Jack Hardaway
“They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither;”
That is from Psalm 1, verse 3, it is about the righteous.
They are like trees, thriving with the stuff of life, the sound of leaves and water, and wind, the scent of fruit and all things green. That is what they are. That is what they bring.
The Saints of God are like that, the Communion of Saints are like that. They are the great Forest filling eternity, deep roots reaching down into the source of life, branches stretching up and out in praise, consecrating all things in their shade.
That is what they are, that is what they bring. And we are part of that great forest with roots and branches growing deep, and reaching out.
Today is all Saints Day.
We remember, we celebrate, we attend to those who have gone before, revealing God, hallowing this earth, like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither.
And we celebrate our connection with that bright communion that we share through baptism, the connection that is stronger than death. The Communion of Saints, one in Christ, bound together in the Holy Spirit, a wild assortment of redeemed sinners, making up the diversity of the body of Christ, and the gifts of the Spirit.
The Communion of Saints is a vision of unity in the midst of dazzling diversity, the unity of the stream of the water of life, and the diversity of so many different ways of speaking and being the image of God.
The Saints live with the mind-boggling uncomfortable diversity of the image of God and don’t flinch, don’t run away, don’t denigrate, don’t understand it either, because it is too big.
The Saints live with being part of something bigger than their own preferences and experience. That is the challenge of being Church, it is full of people who are nothing like me, and they are glorious, revealing the splendor of God’s radiance, strange, and marvelous, and annoying.
It is a vision of humanity that we desperately need to recapture.
Our current philosophies of diversity and unity are no longer sustainable, they are collapsing all around us, the great American vision and Motto of “Out of many one”, our “E pluribus unum” has lost its roots, the leaves are withering. Being part of something bigger than ourselves, something bigger than those who are like me, bigger than our own experience, takes faith, and we have lost faith.
Can we be part of something bigger than ourselves? The bigness of Church? The bigness of a Nation? The bigness of the world? It takes faith.
It is time to bow down before the mystery of the Communion of Saints, and rediscover the sanctity of humanity revealing the image of God to all creation.
The Saints live with the mind-boggling uncomfortable diversity of the image of God and don’t flinch, don’t run away, don’t denigrate, don’t understand it either, because it is too big.
The Saints live with being part of something bigger than their own preferences and experience. That is the challenge of being Church, of being a Nation, of living on this fragile earth, it is full of people who are nothing like me, and they are glorious, revealing the splendor of God’s radiance, strange, and marvelous, and annoying. That is the faith. May we keep the faith.
Today we sing their praise, we sing their song, the Saints glorious in light, those who keep faith.
Their roots grow deep by streams of water, their leaves do not wither.
We now hear the Necrology, the reading of the dead, those who have died since last All Saints Day. Their leaves do not wither. All stand.