Sermon: Sheep

Grace Presbyterian Church

November 26, 2017, Christ the King/Reign of Christ A

Ezekiel 34:11-24; Matthew 25:31-46

 

Sheep

 

 

It may be some surprise, on a day designated as marking the Reign of Christ, to start off with a passage comparing a king to a shepherd. It turns out, though, that such a comparison was actually fairly common in the period in which the book of Ezekiel was written. When the first part of the chapter, before the portion included in our reading, takes aim at the kings of Israel, those who are judged as “bad kings” for their failure to lead as God intended, it in fact falls into line with a metaphor of king as shepherd that was actually pretty common in ancient Middle Eastern thought.  Egyptian writings often stressed the role of kings or even deities as shepherds of the people.  The Babylonian god Marduk was interestingly described as the “shepherd of all the gods.”[i]  In more mundane terms, the famous Law Code of Hammurabi stresses the role of the king (namely, himself) as being “to promote the welfare of the people, to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil that the strong might not oppress the weak” – exactly the kind of language describing a shepherd’s responsibility towards the sheep under his care.  

Given this context, Ezekiel’s discourse here comes as a relief and fits into a familiar political as well as theological framework.  The kings of Israel are indicted for their failure to be true shepherds to the people, as in verse 3 and following: “You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.  You have not strengthened the week, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have scattered them.” In turn God promises through Ezekiel to take such leaders away; beginning with our passage in verse 10, the “right” shepherd is revealed to be none other than God.

God promises to re-gather the sheep who have been scattered or driven away by the bad shepherds, to seek them out and to restore the flock.  God promises to feed them and to restore their health.  There are times the language here sounds an awful lot like the ever-familiar Psalm 23, with its promises of good pasture and good water.

Still, though, God has a bit more for Ezekiel to say about not just bad shepherds, but bad sheep.  The gentle pastoral nature of the passage is badly disrupted at verse 16, in which God promises that “I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy.  I will feed them with justice.”  What seems like a jarring interruption (seemingly too much for the lectionary makers) turns out to be a major interjection, in verse 17 and following:

As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: I will judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats: Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but must you tread down with your feet the rest of the pasture?  When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet?  And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?

Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.  Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they will no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. (17-22)

 

It isn’t just bad leaders God condemns through Ezekiel; the grabbers, the greedy, the hoarders among the sheep themselves also come under condemnation.  Those who greedily consume the good grass and water, and even go so far as to foul the grass and water they aren’t consuming, are judged by God.  There are probably three different sermons to be preached just on this passage alone.  For today, let it be enough to note that the flock, the community of God’s people, are disrupted both by bad shepherds who scatter the flock and exploit their rule to enrich themselves, but also by members of the flock itself who gorge themselves and crowd out fellow sheep from access to good grass and water. The good gifts of God given for all the people of God, not just a select, privileged few.  

The thing is, I’m guessing the “fat sheep” talked a pretty good game about righteousness and “living right” and being children of Abraham and all that. We’re not talking about obvious wolves here; they are sheep, part of the flock. But their behavior towards the other sheep sets them apart as not being the “good guys” after all. How often it is that the ones who do the most harm are not those who threaten from outside, but those who destroy and hurt from within!

Ezekiel promises that God will intervene for the sheep, both casting aside the bad shepherds and promising, where the fat sheep are concerned, to “feed them with justice” (v. 16).  It’s hard to resist the urge to read that phrase as suggest that God is going to shove justice down the throats of the fat, greedy sheep, but in any case their grasping, wasteful ways are under the judgment of God.

Whether one sees this passage as prophetic of Jesus as the good shepherd king or not, one thing that it does make clear is that we humans are in need of this divine intercession.  As much as we might see ourselves us as among the innocent sheep scattered or starved by the bad shepherds or fat sheep, it’s never too far a trip from lean sheep to fat sheep.  Humans, particularly humans placed in power or even merely more advantaged than another, fail.  Don’t doubt that each one of us has at one time been the sheep treading down the grass or fouling the water with our feet.

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr probably expressed this best in his Moral Man and Immoral Society: 

…the limitations of the human imagination, the easy subservience of reason to prejudice and passion, and the consequent persistence of irrational egoism, particularly in group behavior, make social conflict an inevitability in human history, probably to its very end. (xx)

 

We are, particularly in large numbers, prone to wrongdoing and exploitation.  We need deliverance.  And the Shepherd King is promised to deliver us from the exploitation of bad shepherds and fat sheep, and even – maybe most of all – from ourselves.

It’s not hard to make the leap from this Old Testament prophecy to today’s Gospel lesson, the familiar “parable of the sheep and goats,” particularly as the parable as Jesus tells it uses the same kind of metaphor as Ezekiel attributes to God, sorting “sheep from sheep … rams from goats.”  Jesus’s point in the parable is also pretty similar; those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, cared for the sick, and visit the imprisoned are the blessed ones, while those who did not do those things are not, because whether you did or did not do those for “the least of these,” you did or did not do them for Jesus himself.  

Jesus’s teaching directs us to care for “the least of these,” and in so doing puts an affirmative spin on what comes off as punitive in Ezekiel’s prophecy. What is striking in the parable is that this sorting is not applied only to the people of Israel, as in Ezekiel’s case or in much of Matthew’s gospel, but to “all the nations” – a term Matthew’s readers would instantly have recognized as including the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people of the world. The Reign of God, in other words, is not restricted to the "people of God." Nonetheless, much of Ezekiel’s warning is echoed in Jesus’s parable. Jesus may call “goats” those whom Ezekiel labels “fat sheep,” but the warning is still clear; you won’t like being sorted that way, and having justice shoved down your throat.

But let’s not forget the part that probably bothers a lot of us most; the degree to which even the sheep in Jesus’s parable don’t seem to realize who they are or whom they are serving. We tend to want our Christ the King scriptures to be all about the obvious “good guys” getting in and the obvious “bad guys” being cast out into that eternal fire. But how does that work when even the good guys don’t realize that they’re the good guys? What do we make of that?

For generations this day was known only as Christ the King Sunday; the term “Reign of Christ” is a recent one, but it has at least one definite advantage. To speak of the Reign of Christ places the obligation of responding to that reign directly on us. Are we doing the work of Christ’s reign? Are we giving food and drink, welcoming, clothing, caring, visiting? Are we doing the work instead of merely talking about it? Or have we devolved into Ezekiel’s fat sheep, crowding in and butting out and fouling the water and trampling the grass so that the other sheep can’t feed and drink, all the while hiding behind “thoughts and prayers” or some other slogan to cover for the work we won’t do? 

Where are you going to be when the Big Sorting happens?

For the Reign of Christ, and that it compels us not just to talk, but to do, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #320, The Church of Christ in Every Age; #767, Together We Serve; #---, The reign of Christ compels us

 

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[i] Among may other epithets: http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/gods/lords/marduk1.html

Sermon: Talents

First Presbyterian Church

November 19, 2023, Pentecost 25A

Matthew 25:14-30

 

Talents

 

 

Once again, here in Matthew 25, Jesus is giving a parable. It's the next-to-last parable he'll tell in this gospel; there's one more to go, the most famous one, in this chapter, and beginning with chapter 26 we are counting down Jesus's final days. In short, this is the end, or very near it, and Jesus knows this, and this should perhaps be something we keep in mind in hearing these parables. 

First of all, though, we have to define our terms, or at least one term.

The term that is given as “talent” in the NRSV is in Greek talanta, a term that doesn’t translate for us because it is a term for a specific amount of currency. (The NIV's "bags of gold" is imprecise, as we shall see.) Most scholars agree that one talanta or “talent” would be a sum of money equivalent to the accumulated wages that an average day laborer of the time could expect to earn over the course of fifteen to twenty years. Given the life expectancy rates of the time, you’re easily looking at a lifetime’s wages being entrusted to even the slave given only the one talanta. So, understand first that these three slaves in the story are being entrusted with very large sums of money. What they are asked to steward is extremely valuable.

Now also notice that this parable does not open in the same way as the first parable found in this chapter, the subject of last week’s sermon. In that case the parable is introduced with Jesus saying “For the kingdom of heaven is like this.” Straightforward. Seems simple. This parable, on the other hand, picks up from verse 13 – “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” – with a rather more ambiguous opening: “For it is as if a man, going on a journey …” with no reference to exactly what “it” is in this case. Given the parable, and in particular its testy and accusatory final section, maybe this isn’t the “kingdom of heaven” we’re looking at here. It could, though, be – like last week’s parable – about living in the time between, the waiting for the kingdom to be revealed in its fullness, perhaps. It’s not hard to argue that the two do have the same point – our waiting is not passive; we continue to work; we continue to serve; we continue to act. 

But you can start a really fierce argument in biblical scholarship circles by asking whether the wealthy traveler in this parable is actually meant to evoke God, or even Jesus. His interactions with the “one-talent slave” don’t look very Jesus-like to us, if we’re honest with ourselves. At least we hope we don’t encounter Jesus blasting us as a “wicked, lazy slave” and calling for us to be cast into the “outer darkenss, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” But I wonder if perhaps there might be a point to this angle after all; if one is obligated to put in the work for a particularly unpleasant earthly "boss" of this sort, how much more so are we obligated put in the work for our God?

Perhaps the strongest “unlearning” we need to do with this parable is to ask ourselves these talents in the parable – these talantae – are really supposed to mean.

An allegory – defined by Merriam-Webster as “the expression by means of symbolic fictional figures or actions of truths or generalizations about human existence” – can become less meaningful if we reduce it to something like a metaphor or simile – “this is that,” or “this is like that”. Once allegory is opened up, on the other hand, the potential meanings of the different symbols in the story can multiply and lead in directions we may not expect. So, what do those talents – the five, the two, the one – potentially stand for?

Over the centuries, sadly, Christian thought has tended to reduce the multiple possibilities of this allegory to only two: money – a reflection of the original meaning of the word – and talents – our English appropriation of the word to describe the natural intelligences, aptitudes, skills, or capabilities of an individual.

On the surface there is nothing wrong with either of these representations. This passage is often enough appropriated for “stewardship sermons,” and that’s not necessarily a wrong reading of the text. It’s not as natural as it might seem, though. Note where Matthew has paced this parable in his account of Jesus’s ministry. For one, it’s right after that parable of the bridesmaids from last week, and before the famous parable of the sheep and goats (next week). Financial stewardship is certainly appropriate to think about as a part of how we live (and we certainly do talk about it that way plenty in September and October), but this series of parables seems an odd context for Jesus to start talking about money. Furthermore, as noted earlier, the next thing to happen after these parables in Matthew’s account is Jesus’s final days in Jerusalem. The anointing of his feet at Bethany, the preparations for and sharing of that last meal together, the trial and crucifixion and what comes after – in other words, what happens next is Holy Week. Again, between these two, seems an odd time for a stewardship sermon.

As to talents, aside from how the original word has nothing to do with our modern usage, it seems unlikely to be an exhaustive thing for Jesus to talk about with what he knows is coming. 

Again, neither possibility is necessarily wrong, but they don’t seem terribly exhaustive. Certainly these are not the only gifts God gives us “for the living of these days,” to borrow the words of an old hymn? 

Maybe our reading of this parable is too limited. What if we think of all of the gifts and blessings with which God has gifted us? What are the other parts of our lives we are called to steward and invest and oversee and bring back a 100% return on God’s investment in us? 

What about our time? How do we “invest” our time to bring about that return? Are we studying the scriptures? Are we in prayer, meditating on God’s call to us? Are we serving God by serving God’s children? Or are our hours getting choked away in pursuits that are, even if good and even helping the church, pursuits that are not bringing about God’s call in each of us and in all of us together?

What about our minds? How do we “invest” our minds to bring about that return? Are we again studying in God’s world? Are we paying attention to the world around us in order to hear how God calls us to work and serve our neighbors, or to work and serve with our neighbors? Are we opening ourselves to the truth that sets us free? Are we being “transformed by the renewing of our minds,” as the Apostle Paul wrote (Romans 12:2)?

What about our voices, or even our witness? How do we “invest” our witness to bring about that return? Do we bear the gospel with us readily? Are we ready to give “an account of the hope that is in you,” in the words of 1 Peter (3:15)? Are our voices heard when injustice is not only perpetuated, but tolerated and even winked at? Is our witness heard when hatred is not only tolerated, but is enshrined in the highest halls of power our land has to offer? Do we speak up with hope when the world teaches and preaches despair?

Here’s the thing: when we don’t “make these investments,” people are hurt. The body of Christ loses when we don’t invest our time together. The world loses when our minds are not renewed and transformed in service to God. People suffer and are oppressed and impoverished and even killed when our witness goes silent. And while it might be hard for us to imagine, it would not be that hard to imagine Jesus’s grief, Jesus’s anger even, when those things happen. Maybe even “weeping and gnashing of teeth” kind of anger.

How are we investing our money? How are we investing our abilities and talents? But also how are we investing our time and our minds and our witness and all of the gifts that God has given us, each according to our own ability? How are we, in short, investing ourselves?

For good return on what God has invested in us, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #403, Open Now Thy Gates of Beauty; #716, God, Whose Giving Knows No Ending; #719, Come, Labor On

Sermon: Lamps

First Presbyterian Church

November 12, 2023, Pentecost 23A

Matthew 25:1-13

 

Lamps

 

I don’t think I am unduly telling tales out of school to observe that some scripture passages are more challenging for preachers than others.  Not to say that any scripture is ever all that easy to preach, mind you; even a favorite like Psalm 23 presents a challenge to the preacher if only because it is so well-known and beloved that it can be hard to find something to say about it at all.

But there are passages that are challenging for different reasons.  Some passages are challenging because of what they have to say.  Sometimes it’s puzzling, sometimes it’s a hard word to hear, and sometimes (especially if you wander over to Revelation) its just flat difficult to make any sense of it.

And then there are passages like this parable from the beginning of Matthew 25.  This presents a different kind of struggle; the struggle to create a sermon on a passage when you can’t shake the memory of scriptures like the ones you’ve just heard, even some from this very gospel, that point to some very different conclusions than the scripture at hand today.[i]

It just feels…off. There's no "good guy" in the story, so to speak. I just wish the story was as easy as our first hymn made it seem.

The point here is not to dismiss this parable.  For one thing, the Revised Common Lectionary insists on bringing it around at least once every three years, and who knows how much Christian education curriculum will also include this story.  Besides, it’s not our place to toss out scripture that disturbs us.  There is something to be learned from this parable.  It might also be, though, that after decades or even centuries of reading and hearing it, there might also be some things the church needs to unlearn as well.

It’s perfectly appropriate to come away from this parable having learned that we don’t want to end up like the foolish bridesmaids, lacking oil for their lamps and hunting for a 24-hour Casey's General Store in first-century Israel. Calling them "foolish" becomes a problem, though, when we remember scripture like 1 Corinthians 1:27, "But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise," or 3:18, "If you think you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise." Scripture tends to take a dim view of what passes for human "wisdom"; see, for example, the parable character in Luke 12 who proposed to build bigger barns for his unexpected harvest, only to have God label him a "fool' when telling him "this very night your life is being demanded of you." The "foolish" in scripture aren't always who or what we think they are. Perhaps the one actually "foolish" thing they did was go off looking for oil instead of simply staying and waiting for the bridegroom, no matter how dark it got.

On the other hand, the "wise" bridesmaids are not necessarily objects for our emulation either.  Nowadays that extra oil might qualify them more for an episode of Hoarders or Doomsday Preppers or some other “reality” show and less as examples for our emulation, or at least like that would-be barn-builder in Luke 12. At minimum, it’s one thing to be “in,” but there is simply too much weight of scripture against them to celebrate anyone who plays a role in keeping others “out,” particularly when we get to the parable at the end of chapter 25, the one where those cast out failed to help "the least of these" when they had the chance to do so.  The parable cannot become an excuse to turn into hoarders of the gifts of God, whether physically or spiritually.

We might also want to re-think what it means to wait for the Lord.  Somehow it seems to have snuck into the collective subconscious on this parable for many decades or even centuries that the foolish bridesmaids were somehow at fault for falling asleep, and therefore not being ready for the coming of the bridegroom.  Of course, the problem with this is that the parable explicitly tells us “all of them became drowsy and slept.” (25:5).  The so-called “wise” bridesmaids were just as conked out as the foolish bridesmaids.  Yes, we need to “keep awake” as Jesus says at the end, but that can’t be what brought shame to the "foolish" bridesmaids if the "wise" bridesmaids did it too.

(While we're at it, what's with the bridegroom arriving for a wedding banquet at midnight? And where's the bride in all this? Shouldn't the bridegroom be bringing the bride with him? And refusing entry to invited guests? That would get heaped with scorn in a culture that was all about hospitality.)

We need to steer clear of any interpretations of this parable that foster or encourage an “us against them” mentality.  There is no “insider” vs. “outsider” contrast here; no “Christian” or “un-Christian,” no “saved” vs. “lost” in the way we church folk tend to define things.  All of the bridesmaids are part of the same wedding party; they all are invited guests.  Only the lack of lamp oil (and the choice to go chasing after it) causes the foolish bridesmaids to be left out.  Now this ought to chill us a little bit, but Matthew has already cited Jesus as saying this same thing much more clearly and explicitly in chapter 7; “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Mt. 7:21) There are many who talk the talk, to put it in modern slang, who will find themselves on the outside looking in because they didn’t walk the walk.

So what do we learn from this?  No matter how difficult or challenging the story might be, is there something we should be taking from this parable as a positive instruction for our lives?

The Australian theologian William Loader puts it this way:

It is about sustaining the life of faith. … Having had lamps in hand which burned well once is no guarantee they will burn in future. Having the status of being Christian, even being a light bearer, means nothing if it is not a continuing part of our being. Many who were first will be last (20:1-16). Matthew is interested in enabling people to live in a relationship with God which has continuing significance and continuing life.[ii]

 

Light bulbs have to be replaced (even the fancy energy-efficient kind, eventually).  Flashlights need new batteries.  The oil in our lamps needs to be replenished, and regularly.  And I dare say that the one sentence applies pretty well to churches as well as individuals.

That oil, that fuel for a life lived in Christ, is not replenished by spiritualized words and lofty-sounding pronouncements.  It is not replenished by calling ourselves “Christians” over and over again (or denouncing those we disagree with as un-Christian).  It certainly is not replenished by checking off lists of do’s and don’ts, carefully drawing lines to make sure “we” are “in,” and “they” are “out.”  

We refuel our lamps by plunging into the work of God. We refuel by entering into worship, not as an accommodation to our whims and tastes, but as a profoundly needed encounter with the God who drives us out into the world to do God’s work.  We refuel not by brandishing the Bible as a club with which to beat “outsiders,” but by diving into the scriptures to understand God’s call upon us, to seek in Jesus’s life and work (and in nothing else) our own life and work.  We refuel by opening ourselves to the unpredictable and unsettling movement of the Holy Spirit, who calls us in ways we cannot expect or predict.  

In the end we do wait, but not passively. We act because we are called by a merciful and gracious God who wants no one left out.  We serve, because we know what is to be the foolish bridesmaids, fumbling in the dark with empty lamps, but also because we know what it is to be the “wise” bridesmaids, fearfully refusing our treasure to those who need it so much more, hoarding the very Spirit we were meant to share.

We wait by feeding and clothing and welcoming and visiting, but we also wait by questioning why there are so many who need feeding and clothing and welcoming and visiting.  We wait by offering our thoughts and prayers in times of tragedy, but we also wait by demanding action to prevent those preventable tragedies and taking action to prevent them from ever happening again. We wait by being the body of Christ, by walking the walk as well as talking the talk.  Anything less is a robbery of the God who calls us out of darkness into light, who calls us to love God with all we have and to love neighbor as self.  

With lamps trimmed and burning, with lives fueled by God’s love moving through us into the world in word and deed, we wait.

For the work of faithful, active waiting, Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #362, Rejoice! Rejoice, Believers; #612, We Praise You, O God; #367, Come, Ye Thankful People, Come

 

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[i] These examples and more from David Henson, “The Breaking of the Bridesmaids: Rethinking a Problematic Parable (Lectionary Reflection),” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidhenson/2014/11/the-breaking-of-the-bridesmaids-how-scripture-undermines-a-parable/ (Accessed November 4, 2014).

[ii] William Loader, “First Thoughts On Passages From Matthew In the Lectionary: Pentecost 22,” http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/MtPentecost22.htm 

 

Sermon: Saints

Grace Presbyterian Church

November 5, 2017, All Saints’ A

Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3

 

Saints

 

It is one of the quirks of the liturgical calendar that Reformation Day (which we marked last week) and All Saints’ Day fall on consecutive days, October 31 and November 1, respectively. They would seem in many ways to be quite different occasions, maybe even incompatible in the eyes of some. The Reformation of course marked, in the long term, a reaction against and ultimately departure from the larger church and many of its practices, and most (though not all) Protestant groups disposed of the practice of venerating saints in their attempts to distance themselves from the practices of that larger church. In other words, most Protestant church traditions don’t have “saints” in the formal sense.

But of course we do have “saints.” We may not use the title, but we most certainly do have “saints.” And you know of whom I am speaking.  We as a congregation have borne the departure of Art Schenk and John Welch from our fellowship since this time last year. I did not have the chance to meet either of them (although our paths may have crossed with John's many years ago, in Tallahassee),, but the roles they played in the life of this congregation will linger on in the memory of many of you.

The word “saint,” still, is intimidating to us. We might, at our imagination’s most vivid moments, conjure up a scene something like that found in a reading from Revelation that we heard a few weeks ago on World Communion Sunday, the “great multitude … from every nation” found exulting in the salvation of God while rejoicing and praising and worshiping constantly. It’s a glorious scene to be sure, but not necessarily one in which we see ourselves; as the one elder describes them as having come through the “great ordeal” (likely a reference to early examples of persecution finding its way to the early church), we realize that, generally, that’s not us – we don’t know persecution for our faith. 

As for the reading from Psalm 34 today, it can sound awfully intimidating, or perhaps more of a challenge than we feel ourselves ready to meet. How often do we feel like we could accurately quote just that first verse? Do we really "bless the Lord at all times"? Can any of us truthfully say that God's praise will "continually be in my mouth"? Sometimes these psalmists set an extremely high standard, and while we might be uplifted by the poetry and musicality of it all, we might also feel just a bit overwhelmed by it and end up feeling a long way from being any kind of "saint" even if the psalmist isn't using that word to describe the singer.

But that’s where the account from 1 John comes in. Written to a church that has apparently suffered not persecution but division, this letter focuses on getting through such trials as we do face, and doing so in a way that gives off visible evidence of being those who are “called children of God.” 

This very short passage still makes that point we need to hear; we really are children of God, even if the world doesn’t see it. But then, if the world doesn’t know what God looks like, how would it know what a child of God looks like? What we will be, we don’t know; but what we know is that on that day, whenever it may be, that God is at long last visible and revealed to us … “we will be like [God], for we will see [God] as [God] is.” This is the hope we have in us.

Of course we don’t get there by our own superhuman will. All that goes into becoming whatever we will become is a gift of God, as the Apostle Paul would jump in to remind us at about this point. 

So, we go forward. We “press on." One thing this reading reminds us is that, to borrow another popular phrase, “the best is yet to come.” 

The risk of an occasion like All Saints’ Day is that we get caught up in glorifying the past. That’s particularly a risk for a church like ours, where that list of those who have departed from us in past years can seem overwhelming and even crushing, and we are tempted to get caught in nostalgia for those days when those departed saints were filling pews all around the sanctuary.

But the “glory days” of the body of Christ are not back there. They’re not behind us; they are still ahead. Anything in this earthly life is not going to be “glory days,” folks. We may not know what the future of this congregation or any other congregation is going to be, but we know what the future – what the hope – of the body of Christ is.

And so, toward that hope, we press on, "saints" or otherwise. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #326, For All the Saints; #729, Lord, I Want to Be a Christian; #804, Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart!