Sermon All Saints Sunday 2012

Sermon:

Text: Isaiah 25:6-9

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who wipes our tears away in the feast.

            So, as you all know, I like to cook, I don’t always want to cook for 700 like today, but it’s great fun to do so every once in a while.

            Many of my favorite memories are surrounded by cooking and eating. Sloppy Joes for 600 at my friends Jon and Renee’s wedding, dinner on Sunday nights at my Campus Pastor’s house, thanksgiving dinner around the Grandparents table, trying to rush through Christmas Eve dinner so that we could open presents 2 mins earlier.

            And yet there always seems to be a somber, sad side to such dinners. There always seems to be someone missing, be it the relative who couldn’t make the journey, or didn’t want to make the journey, the friend, son, daughter, husband, wife, or parent whose chair sits empty and whose presence is noticeably absent.

            As I look out I don’t see a face who has not experienced that loss in some way or another. I can’t see a face which tears have not touched.

            Tears and food go together. It is in dining together that stories get told, that memories are shared, loved ones thought of and never lost.

            In our text from Isaiah we find a message to a people so like us. A message to all people of every time and place. We are hurt, a shroud of pain envelopes us, a sheet of mourning hides the sun. Death overwhelms. Tears flood.

            Tears are meant to be shed. There are a multitude of reasons why we cry, some are obvious, we need to lubricate our eyes. But, tears of sorrow and mourning are different, there is no real concrete reason given for what they do or why they occur. Is it for removing excess hormones and proteins that then gives us a emotional burst? Or to show to others that we are in a state of pain and emotional stress and deserve to be pitied and left alone?  

            Whatever the reason, tears are connected to sorrow and loss. In the midst of his sorrow on the death of his friend Lazarus, Jesus began to weep, often seen in the more common form “Jesus Wept.” But, there are two other occurrences in this text alone showing Jesus emotionally overcome if not also implying weeping. When Jesus sees Mary weeping he is greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved, and when he comes to the tomb is again greatly disturbed. In this story our savior enters the human condition and enters our sorrowed mourning.

            Christ is with us in all the experiences that cause tears to flow. When again we are overwhelmed by the loss of loved ones. Seeing other loved ones in mourning, approaching the gravesite of our loved ones, or simply the memory of them invoked by a sight or smell.

            On this All Saint’s Sunday we remember all those who have gone before us, one with us as the Saints of God, together with us as beloved Children of God. We gather together to collectively remember those we have lost. As we look around we see that we are not in this alone. Jesus wept, our neighbors weep, our friends cry, our loved ones sob.

            The pain of loss still looms, the sheet covers, the shroud blankets. And into that sorrow, into that mourning God bursts with an answer.

            God’s answer is a feast.

            A feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine. A feast prepared not with human hands, but by God’s self. A feast that embodies the very nature of God as Triune, a God of connection and relationship. God creates for us a feast that restores us, that releases us, that empowers us. This feast removes the shroud of pain, destroys the sheet of mourning. In this feast God swallows death. We will still die, but in the feast, God wins.

            This feast is God’s victory over death through the cross of Jesus Christ who weeps with us in our sorrow, who takes that sorrow and wipes our tears away.

            This feast is in God’s presence, where we again find our loved ones present. This feast is God’s promise that mourning and crying and pain will be no more. This feast is God’s covenant with us that death has been overcome, we die, but God triumphs, on the last day God will raise us up to new life.

            Everyday we will miss our loved ones, not a moment will pass where somewhere in our thoughts a space is not occupied with them. But, God’s promise here is that God will remember them as deeply as we do. God dwells with us, Immanuel, God with us. God does not forget them or us. Our tears will come, but God wipes them clean, our mourning will occur, but God will comfort us. And on the last day God will bring us to the new earth, the new Jerusalem, and finally our tears will be gone, our sorrow removed, and we will feast again together with those we miss so very much.

            Let us pray,

God of mercy, we ask you to be with us in our feasting, be with us in our mourning, be with us in our sorrow and joy. We know your promise to never leave us, to wipe our tears, help us to remember your presence in those moments.

Amen.