All Saints Day

All Saints Day November 1, 2020 | Revelation 7:9-17 | Pastor David H. Brooks |

Many years ago, I watched a performance of an Irish play entitled “Stones in His Pockets,” which tells the story of a big, brash Hollywood production landing on a tiny rural Irish town to properly capture the perfect Celtic atmosphere. The play relates how the townspeople—mostly serving as extras—react to the influx of money, high-wattage movie stars, paparazzi and assorted insanity that comes with the production crew. The emotional turning point of the play occurs when one of the locals is humiliated by one of the film’s stars and drowns himself by filling all his pockets with heavy stones and walking into a nearby lake.

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying “who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I replied, “Sir, you are the one who knows.”

It is the struggle of our age—we have reached a place where we find ourselves responsible for everything that happens, everything that affects us and our families; everything that occurs on our planet. For instance, I invite you to ponder what you are urged to remember when you go to a grocery store in the United States:

• To enter a public building, you are asked to wear a mask; if you are of a certain age or high-risk group, you should limit your shopping to certain hours;
• When buying food for, say, weekday lunches, avoid prepared food like potato chips or deli meats; such foods require more energy, land and resources than vegetarian options; look to buy fruit/vegetables that are organic (but make sure they’re locally grown and in season);
• as you shop, be mindful of the products you purchase and/or the companies that produce them so as to not violate your political preferences, social standing or cultural commitments;
• at the till, remember that any of your bagging choices comes with, well, baggage, as does your decision to pay with cash or card.

Let me be clear: I am not trying to pick on or criticize your particular set of allegiances, whether environmental, political, socio-economic or what have you. We all have them. No matter where you or I direct our attention, we find that we are simply not keeping up with all that we must/should do. Is your marriage failing? There’s a lot you can and should do. Are your children struggling? There’s a lot you can and should do. Is your work unsatisfying? There’s a lot you can and should do. Is your personal life, your sense of well-being awry? There’s a lot you can and should do. Is God distant or absent, your religious life unrewarding? There’s a lot you can and should do.

We pick up all those you cans and the you shoulds and slip them into the pockets of our lives and then wonder why we are so weighed down, why we can’t seem to keep our heads above water.

Last week I talked of how a core portion of Luther’s theological wrestling and his Gospel breakthrough was the realization that he was a slave to sin, a captive, a prisoner, in bondage. Yes, that’s a Gospel breakthrough. Luther realized that it wasn’t just that he “wouldn’t” do all of God’s you cans and you shoulds, he couldn’t! Luther realized that to pick up all those cans and shoulds only meant that he was weighed down more and more, until he was simply unable to move. What Luther grasped was that Jesus comes to set us free, to exchange our stone-filled lives with his own life.

I think that the true secret of what we call sainthood is nothing more than, in the words of Paul, to put on Christ—wear him like a garment. We go into the waters of baptism weighed down, heavy with all of our lives—our frantic, impossible, overloaded lives and we sink. Down, down we go, down to death. The dead have no need for any cans or shoulds.  Once we are dead, God removes from us all that heavy, sodden clothing and dresses us in Christ, in garments fit for a heavenly kingdom—light and airy as breezes on a hillside—and lets us run around in the sunshine of a new day, a new life.  In our new clothing, our kingdom clothing, our wedding outfits, we find that we no longer have to live under the tyranny of any more cans or shoulds, but live and love freely, letting Christ the Lamb lead us—to let him be our guide for what is good and true, to trust him enough that we do not look to anything else as necessary for life, refusing to pick up the stones the world insists we can and should carry.

Fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich wrote about the wonder of it all that …

As the body is clothed in cloth

and the muscles in the skin

and the bones in the muscles

and the heart in the chest,

so we are, body and soul,

clothed in the Goodness of God

and enclosed.

For that our soul cleave with all its power

Is the one desire of our Lover.
–Meditations with Julian of Norwich.

Who are these, clothed in white? They are the beloved of God. They are you. Amen.

Pastor David H. Brooks

Durham, NC USA

Pr.Dave.Brooks@zoho.com