Unlikely Saints
November 4, 2007
Ephesians 1:15-23
Today we’re here to think about, remember, touch the saints in our lives. Saints are the people who’ve come before us, or are present with us, or those little ones who hold our hopes. Saints are the people who open pathways for us. They help us when we’re trying to do something new. When we have hopes and they connect us to the things that make those hopes reality. They are the people who help us heal our hurts, hold us when we cry or answer our calls for help. Saints can be people we know or people we’ve never met. We can find them in fiction, poetry, Scripture, Television shows, we find them in neighbors, friends, teachers, politicians. The Saints. In honor of the Saints, we recognize those who have passed out of this life since the last All Saints Day in our community: Richard Solar and Chuck Gregson. We invite you now, to call out the names of your saints and if you haven’t and would like to, you may come to the front and light a candle to honor the light they have brought to your path, your heart, the light of wisdom in your mind. And, as this happens, I invite us to hold all of the names, memories, hopes, healing in prayerful presence. As you feel so moved I invite us now to call out the names, and to come to the table to light and place a candle.
(Naming the Saints)
We honor the names spoken and held in our hearts of the saints who have opened up pathways for us. In honor of those pathways, I invite you to share some of the things they taught you or ways in which they opened your life or transformed you.
(Sharing)
I have heard of your love toward ALL the saints
I do not cease to give thanks for you.
I remember you in my prayers.
This is how the Scripture passage started this morning. Tender beautiful words to remind us, we are the saints…we are the saints today who are charged to sew our love. To love so hard, so freely, so widely that we are known for our love of all the saints. Not just the ones we agree with, not just the saints that look like us, not just the saints we know, but all the saints. And, we are reminded by this saint who came before us to give thanks for the love in our lives, for the ways we are loved and the ways we see love in one another. Because God believed in love so much that the Divine image was embodied in Jesus Christ and set forth. God wanted us to see, feel, touch and recognize the God within us. And, when that embodiment was killed. The power centered around raising Jesus from the dead. Not the reanimation of a corpse, but the taking of Jesus’ humanity into a “spiritual body”. You see, both Christ and the church are inseparable in Ephesians. Inseparable. You can’t have one without the other. Because this witness of Jesus, and the transformation of the resurrection, we have become the “spiritual body” that carries on the embodiment of God and God’s holy purpose, in loving one another. This Divine power is there within us waiting to be acknowledged, awakened, opened that we might be a witness in this world. And the best kind of witness we can be is a witness to one another. When life is hard, we can be soft. When life is lonely we can be comfort. When there are only tears, we can be the rainbow. This communal living is absent in any other part of this world. To make a dinner to deliver, to clean a dirty house, to listen to a lonely person…it is more light and life than any other experience, it’s the best kind of love.
First Congregational United Church of Christ…You are the resurrection of the Christ. I see the face of God in you…
I have heard of your love toward ALL the saints
I do not cease to give thanks for you.
I remember you in my prayers.
And, I can’t wait to hear what it is you will do next. Let us pray.