It’s All Saints Day, a day inviting us to remember our loved ones who’ve passed on and tell stories of how their lives changed ours. This is surely one of the most bittersweet moments of death: a time to gather in the living room or at the funeral home or around the graveside to tell stories about the soul who has gone before us.
Even in for relationships that were strained or less than perfect (which is basically every relationship), we know deep down that our lives would not be what they are without this person. We know we have been changed by our encounters with this individual.
It’s like the song says:
Because I knew you, I have been changed for good.
“For Good” from Wicked
Wherever we encounter people and for however long we are in proximity to them, their existence may have a profound effect on our own. And likewise, our presence can have an impact on their life, whether for good or ill.
During a grad-school lecture on Trinitarian hospitality, my professor Richard Beck said,
We’re saved as individuals and into community.
Our salvation story is not written in isolation. It’s crafted in community with others. It’s affected by our proximity to people who are following Jesus with their whole lives and invite us to come and see. Our salvation is dependent on the influence of others, for better or for worse. Our spiritual formation is affected by and for others. We need each other.
And yet…
One of the great struggles of our human existence is loneliness, a craving for community. At our core we desire to find safety and encounter love in relationship with others. We desire to be known fully and embraced just as we are, loved fully and urged to become all we were meant to be. This kind of intimate relationship is rare, it’s hard to come by. It requires mutuality, an almost covenantal kind of a friendship that commits to loyal and unconditional love. It’s hard work, but work that’s worth doing.
We find ourselves in long lines at the grocery store or sitting in a doctor’s office or passing people on our walking path and can still feel deeply alone. Wherever we live – in an apartment complex or in a residential neighborhood or out in the country – we see neighbors coming and going all the time. But doesn’t there seem to be some unspoken mutual agreement to not both each other? We assume minding our own business is best for everyone so we pull in the driveway, close the garage door and do our best to keep to ourselves. We commit ourselves to a particular congregation and show up week after week to see the same faces again and again, but somehow there’s still a void in our spirits. And now we find ourselves nearing month nine of a pandemic which compounds our ongoing struggle with loneliness and our desperate need for community.
Of course not every grocery-store encounter will result in a lasting community, the type intimate relationship I just mentioned a moment ago. But nevertheless every encounter with another human being can have a mutual effect on our lives that heaps piles of God’s love onto one another, if only for a second.
When God created humankind in his image, he knew it was not good to be alone, but to have a companion and partner in life (Gen 2:18). God’s very nature, the Trinity, is communal, a divine partnership between Father, Son, and Spirit.
Once we believe with all our being that community is a requirement for wholeness, we need to take responsibility. We cannot wait around for someone else to take the initiative. Let us not delay in engaging with the people around us. Let’s not wait for a neighbor to talk to us first or for the cashier to engage in genuine conversation or for that couple at church to make the first move.
Let’s channel our inner child and strike up a conversation, a friendship with a stranger. Take a note from my daughter’s pre-COVID habit of saying, “Mom, look! My new friend is here” every time a new kids shows up on the playground.
Friends all this talk about community and the importance of our stories in conjunction with others, it’s for this reason I find such life and anchoring in the lectionary and the litrugical year and in Holy Communion. In all of these practices, I am reminded I am not alone. My faith is just mine. I am practicing my faith and saying my prayers and reading these Scriptures in conjunction with hundreds of others all over the world on this very day and for decades and centuries before.
When we observe a day like All Saints Day we are encountering the “great cloud of witnesses” those who have gone before us and those with whom we will join singing, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Imagine with me for a moment our joining this everlasting gathering of people who know one another and love one another with the love of God, a community of safety and belonging through Christ Jesus our Risen Lord:
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.
They are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Revelation 7:9; 15-17
Friends let us continue the good work of these saints who have gone before for the sake of the saints who will come long after us. Let’s be bold. Let’s remember there are souls at stake.
