Luke 6:20-31
As the beautiful, white and gold vestments imply; and the nearness to Halloween indicates; and if all else fails, as your bulletin states: today is All Saints’ Sunday. Its celebration implies the shortness of our own life when we reflect on the vast expanse of the Church, past present and yet to come. The naturalist poet and essayist, Wendell Berry, hits squarely the sentiment of this season of remembrance and self-forgetting. He writes:
I know for a while again
the health of self-forgetfulness,
looking out at the sky through
a notch in the valley side,
the black woods wintry on
the hills, small clouds at sunset
passing across. And I know
that this is one of the thresholds
between Earth and Heaven.
It is a place in the world,
a place also in the mind,
the mind's most native place,
ancient beyond time's age,
from which even I may step
forth from my self, and be free.
With the graying, melancholic beauty that comes with autumn, it makes sense that this is the time when we reflect on the thresholds of our lives. The ancient Celtic Christians pointed to the hazy, thinness of this season where for a few days or moments we live our present lives in the past; were we revel with bittersweet joy our loved ones lost into the loving arms of God even as we embrace God’s most recent gifts. It is a time that humbles us in this present age and begs us “to step forth from our self” and to look back at the past to better see how we can best carry the love of God into the future.
As Christians and followers of Jesus our Christ we are continually called to the humbling health of self-forgetfulness. Not in any sort of groveling or humiliating manner, but by taking steps through the threshold between this world and the Heavenly world of God. We Christians are walking forever through God’s threshold of Heaven and Earth; of Justice and Peace; in a journey that passes through nothing less than Jesus Christ himself. He is peace and justice; he is the threshold between heaven and earth through which all saints have passed and through which all souls will pass-on-through to the Church of Heaven.
And in that hope and faith of Christ’s presence we bring our loved ones and we come to this building; this threshold between heaven and earth knowing that God’s grace will make perfection out of our imperfections. We know that with God’s help and with the saving health of self-forgetfulness the hungry will eat, the sad will laugh, poor will have kingdoms. This can happen if you just listen. Forget yourself and ‘love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.’ It is as easy as it sounds and it is as difficult as it is easy. Thanks be to God that we have such a cloud of witnesses, thanks be to God for the saints who have traveled this journey before us and who have passed through the threshold of Christ Jesus.
Again, Mr. Berry writes:
[T]he world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.
Ryan Martin, Riley Eileen, you are on a threshold right now for you will be joining us on that arduous and humbling and joyful journey of inches. And as you pass through thresholds in your journeys never forget the great cloud of saints who have gone before you; and may we, here in the present, never neglect the saints yet to come. By God’s grace and with God’s help may we journey those inches until all of God’s children “learn to be at home”.
Thanks be to God.
