A Message from Mark

 

For All the Saints

Mark McCormick, General Presbyter

 

O blest communion, fellowship divine!

We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;

Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.

Alleluia, Alleluia!

 

The third stanza of For All the Saints reminds us that our faithfulness in ministry and in the work of redemptive and reparative justice is not isolated from the saints who have gone before us. As we continue to struggle forward aligning our work with our best discernment of the divine intent, we should be encouraged by the stories of our forebears who labored faithfully. We naturally think of the great names that come to us from the Scriptures, the roll call that includes Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, and the martyrs, Stephen, Peter, Paul, and so many more. We hear their stories as encouragement to see our own lives in relation to God’s persistent invitation to faithfulness.

This year the lectionary readings for All Saints remind us of the great multitude that no one could count, our membership as children of God, the great promises in John’s revelatory vision, and the Beatitudes as a guide for attitude and action. We have an opportunity to see our lives and labors in the context of those who blazed the path and who yet shine as encouragement to our faithfulness. We envision them not to measure our lives against theirs, but to understand their testimonies and the stories of their faithfulness within our experience. When John the Revelator witnesses such a crowd of saints gathered around the Lamb and imagines a world in which all the hopes are fulfilled and all tears are dried, we read our own hopes in that vision and see our lives in the context of that hope. Then, seeing ourselves and our lives in that reality, we are renewed in our strength and our commitment to faithfulness.

We can also readily call to mind faithful saints nearer to our moment, whose instruction through word and deed still shine upon us and light our path toward faithful work. We can invoke the memory of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King, Jr., whose theological and ethical calls to sacrifice and justice still ring in our ears. But I imagine also that many of us can readily call to mind saints even nearer in our lives whose faithfulness shines in our memories and invites us likewise to be faithful. Sunday School teachers, elders of the church, camp counselors, pastors, professors, so many saints whose voices and actions set goal posts and boundary stones that mark for us what it means to be a faithful child of God. If we hear the third stanza again, it matters not that some have gone before and some are still among us, it matters not that we do not fully know our own influence upon others, “yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.” As we are in Christ and Christ in us, we are united with all the saints in blessed communion.

This is the “blest communion” of All Saints: the opportunity to raise in our present awareness that we are each of us the result of the faithfulness of so many others and our faithfulness today sets a mark for those yet to join the work. It invites us to see our ministry in central Alabama and beyond in the context of that great multitude of saints and the redemptive work of God through the church. It lures us to remember that we have union in Christ with that great multitude in the work of praise to God manifest in all our attempts to live into the beloved community, the kingdom of God, that ever-arriving domain where selfless love is the guiding ethic. As we recall the saints in our lives who marked out faithful service, may we give thanks to God and know ourselves members of that blessed communion!

 

Thanks be to God!