyone gets enough,
and anything that really matters
can’t be collected, amassed, or hoarded.

Thinking about the Beatitudes from Matthew then, blessings cannot be something some people ‘get’
and other people lack.

We have all been blessed; we are all blessed.
No one gets more manna than anyone else
and no one gets more blessing than anyone one else –
we have ALL been blessed.

So we need to stop commoditizing God
by imagining health, success, wealth or beauty
are blessings.

If the people we think of as wretched
are actually blessed,
then blessing must not have anything to do
with getting the good stuff
or being cursed with the bad stuff.

Blessing must be something else altogether.
But what?
What is better than the good stuff?
What the heck is blessedness?

Hmmm, I think it is mysterious
and demands humility on our part
rather than certainty.
But here is one thing I do intuit about blessedness:
Blessedness is connected to stewardship.

Ooh, you probably knew that was coming
but got lulled into unguardedness.

“Stewardship” comes from the Greek word, oikonomia, which literally means, house management.
But the biblical concept
is better conveyed in the 21^st century,
by the notion of an executor –
as in the person named to administer an estate.

So, we all know we are going to die
and we may need someone who survives us,
who will oversee the sharing of our treasures.

We can’t take it with us after all,
unless we have pyramid to put all our stuff in
along with our casket.

But our estate will not belong to the executor,

it will belong to our heirs
who need stuff cared for and managed
between our death and the dispersal
of all that we bequeath.

That is stewardship.

Stewardship is not about money.
If blessedness is not about
how much of the good stuff we have or don’t have,
then stewardship cannot be about
how much money we give away or not.
Stewardship is NOT about commodities.

Here is a thrifty little definition of stewardship:
caring for and nurturing
that which has been given us to share.

Let me repeat:
caring for and nurturing
that which has been given us to share.

People that do well caring for, nurturing, and sharing
that which has been given into their care…
are blessed.

There is the connection.
Those who have learned to be good stewards,
are blessed.

That is an inference from Biblical wisdom.

In other words, one way to think about the
relationship of stewardship to blessing,
is simply this:
When we are caring well
and nurturing
what is ours to share,
then our lives are truly blessed –
our life becomes a blessing in itself.
WE become a blessing.
We are blessed.

That makes sense to me.
Whatever your manna is,
it has been given to you to care for and share.
How are you doing?

If you have a lot of money, are you sharing it well?
Are you sharing enough of it?
It is not yours to hoard,
it is yours to distribute – if indeed
you have more than enough.

If you have a specific talent or skill,
are you sharing it?
Will the living give thanks when you have died
because you showed them how to live better?
Or will your survivors discover
you were hoarding wisdom, or worse,
never have an inkling that you knew something
that would have benefited them?

Are you good at encouragement?
Don’t hold back.
Is teaching your gift?
Then do it.
If you’re beautiful, be beautiful.
If you’re kind, let it shine.
We can always use more people who listen well,
so don’t stop trying.
Do you see a world of things
to which the rest of us are blind?
Then by all means, open our eyes.

The big stewardship question
is not “How much” but “What?”

Now there is a different angle on stewardship!
The big question of stewardship
is not “how much” but “what?”

What has been given into your care
for nurture in order to share?
How well are you caring for it?
How well are you sharing it?
Like manna, it is a daily question
not a once and for all kind of thing.
One day at a time,
sometimes one step at a time.
What has been given to us to care for and nurture,
and how do we share it?

Those that do it well are blessed,
which means that blessing has been given to all of us.

And now, let us open our hearts and our minds,
and the deep well of our memory,
to give thanks to the dead.
We give them thanks,
our deepest and most profound gratitude,
because they made us who we are.

And as we give thanks for them,
let us also ask God to empower us,
and make us wise
with the blessings we have been given to share.

All Saints’ Day 2016

November 6, 2016 by Cam Miller

I have preached this sermon in one version or another,
in every parish I have ever served.
You will understand why as it unfolds.

I love All Saints’ Day!
I might even like it better than Christmas or Easter
because it is less adulterated with cultural spew.

Maybe I like it so much because it is bittersweet in the way that grief is,
when it mellows and has been with us a long time.

All Saints’ does not simply celebrate the past
or raise up big named heroes
or in any way invite nostalgia.
Rather, All Saints’ invites us to dig down
and mine our memories –
both our individual and collective memories –
for people who can teach and guide us
through the murky present into a clearer future.

But we not only seek the counsel of our saints
we need to also celebrate their gifts,
and that is what All Saints’ Day is truly about:
Thanksgiving.

I invite you to play a game of “pretend” with me.

Now some people hate this kind of thing
and if you do, I apologize and ask your patience
as other people play along with me.

I invite you to close your eyes –
if that helps you to imagine.
And we might as well relax a little too.
So take a nice slow, deep breath –

Inhaling through your nose,
and exhaling through your mouth.
Let’s just do that a couple times
and clear our minds for a moment.

Now, imagine if you would…your kitchen.
Just bring to mind the kitchen in your home –
its colors,
the textures,
the furniture and aromas.

Now…with your imagination,
invite important people from the past into your kitchen –
invite people you actually knew,
those who have died;
and invite other people you did not know –
people from history you admire,
or wish you had known.

Invite those folks into your kitchen.
However many chairs are around your kitchen table,
that is how many to invite.

And feel free to try them out and substitute freely
rather than be stuck with the first ones to appear.
Good group chemistry is important.
Karl Marx might not get along with Ronald Reagan,
and your great-grandmother may not be on
speaking terms with Jesus at the moment.
So gather a group that can work with each other
as well as being wonderful and great individuals
you happen to admire.

I am going to stop talking now
and give us just a moment
to conjure up the saints at our kitchen table.

Well, I don’t know if that worked for you or not
but it is the kind of thing you can play with.

Who do you invite?
Why them?
What values does their presence
indicate you cherish most?
Why those people instead of all the folks
you could choose from?

What do they have that is attractive to you:
power,
greatness,
wisdom,
intellect,
beauty,
strength,
faith,
holiness…
or did they just love you really well?

Chances are that the people we invite to the table
say more about us and what we value
than it says about them.

Our saints reveal what we cherish and value,
aspire to, and reach toward.

I have a saint that hangs out in the corner
of my mind – not front and center.
Other saints come and go
depending upon my mood,
in the same way that all memory
is subject to the character and substance
of the moment in which it is remembered.

But this particular saint is always at the table
hanging out in the basement of my memory –
sometimes a treasured guest,
sometimes a forgotten one,
sometimes a ghost who haunts me.

At the seminary I attended,
The Episcopal Divinity School
in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
there was a life-size oxidized bronze statue
outside the chapel.
It was a dark tortured figure
kneeling in anguish,
his face raised toward the heavens,
and hands covering the eyes and face
as if holding back an ocean of grief.

It was dedicated to Jonathan Daniels,
an EDS seminarian
killed in Hayneville, Alabama.

This is how it happened.

In 1965 Jonathan Daniels,
along with Ruby Sales,
a 16-year-old African-American girl,
Judy Upham and Joyce Bailey, also Episcopal seminarians,
and a Roman Catholic priest named, Richard Morrisroe, were arrested and beaten.

I mention them all by name,
even though they are not famous
and you may never hear of them again,
but they deserve to be remembered
and honored.
That is the way with saints –
most of them are historically anonymous.

And also, a side note of personal serendipity.
I came to know Richard Morrisroe’s son
when we both lived in Buffalo
and were active in the community.
Meeting and getting to know Richard Morrisroe, Jr.
was like a hand from the past on my shoulder
assuring me that Jonathan Daniels, who I never knew,
was indeed a presence to be both
welcomed and reckoned with.

Anyway, those earnest young Christians I mentioned
committed what the society considered to be
a subversive activity:
they registered African-Americans to vote.

It serves as a great reminder to us
that what is considered subversive in the moment
often looks like exactly the right thing to have done
when it is remembered a generation or more later.

Anyway, they spent six days in the Fort Deposit, Alabama
jail for the crime of registering African-Americans to vote,
and on Friday, Aug. 20, 1965, they were released.
This is a quote by Ruby Sales, a first hand account of the incident as it appeared in the Washington Post (1990):

“We left the jail in a group, and we walked up to the corner. It was one of those hot steamy days. We’d been in jail, underfed, and we were thirsty. As we were walking to the store to get a soda, suddenly there was an ominous sense that filled the air and I became very nervous…the street was clean of cars. There was literally no one around. It was as if the town was suddenly shut down. We started up the stairs.

I was in front, Jon was behind, and Joyce Bailey and Father Morrisroe were walking side by side up the steps. When I got to the last step, Tom Coleman (the sheriff) was standing there brandishing a shotgun. He said, “(Expletive), I’ll blow your brains out.” And then I felt a tug and I fell back. A shotgun blast, a thud. A few seconds later, another shot. And then I heard Richard on the ground crying for water.”(Washington Post 1990).

Now According to Ruby,
Jonathan Daniels
pulled her out of the line of fire
and was shot in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun.
The force of the blast sent his body flying backwards
and he was killed instantly.
Richard Morrisroe was wounded but recovered.

Jonathan Daniels died at age 26 that August day in 1965,
which was his mother’s birthday.

Jonathan wrote this shortly before his death,
a description of how the Communion of Saints,
at his “kitchen table” of saints,
was empowering him through the dangers of 1965,
and allowing him and his colleagues
to practice their courageous form of spirituality.

“I lost fear…” he wrote, “when I began to know in my bones and sinews
that I had been truly baptized into (Jesus’)
death and Resurrection,
that in the only sense that really matters
I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God.

I began to lose self-righteousness
when I discovered the extent to which my behavior
was motivated by worldly desires
and by self-seeking…
The point is simply, of course,
that one’s motives are usually mixed,
and one had better know it.

As Judy and I said (prayers together) day by day,
we became more and more aware of the living reality
of the invisible “communion of saints” –
of the beloved community in Cambridge
(meaning Episcopal Divinity School)
who were (sharing our prayers) too,
(and) of the ones gathered around
a near-distant throne in heaven –
(those) who blend with their (prayers)
our faltering songs of prayer and praise.

With them,
with black (folks) and white (folks),
with all of life,
in Him Whose Name is above all the names
that the races and nations shout,
whose Name is Itself the Song Which fulfills
and “ends” all songs,
we are indelibly, unspeakably
ONE.”

To me,
it is both comforting and haunting
to read these words Jonathan Daniels wrote
about the table of saints in his own life,
so soon before he gave it up to save another.
In my loneliest moments in seminary,
late into the night,
I used to go sit under that memorial to Jonathan Daniels.
He is the saint at my kitchen table
who reminds me to be brave
when I don’t want to be.
He reminds me that I am never alone
when I am feeling all alone.
He points my attention out the window
when I get absorbed
by the minutia and the business of doing church.

That is what saints do for us,
and so I mention Jonathan
as an example of a kitchen table saint.
I know there are such saints in your life too;
ones who perhaps cradled you
and ones who, like Jonathan,
whisper to you from a greater distance.

We have no shortage of saints
but you and I have to empower them
so they can perform their function.

But here is what we also need to remember,
as scary and intimidating as it is:
you and I are potential saints for other people.

It would be utter narcissism for us to only look
beyond to other saints for ourselves,
and not give considerable thought
to how we might encourage and strengthen,
heal and challenge,
those around us.

You and I may never know
that we are sitting at the imaginary kitchen table
of those with whom we lived and worked and played;
but we should aspire to that position.
I don’t mean in an egotistical, self-righteous way.
I mean that we need to be thoughtful about
how we nurture and care for those around us.

I am not talking about do-gooderism.
I am talking about living as though we never know
who is observing us,
and learning from us,
and even copying us.

I never knew Jonathan Daniels
and he died when I was a child
long before I ever imagined becoming an Episcopal priest.
And I have grave doubts
about whether I would ever be brave enough
to do what he did.

But even so, along with many others people,
I continue to live off the spiritual marrow of his bones.
You and I might be like that for someone we know
or even someone we do not know who is watching us.
We may be like that for someone
who only comes to know about us after we die!

It is an awesome, humbling and sobering thought
that begs for our imagination and contemplation.

So today is for giving thanks for the many
who have gone before us,
known and unknown,
and who bequeathed to us
a treasure-trove of love we call spiritual community.
It is a day to give thanks for saints
at our kitchen table and elsewhere,
and to ponder if we are one too.

For all the saints, we give our thanks.

Amen.

All Saints’ Day: The Dead

All Saints’ Day 2016

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