Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

John 11:32-44 + All Saints’ Sunday + November 3, 2024

On Friday morning, saints from this congregation gathered in this sanctuary and listened for the sound of Marilyn Dayton’s voice in the heavenly choir. You know the line, “And so, with the church on earth and the hosts of heaven, we….and sing their unending song, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord…” Marilyn had been a fixture at Gloria Dei…no, wrong word..a force at Gloria Dei. When she was a small girl, she fell and hit her head. The impact of the fall changed Marilyn’s brain. None of the words that try to describe the effects of that impact or who she was are quite right. Certainly, it left her with challenges to negotiate, but it also did something to whatever that part of the brain is in most of us that struggles to understand or trust the power of love. Tim, in eulogy that gave all the preachers a run for their money, said that she had the gift of trust. She trusted that she was loved. She never held back in saying it. And she was free to live a life that included independence, care for others, and a kind of innocent generosity that was changed you.

Every funeral brings its own grief, but this one touched so many here because we saw something in Marilyn that shined with a heavenly light. In a strange way, it made, at least, me a better person. Many have said, “Marilyn made us a better church. We are who we are today, partly because of the presence of Marilyn Jean Dayton. She embodied the yearning in us that gives way to metaphor. The place where every tear is wiped away; no more sadness; no death; no loss of ability; the place with “a feast of fat things,”; the Lamb on the throne, a place with no more elections; the place that is all Peace, Love, Light, and the ongoing refrain, “Alleluia.” Alleluia. Alleluia.”

Most of us have a hard time trusting the love that is offered to us. We carry the wounds from the times when, indeed, that love was untrustworthy; or the stories deep within of how we let our beloved ones down; or we’ve just learned that life is complex, ambiguous, usually more difficult than we want. Evolution gave us a lymphatic system that uses fear to protect us. In our bodies and in our history books, we know bad things can, and do, happen. Our collective fear of that just makes it all worse.

We yearn to have the life that shimmered in Marilyn’s life, which made me ask this week, “Did anyone ask Lazarus about being called back to a life? Was he settled into that choir, putting together the music folder that would be ready for Marilyn, or relishing the pure presence of God, only to hear, first from a distance, then closer, more insistent, demanding, powerful, unavoidable: Lazarus, Come out!

Lazarus, come back to the body you just got rid of, the one with the bad right knee and the unpredictable cancer cells, the one with the brain that had started to misfire. Back to the Roman Empire, the poverty of a village in occupied territory, the dispute about the dog that keeps barking all night, the sisters, so lovable and so irritating at the same time, the politics of the synagogue, the uncertainty of tomorrow and of faith, all those doubts about whether this Jesus community was real, or just naïve hope.

We want out of that life! And he got called back into it. That’s really the definition of a saint: someone who has had enough of an experience of heaven to have it as a reality within but, at the same, time living in a world that is not heaven. In fact, sometimes, and for many, more like hell. We are living in a world with elections.

Lazarus is us. Jesus has called us live on this side of the tomb. At the same time, we are going to boldly trust heaven, certainly an experience to come but more so a world that is possible now. We are this weird people with a history—a history of God acting in profound and real ways. That’s why we read the Bible; that’s our shared experience. And we have a collective spiritual  lymphatic system that has known heavenly love, centuries of glimpses, and run-ins, and rituals, and music, and even tiny things like seeds, or babies, or flickering candles, that have changed us. If you sing enough Alleluia’s, they become a confession of baptismal identity, a hope for the years to come, a place to stand, even at the grave. Alleluia!

That’s the power of days like All Saints’. At this beginning of November, something is happening, fall leaning into winter, that makes life and death closer, a window between the worlds opens, a thin place. Terror and hope make for Halloween and All Saints. We take seriously All Saints and giggle about Halloween, and perhaps with an innocent trust, call the communion of saints to come a little closer, to ground us in what’s ultimately true and to give us a taste of the love that is at the table of fat things. They are the ones that come from beyond, join us to say, “It’s going to be okay. In the end, when all is said and done, written and filed, ultimately, it’s okay. Good is good. There will be a new creation. It’s not that our saints were that great in their lives; most probably weren’t; but they are the ones who we all will become at death, purely and fully loved and liberated and healed. The fancy church word is “redeemed.” Heaven flows through time and space as an Alleluia.

This is what Jesus will finally offer to Lazarus and all those who follow him, a glimpse and shared experience of the resurrection, the sign of the cross marked on and within us.

Here’s what I also noticed this week. We are really in this together in more ways than we know. Jesus said to his friends, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Jesus gives the world a communion of saints who have a job: to unbind. To undo the knots; to free the suffering, to care for one another, to forgive, to practice an abundant and thriving reality that is grounded in hope, and love, and tenacious generosity.

In these last two days before we vote, maybe it’s not enough to have just a foretaste of the feast and a community with the job of liberation, but, friends, it’s what we came here to trust. Let’s try, at least for another week, to live as if the resurrection of Jesus, and all that means, is where we stand.

Vote that way on Tuesday. Talk to your family that way. Work that way. Study that way. Get sick and die that way.

I promise you. On Wednesday, the same will be true as has always been. There will be enough experiences of heaven to keep the hope alive, and there will be a community of people who are at work unbinding, and undoing, and practicing the Jesus’ way. We already live in an eternal life, God’s life, pure unbounded love. We’ll say this today, and I want you to say it before you read about the results of the election or the results of the blood test or you read the college admission email. Alleluia. Christ is risen. Christ is risen, indeed. Alleluia.