Proper 28, Year B

Sunday, November 17, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Mark 13:1-8

 

The Gospel reading that we’ve just heard is taken from what’s known as the Little Apocalypse, in Chapter 13 of Saint Mark. Leaving the Jerusalem Temple, Our Lord makes the shocking prediction that the Temple itself will soon be destroyed. Then, having gone across the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives, Jesus sits down, assuming the posture of a teacher. Speaking to his innermost circle of disciples—Peter, James, John, and Andrew—he describes the trials and tribulations that will precede his Second Coming.

 

Approaching Advent, with its focus on the Last Things, the lectionary’s compilers chose this Gospel to get us thinking about the end times. These apocalyptic passages can be difficult for contemporary readers. Despite the very real threats to our collective existence posed by weapons of mass destruction, environmental degradation, and other potential sources of global catastrophe, many people find it hard to take seriously these biblical predictions of a literal end of the world brought about by God himself in response to a rising tide of human disobedience and rebellion. Nonetheless, it’s all right there, in the Scriptures.

From the earliest days, however, the Church has understood these passages as having a double meaning and a double application. On one hand, they speak of a sequence of global and even cosmic future events culminating in the end of the world as we know it, the return of Christ to judge the living and the dead, and the inauguration of God’s Kingdom in a new heaven and a new earth. We cannot know ahead of time what exactly all this will involve or what it will be like for those who are alive to experience these events. These biblical prophecies are couched in highly symbolic imagery pointing to mysterious realities otherwise impossible to describe in words.

 

On the other hand, “the end of the world” becomes an individual and personal reality for each of us, as we face death. The world will go on without us, but at the moment of dying our world comes to an end. In the hour of death, we begin to experience for ourselves—immediately and directly—the events traditionally associated with the end of the world: the coming of the Lord, the last judgment, and the life of the world to come.

 

Our Lord’s message in today’s Gospel is twofold. When the disciples admire the magnificent buildings of the Temple built by King Herod the Great—“Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!”—Jesus warns them that the time is coming when “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Beyond the historical fulfillment of this prophecy by the Roman legions several decades later in 70 AD, these words admonish both the disciples, and us, that nothing in this life is permanent. If we put our trust in earthly goods, no matter how strong and sturdy they seem, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. We live in the midst of a world that is passing away.

 

To the disciples, this prediction may have seemed shocking and blasphemous. The Temple of Jerusalem was God’s dwelling place on earth. What Peter, James, John, and Andrew say next can be paraphrased: “Okay, Lord, now you’ve got our attention! When is all this going to happen, and what sign will tell us that the time has arrived?” Here, however, they manifest the misguided tendency of some Christians in every generation to try to work out the timetable, so they can predict with certainty when the end is at hand.

 

But Jesus responds with a contrary warning. He says, in effect, “Even when things get so bad that you think that it must be the end of the world, don’t panic, the time is not yet. Many will come in my name, saying ‘I am he,’ and they will lead many astray.” In other words, the Church must settle in for the long haul of history. Those ready to believe rash predictions can all too easily be led astray by false prophets.

 

So, the two counterbalancing parts of the message are, on one hand, that the end of the world is indeed coming; but, on the other hand, we need to avoid jumping the gun and prematurely concluding that it’s already here. Those who get caught up in doomsday cults are apt to make bad decisions that they live to regret (if they’re lucky).

 

Finally, Jesus deploys a totally unexpected and surprising image. Wars and rumors of war, nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes, and famines: all these are “but the beginning of the birth pangs.” That image requires a bit of unpacking. “Birth pangs” is biblical code for labor pains—the rhythmic contractions that signal the onset of labor and the sequence of biological events culminating in the delivery of a child.

 

This image occurs several places in the New Testament. In his First Letter to the Thessalonians, Saint Paul writes that the Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night: “When people say, ‘There is peace and security’, then sudden destruction will come upon them as travail comes upon a woman with child, and there will be no escape.” (Again, “travail” is the biblical code for the labor of childbirth.)

 

Later, in his Letter to the Romans, Chapter 8, Paul writes of the whole creation groaning in travail, undergoing present sufferings, which cannot be compared with the glory to be revealed. Think of that: the universe as a kind of womb, undergoing the contractions of labor as it struggles to bring forth a new world!

And in John’s Gospel, Jesus alludes to his own coming death and resurrection with this amazing image: “Truly, truly, I say to you … you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child has been born into the world.” For this reason, some medieval biblical commentators interpreted the Lord’s suffering and death on the cross as a kind of divine labor, bringing a new creation to birth.

 

So, this apocalyptic Gospel image of “the beginning of the birth pangs” carries the promise of reassurance and hope. Labor pains can be exceedingly unpleasant, but in the majority of cases they’re the prelude to the unparalleled joy and happiness of new life.

 

The message for us is that, even in the midst of violence and destruction, catastrophe and disaster, whether in the world at large or in our own personal worlds, God is always at work, bringing new realities to birth. The promise of the Lord’s resurrection is that death never has the last word. In Christ it becomes birth into eternal life. And for Christians, the agonies of death are but the birth pangs of a new creation, the beginnings of a world without end.

COMMEMORATION OF 

ALL FAITHFUL DEPARTED

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

 

 

 

Together, the Feasts of All Saints (November 1st) and All Souls (November 2nd) direct our attention to one of the basic teachings of the Christian faith explicitly mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed: namely, the Communion of Saints. Here, the word “Communion” means fellowship or community.

 

The Church’s traditional doctrine of the Communion of Saints teaches that the Church exists in three dimensions or states, sometimes called the Church Militant, the Church Expectant, and the Church Triumphant.

 

The Church Militant consists of all Christians alive on this earth at any given moment in time. The Church Expectant consists of those Christians who have fallen asleep in the Lord, but are still awaiting the Resurrection of the Dead and the Last Judgment. And the Church Triumphant consists of all those Christians who have entered into the fullness of the joy of heaven where they see God face to face.

 

So, when we speak of the Communion of Saints, the key point being made is that the Church’s fellowship encompasses all three: Church Militant, Church Expectant, and Church Triumphant. In Christ, we enjoy the bonds of community not only with all other Christians alive on this earth here and now, but also with those who have gone before us. The Church is a fellowship of the living and the dead.

 

This year, as I was thinking about all this, it occurred to me that All Saints and All Souls look at the same mystery from different vantage points with respect to time. All Saints Day views the Church from the perspective of eternity, after the end of time, indeed from outside time as we know it. From this viewpoint, we see the Church’s final end, when all are safely gathered into God’s kingdom. All Saints Day thus offers us a glimpse of our future, and the future of all the faithful, in the Church Triumphant.

 

All Souls Day, by contrast, looks at the same mystery from the vantage point of the present moment, from within time. Our departed loved ones are gone from our sight, and we’re all still waiting in hope for the coming of God’s kingdom—both we in the Church Militant, and the Faithful Departed in the Church Expectant.

 

The Church’s prayer for the Faithful Departed is that they may “rest in peace.” But what does this rest refer to? Even though the Church’s prayers do refer to “eternal rest,” I suspect that the rest being mentioned here refers primarily not to our final destination in heaven, for then we’ll be too busy enjoying the celebration to do much resting, but rather to the intermediate state between this life and the life of the world to come. We pray that the souls of the Faithful Departed may rest in peace as they await the resurrection of the dead. Or, as some versions of the prayer put it, that they may “rest in peace and rise in glory.”

 

Think of some of the implications of this prayer. On a few occasions in the course of my priestly ministry—thankfully, very few—I’ve been called upon to bless a house or residence troubled by paranormal activity. In some cases, not all but some, the underlying problem turns out to be what’s called a restless spirit: that is, the soul of a dead person who is neither at rest nor at peace. When that turns out to be the case, the Church’s prescribed course of action is not only to bless the location, but also to pray for the repose of the troubled soul, that it may depart to its appointed place, there to wait until the day of resurrection.

 

But such cases are by far the exception rather than the rule. Most of the time, we pray for the souls of the departed simply to express our love for them—in the conviction that it’s the one effective thing that we can still do to help them in their continuing journey into the light of God’s presence, and in the hope that others will so pray for us when our time comes to enter into that rest.

 

In this life, rest brings healing and wholeness. Ideally, we wake up restored and rejuvenated by our nightly sleep. So much the more, then, with the faithful departed resting in the sleep of peace. God’s Holy Spirit continues and completes the work, normally begun in this life at baptism, of healing all their infirmities and cleansing away all their sins. Then, at the sound of the last trumpet, they will wake up and rise from their sleep, ready to see God face to face and enter into the joy of their eternal inheritance.

 

In a sense, a Requiem Eucharist is basically an all-purpose funeral service. We give thanks for the lives of the faithful departed, especially those whom we love but see no longer. We celebrate the Christian hope of resurrection from the dead. The purple color of our vestments this evening signifies not so much penitence as Advent hope for the day of the Lord’s coming. But, most of all, we pray that until that day, the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, may rest in peace. Amen.

 

THE SUNDAY AFTER ALL SAINTS DAY

November 3, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

 

On our observance of the Feast of All Saints, it seems opportune to ask the question: What is a saint? Well, the word saint literally means “holy one.” In the Bible, it refers to all the holy people of God. In the Old Testament, the “holy ones” or “saints” are the whole congregation of the people of Israel; in the New Testament, the whole assembly of the Church.

 

Early on in Church history, however, the word took on a more precise meaning. In this more restricted sense, a saint is a departed Christian who exhibits three characteristics.

 

The first characteristic is that a saint is someone whose life on earth manifested such holiness that we’re as sure as we can be that they must now be in heaven. In the early Church, the definitive sign of sainthood was martyrdom. For the early Christian faithful there was no question that those who’d shed their blood and given their lives rather than deny the faith were now reigning with the Lord in glory. But as the early ages of persecution waned, it became clear that Christians of exemplary holiness who’d lived and died peacefully in their beds could also reliably be counted among the saints in heaven.

 

The second characteristic is that enjoying the fullness of the Lord’s presence without any earthly worries or distractions, the saints in heaven are free to give their full and undivided attention to praying for the Church and its members on earth.

 

Like most ancient peoples, the early Christians revered their dead. They often gathered for worship, devotions, and festive banquets at the martyrs’ burial places, particularly on the anniversaries of their deaths, their “birthdays into heaven.” On these days they sometimes used the horizontal slab of the sarcophagus as a makeshift altar for celebrating the Eucharist. And these early Christians soon discovered that the martyrs’ tombs were holy places, where healings and other miracles were apt to occur. As Saint Augustine of Hippo explained in the early fifth century, when you prayed in the presence of a saint’s relics on earth, that same saint was praying for you in heaven, often with powerful effects.

 

The third characteristic of sainthood eventually became an official decision, on the basis of the first two characteristics, that this person merited some form of public recognition in the Church’s life.

Beginning in the third or fourth century, churches began to be dedicated and named in honor of individual saints, often built over their earthly resting places. The most famous is St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, built over the cemetery on the Vatican Hill where Peter himself was buried. In other cases, where the burial place was too remote and hard to get to, a saint’s relics might be disinterred and brought to a more conveniently located church, where they were usually placed in or under the altar.

 

At around the same time, the Church began to designate official days in the calendar to the memory of particular saints: usually on the anniversaries of their deaths. For example, the feast day of Saint Mark, this parish’s patron, is April 25th, traditionally believed to be the anniversary of his death in Alexandria, Egypt, in the year 68. And so, in the end, the term “saint” characteristically came to designate those heroes and heroines of the faith with both churches and days in the calendar dedicated in their honor.

 

To recapitulate, then, the term “saints” refers in a general sense to the whole assembly of the faithful, and, in a more restricted sense, to those departed Christians whose holiness in this life was such that it seemed clear to the Church's members, first, that they were certainly with God in heaven; second, that they were praying for us on earth; and third, that they should be receive official recognition both in the dedication of church buildings and in the Church’s calendar.

 

A problem began to emerge, however, when the Church found, after several major persecutions, that it had more martyrs than days in the year to commemorate them. So, between the fifth and ninth centuries, the Feast of All Saints grew up as a sort of catchall festival, held at different times of the year in different places, when the Church honored all the holy men and women who’d lived and died in the faith of Christ. Then, in the year 732, Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel to All the Saints in Saint Peter’s Basilica on November 1st, which the Western Church has kept ever since in its Calendar as All Saints Day.

 

So, we come full circle to the biblical understanding of the saints as a great multitude, many more than we can name or number. While we celebrate some of the more notable ones on their designated days in the Church year, the Feast of All Saints reminds us of the millions of anonymous holy men and women down through the centuries who’ve gone before us to their heavenly reward: a great cloud of witnesses watching us and cheering us on as we run the race that they’ve completed ahead of us.

All Saints’ Day thus reminds us, also, that we’re all called to be saints. Contrary to popular belief, sainthood is not an exclusive vocation reserved to a few elite souls of extraordinary sanctity. When we actually read the lives of the saints, we discover not stained-glass figures of otherworldly perfection, but real flesh and blood people, of every temperament and personality, exhibiting all the anxieties, neuroses, hang-ups, annoying habits, temptations, and sins that beset us all, and then some. Yet, by their perseverance in God’s grace, they show us what life in Christ can and should look like. If they did it, then so can we.

 

We receive the call to sainthood at baptism. All Saints’ Day is one of the four great baptismal occasions of the Church year. (The others are the Easter Vigil, Pentecost, and the First Sunday after the Epiphany, a.k.a. the Baptism of Christ.) On these days, it’s especially appropriate to administer Holy Baptism, as we shall be doing today.

 

So, today we give thanks for all the saints – both the famous heroes and heroines of the faith whose lives inspire and encourage us in our Christian journey, and also the countless anonymous holy women and holy men who’ve run the same race. Today we take the opportunity to recommit ourselves to following in their footsteps, “encouraged by their examples, strengthened by their fellowship, and aided by their prayers.” In this way, we make our own the words of the wonderful hymn, “for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.”