"Remembering" - All Saints' Sunday - Pentecost 21C

Saint Luke 6:20-31
Saint Luke 19:1-10

In Friday’s Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich took note of what we are doing this day.

From the last day of October through the early days of November, we, the currently living humans, have all kinds of celebrations to invite the dearly departed back into our mortal realm.

There’s All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Halloween and Día de los Muertos. There’s the Gaelic festival of Samhain, in which the dead are guided home by lights left in the windows.

These celebrations aren’t identical, but they all come with the idea that here in mid autumn, at least in northern places, when the days get dark and the leaves are falling, it’s a good time to commune with the vanished souls.

The older I get, the more I sense the vanished souls among us. They’re the spirits of our departed parents, siblings, teachers, that old woman who lived next door until one day she didn’t. They’re the spirits of the people who wrote the old songs we sing, the famous lines we quote.

Some are strangers. Some are friends.

They’re the souls of my mother and my father, of my old friend Steve Daley, my dear friend Sharman Stein, my Aunt Mary Louise, my brother Bill. They’re the souls of my college French professor, Virginia, of my first boss, Jack, of my second boss, Dave. They’re the souls of Beethoven and Louisa May Alcott and Aretha.

I glimpse them all out of the corne\r of my eye, sense them all as a shadow at my shoulder. So close. And yet.

The older you get, the more you sense vanished souls crowding in around you. It’s like living in a packed “L” car, more and more souls trying to squeeze in all the time.

“No more room in here!” you want to shout. But there’s always room for just one more, whether you like it or not, because as you travel through time the people you’ve been traveling with die, one by one.

Gone? How could they be gone? How can people you love just vanish?1

I am not sure that Schmich would call herself a member of a faith community anymore.  Otherwise, she might not have used the word vanished.  But there still does seem to be a longing on her part for something more than memory. 

What she may be longing for is what we celebrate this day – the communion of saints.  The belief that all those we have loved and lost live on in not only our hearts but the heart of God. 

It is, for believers a blessed day that is born in a community that is always about hope.  If we are in a community where the light of God’s healing shines even in the darkest places we can go forward.  It is in faith communities, unlike any others, that we can find hope. 

I believe that is what the people who want clergy to be present to “say a few words” as they bury their dead or who  fill our churches on Easter but disappear on ordinary Sundays miss out on.

They miss out on being a part of a community that can hold the faith for them when they find it hard.  They miss out on being a part of the community of the living.

That may be where their story meets Zacchaeus’ story.  He wasn’t just a “wee little man” or a short person who, in the words of the old politically incorrect Randy Newman song, “got no reason to live.”  He was an outcast.

If he would have fallen out of that tree and been killed on the street no one would have mourned because, don’t you know, “no one mourns the wicked.”  That’s what he was in the eyes of his neighbors.  He was wicked.

Saint Luke tells us that not only that he was  chief tax collector he was a rich tax collector.

The Romans were dependant on tax collectors in order to govern (and finance) their far-flung empire. 

Few tax collectors avoided  . . .  corruption.  The fact that Zacchaeus is a “chief” tax collector is a sign that he is probably very, very, rich and probably very, very corrupt.  And for those reasons he was probably the most hated person in the village.2

It can’t be any fun to be hated no matter how much money you have.   It’s bad enough when we know that one person doesn’t like us but to have a whole town hate us is a much bigger matter.  It must have been very lonely and disheartening.

Apparently Zacchaeus had heard that Jesus was a friend to tax collectors and sinners. He may not have believed it but he had heard it and I wonder if just that thought - “There is somebody who will be a friend to someone like me!” - wasn’t enough to make Zacchaeus want to go and have a look.

We have no idea whether Zacchaeus was able to see or even recognized Jesus but Jesus saw him and recognized him for who he really was.  Of this moment Dr.  Fred Craddock writes:

His lifestyle and the resultant treatment by community and synagogue had not moved him beyond the reach of God’s seeking love.  And if he is a child of Abraham so are they all, including those who murmured against Jesus, and as children of Abraham they need the grace of God as much as Zacchaeus does.3

That is where all of us and all who we remember this day stand — in need of the grace of God.  When we find it or it finds us we can count ourselves among God’s blessed saints.

That is who we are remembering this day.  We are remembering imperfect people who have been saved by God’s grace.

Another Chicago Tribune columnist, Mary Wisniewski, was thinking about her loved ones at this time of year and reminded us.

In Mexican culture, on All Souls’ or the Day of the Dead, families assemble ofendras altars containing pictures of their lost ones, along with personal and sacred objects, flowers and sweets.
 
 I don’t have an ofrenda altar in the house, but I keep one in my head. I’m remembering you, on this blustery day — Dad, my grandparents, Susie, Danny, Carlos, Uncle Dennis, Cousin Bob.4

In one of his final public appearances Fred Rogers, Mr.  Rogers to most of us, gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Dartmouth College.  At the conclusion he said to the graduates:

Anyone who has ever graduated from a college, anyone who has ever been able to sustain a good work, has had at least one person, and often many, who have believed in him or her. We just don’t get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others.

I’d like to give you all an invisible gift. A gift of a silent minute to think about those who have helped you become who you are today. Some of them may be here right now. Some may be far away. Some ... may even be in Heaven. But wherever they are, if they’ve loved you, and encouraged you, and wanted what was best in life for you, they’re right inside your self. And I feel that you deserve quiet time, on this special occasion, to devote some thought to them. So, let’s just take a minute, in honor of those that have cared about us all along the way. One silent minute.5

Then Mr.  Rogers looked down at his watch and waited.

When I watched the video of this I was astounded how quiet everything became.  Some students bowed their heads and gave thanks.  Others, with eyes wide open, were clearly remembering.  Even the faculty on the dais seemed to be taking that moment to remember.

After we commune today we too will have such a time. 

If you would like going into Crayons chapel, lite a candle, and remember. 

If you want to have a seat in the chapel please do.  If you would like to stay there until the conclusion of the worship, feel free.

Take some time to remember those who “loved you, and encouraged you, and wanted what was best in life for you” and be blessed in remembering that they are not gone but live on in the great communion of saints that we celebrate this day. 

Remember them and give thanks.

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1.  Mary Schmich,  “The Season of All Souls.” The Chicago Tribune, November 1, 2019, Morning edition, sec. 1. http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/html5/desktop/production/default.aspx?edid=b108e83e-4f37-4f59-ae32-76fe541df447.

2.   William H. Willimon, “Eating and Drinking Among the Lost.” Pulpit Resource 35, no. 4 (October 1, 2007): 21–24.

3.  Fred B.  Craddock, Luke: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.  (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2009), p.  219.

4. Mary Wisnewski, “Loved Ones Go but Memory Remains.” The Chicago Tribune, November 1, 2019, Morning edition, sec. 1. http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/html5/desktop/production/default.aspx?&edid=b108e83e-4f37-4f59-ae32-76fe541df447.

5. “Revisiting Fred Rogers' 2002 Commencement Address.” Dartmouth News, June 11, 2017. https://news.dartmouth.edu/news/2018/03/revisiting-fred-rogers-2002-commencement-address.
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