Called Forth to Love
The First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
All Saints/All Souls Sunday – November 1, 2009
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: Revelation 21: 1-6a/John 11: 32-44]

Our Puritan/Congregational ancestors would be mystified that we celebrate this day. In their mind they wanted to do away with any kind of remembrance, other than that commanded in the Scripture, of the Sabbath Day. In their mind there weren’t special people called “saints,” because all of those who were believers and followers after Jesus were saints. The First-comers (from the 19th century onward we call them ‘Pilgrims’) called themselves the “saints,” and those who were not covenanted church-members they called “strangers.” So, to celebrate a day dedicated to ALL the saints – which can be traced to the fourth century attempt to remember all of those who had been martyred for Christ, but didn’t have a special day of commemoration assigned to them and began common in the West in the ninth century – would seem foreign to them. I would, however, respectfully disagree with our sainted ancestors – term used intentionally – because I think it important to call these folk, including the Puritan ancestors and their single-minded love of God, to mind precisely because they remind us that we’re called forth to love.

When Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave he was calling him to more than the experience of resuscitation (because, you see, Lazarus would have to die again, which is why I think Jesus wept for him). Lazarus really is you and me and in calling Lazarus up from the grave, Jesus is calling each of us up from the graves that we construct for ourselves. Those graves are the ones we dig from self-centeredness, greed, bigotry, prejudice, narrow-mindedness, guilt, lack of self-esteem and the list could go on and on.

Far too often, we place ourselves in these graves of our own making, bind ourselves tight with the grave-clothes, and then wonder why we feel so dead inside. Then, like Lazarus, we need someone to come along and take the risk of rolling away the stone at the door of the tomb. Remember that when Jesus commanded, “Take away the stone,” Martha replied, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days”? There has to be someone who’s willing to risk even the stench of our tombs to bring us into life again.

Roberta Porter addresses this in a lovely little poem called ‘Resurrection,’ which I’ve referenced before, but it’s still quite good. It takes the form of a prayer:

God, Sometimes we’re as tightly bound as Lazarus in a tomb:
Unseeing, unfeeling, unmoving.
Then, in our bondage you send another to help free us;
A friend who believes and rolls the stone away.
Unbound, enabled to emerge from the caves of our making,
Our eyes are opened to see your loving face.
We are released – Resurrection!

I believe that the church is where we’ll find “another friend who believes.” Martin Luther thought that Christians became “little Christs” for each other. He focused on one’s willingness to die for one’s neighbor. For me, being a “little Christ” is about our willingness to live for one’s neighbor; living for others and helping others to live is where we take the risk. And it is here in the community of faith that one can feel safe enough to be called forth from the tomb – stench and all. Why? Because those who call us forth bear the same marks and themselves know what it’s like to be called forth to live. The gathered community of Christ-followers is, then, a community of resurrection and a place where life happens in abundant freedom and abundant love.

You and I, you see, have been and are being called out of those self-made graves so that we can call others out. As John, the Theologian and Revelator, saw, the Lord is making “all things new,” including us. We remember the saints because they were called forth to love and in their turn they called others to love – in many ways, they continue to call us to love. We’ll sing a hymn at the close which, I believe, sums this up. Some of the words appear quaint, but they are powerful. The last verse, in updated lyrics, goes like this:

At root of being a saint is hearing the voice of our friend, the Lord Jesus, who is calling us back to life and calling us forth to love. You see, this is our day, too. Now, let’s go meaning to be a saint and, more importantly, to live like it, shall we?