All Saints’ Sunday 2005 Ecclesiasticus 44:1-10, 13-14 Psalm 149 Revelation 7:2-4, 9-17 Matthew 5:1-12 November 6, 2005 The Rev. J. Brian Ponder Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. Today, we celebrate All Saints’ Sunday. It’s meant to be a celebration of things both old and new. I think we sometimes forget that. As Episcopalians, we know something about “old” things—traditional things, things that go way back, the way things are done. In fact, there are even a couple of popular recipe books currently on the market dealing with funeral culture and foods that testify to this very “fact,” … the way things are done. It’s part of our heritage. It’s part of “us” being Episcopalian. Now don’t get me wrong. I like tradition. But, I’d like to think that I like new things, or most new things anyway, too. … the smell and feel of a new car, or the look of a new suit … the smoothness of a glossy paperback book or the smell of brand new textbooks at the beginning of the semester. The crispness of a new bill, or the shininess of a new, almost-never-circulated coin. These are some new things that I really do like. But there are some new things that I’m not always so thrilled about … trying new and exotic foods for instance … and I mean REALLY mysterious stuff, or curbing a bad habit, or jumping out of an airplane. (Okay, so I’ve never really done that one.) Even books … I never really liked breaking-in those newly purchased, fresh smelling textbooks as the semester jumped into high gear. … Sometimes I’d like to have forgotten that books are meant to have cracked spines, and smudged edges, underlining and notes in the margins. These show wear and engagement—useful purpose and a book’s living into, if you will, that for which it was created. I want to go back to the idea of a new, shiny coin. … I like new, shiny coins! When scrounging through my pockets, it’s the old dingy and grimy ones that I always try to spend first. Inevitably, though, I have to let that last shiny new coin go because it’s the only one left in my pocket, and I have to make some necessary purchase. Sometimes in this situation, it’s not unusual for me to pause, hesitating for a second or two, rethinking the purchase. “Do I really need everything that’s been rung-up? Can I put something back? Has the total been calculated correctly? Can I get more change by using a different bill?” I check my pockets again. … Nothing. … Sounds a little crazy, right? … Don’t worry. It’s nothing I obsess over. It’s just a series of thoughts that quickly run through my head before handing over the coin. The coin is relinquished, and it’s added to the till to make its way into the mainstream marketplace. The shininess will eventually wear off. There’s no telling where it will end up or through whose hands it will pass, or the circumstances for which it will be offered time and again. Nothing big, mind you, just the novelty of being one of the first handlers of a new coin. It all started when as a child I would visit this ceramic owl nestled in the curio shelves of a desk that was once in the hallway of my grandparents’ house in Jackson. I think I’ve shared this story with you before. … Just about every Sunday, I new that I could pass by the bank and find a fifty-cent piece inside that my grandparents had left for me, an eagle and Kennedy’s head marked on it. The feeling of those new coins in my hand and then in my pocket … it was a good one. I still have several of those coins – never spent, tucked away, guarded safely in a little bank of my own at home. Never spent … held back now for nostalgia and memory. Looking back, it wasn’t so much about the coins themselves as it was about the experience of finding the coins again and again that was special to me. It was the ritual of passage through the hallway towards the desk week after week after week, finding a treasure and understanding that in finding that treasure, I had been remembered. This treasure was for me! When the State quarters appeared several years ago, my grandmother started collecting them for me – trying to set aside at least two from each state – one from each mint. The ritual of coin-finding became different, and the pilgrimage to my grandparents’ house became less frequent than in the days of my childhood, but the treasure was still to be found in those moments – coins collected all the while I was away, being remembered even in my absence – not the monetary value of the coins, but the wealth – the preciousness of remembrance. Today is a day of remembrance. Abraham and Sarah his wife, Moses the lawgiver; Aaron the priest, Miriam and Joshua, Deborah and Gideon, Samuel and Hannah his mother, Peter and Paul and all the apostles, Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, Stephen the first martyr, all the martyrs and saints in every age and in every land, Brigid, William Laud, Antony, Phillips Brooks, Vincent of Saragossa, Bernard Mizeki, Thomas Aquinas, Cornelius the Centurion, Anskar, Absalom Jones, Cyril, Polycarp, Florence Nightingale, George Herbert, Chad, Perpetua and her companions, Cuthbert, John Donne, Muhlenberg, Sojourner Truth, King Kamehameha and Queen Emma, Richard Hooker, Alphege, Catherine of Sienna, Dame Julian, the Venerable Bede, Augustine, Joseph Butler, Justin, William Wilberforce, Joseph of Arimathea, Ninian, Sergius, Lancelot Andrews, Remigius, Francis of Assisi and his sister Clare, Willibrord, the Holy Innocents, C.S. Lewis, Jonathan Myrick Daniels, Florence Li Tim Oi. Today we celebrate the lives of saints across all ages—across all time and space—people who knew something about movement, or being moved, and great and lasting treasure. Today, we celebrate those who have lived the ways of the Beatitudes, whether well intended, or because of circumstance and predicament. Today we celebrate with them … here in our own day and in our own place and we share in the great story, the story of salvation, the story of our lives and loves … our story. Today we celebrate old and new … one story. And it’s a story we claim for ourselves through baptism. In a few moments, we will journey to the font as a community to welcome two new members into the household of God, not just for Church of the Resurrection, but baptizing them into the Body of Christ. It is through the rite of Baptism that we are made new, that we are re-membered as the Body of Christ, and that the old is put away. Each time we prepare for such initiation, the community gathers to support one another and to renew its own baptismal vows … for some, the umpteenth time, and for others still something rather new. In reaffirming our vows we, too, will find ourselves at the font, renewing our covenant of understanding … an understanding of ways of living, an understanding of ministry in God’s name – professing a fundamental agreement between ourselves and God. Our covenant lays out those things for which we strive with God’s help to make real in our world and establish in our own day, realizing that it is only in relationship with God and others that we can be re-membered from the brokenness of humanity—a covenant of mutual care and support, up-building and concern. It is into this covenant of faith that Hillary Heath and Anna Leslie Potts will journey to the font – beings made new through the waters of baptism and by promises made, the old giving way to the new. In baptism, we come to the font, making passage and pilgrimage again and again and again to find the place of renewal in our lives – to find an unexpected, yet unconditional treasure and to know that we ourselves are remembered. This is no small thing. It becomes for all of us that place of sweeping change, of radical difference, of full welcome, full membership and full participation. This is the moment of reciprocating promise, where we stand in relationship with God, supported by those around us in this journey that is life, and in particular, life within the Church—a moment of promise that crosses all time and space. The promise of baptism is not a cure-all for what ails us, but it is the beginning of the marking of a Christian life. It doesn’t mean that we will never find ourselves with pockets full of dingy coins, nor that our new, shiny ones won’t become tarnished or event spent. As a community we will make and reaffirm promises on behalf of Hillary and Anna Leslie which are very hard to live up to. Our baptisms and our lives in the Church don’t solve everything. They simply, yet profoundly, mark us. … Every shiny coin becomes dingy, unless it’s tucked away from life and its realities … compromised of that for which it was meant. That’s not what we’re called to do. It’s certainly not what those folks I mentioned earlier did! Their coins were plenty dingy and dirtied, their spines cracked (some literally as well as figuratively), their pages marked and tattered, some even dog-eared; yet a deeper luster shone through the patinas. Things old and new and All Saints’ Sunday … Today we are called to understand ourselves, each and every one of us, as crazy as it may sound, as included alongside the great cast of characters—the Great Cloud of Witnesses—who have testified to the saving grace and working of God in their lives, those whose names are honored throughout all generations and others whose names may have been forgotten, all of whom have surely left their own mark. Today we celebrate the fact that, though we may not be called to be Saints with a big “S,”—hey, I’m certainly no Saint—each and every one of us is called to be a saint with a little “s,” … showing forth in our own day a witness to the truth of God’s redeeming work done in this world and in our own lives. Our baptisms serve as entry-points into our relationships with God and with one another – the goal is not about perfection and remaining shiny, but rather striving towards perfect union in the midst of the dinginess that clutters our lives and our worldviews. Through the waters of baptism we are offered yet another chance to revision our worldview, to re-imagine our relationship with one another and the larger community and God, to dance more fluidly as the one Body of Christ. Today we hold dear things old and new—not old ways of being, but inspired by people of both ancient and not-so-ancient times whose lives speak to us of new ways of being and doing, all of which makes claims on our one future. Today we welcome two new saints (little “s” saints) among us to share in this eternal priesthood of believers, this wild and wacky cast of characters in this great production of life in which we have all been cast. In so doing, we welcome into the community of faith two new lives for which we will hope and dream, two souls for whom we will make promise, two people charged with the responsibility and blessing of claiming this faith as their own, making it real in this world of ours. … Joseph and Patrick, Methodius and the martyrs of Japan, Dominic and William Porcher DuBose, Constance and her companions, Cyprian and Hildegard, Saint Michael and All Angels, Alban and Macrina, Enmegahbow and Ephrem of Edessa, … Hillary and Anna Leslie and indeed each and every one of us, named as servants of Christ, known as Children of God, called to live into that for which we were created, making ever-manifest and ever-relevant the reality of God’s love in our own day. Amen.