A Reading from the Book of Isaiah (25:6-9)
On this mountain the LORD of hosts
will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of
well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow,
of well-aged wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over
all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over
all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord GOD will wipe away
the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will
take away from all the earth,
for the LORD has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
Lo, this is our God; we have waited
for him, so that he might save us.
This is the LORD for whom we have
waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his
salvation.
Psalm 24
1 The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, *
the world and all who dwell therein.
2 For it is he who founded it upon the seas *
and made it firm upon the rivers of the deep.
3 “Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? *
and who can stand in his holy place?”
4 “Those who have clean hands and a pure heart, *
who have not pledged themselves to falsehood,
nor sworn by what is a fraud.
5 They shall receive a blessing from the Lord *
and a just reward from the God of their salvation.”
6 Such is the generation of those who seek him, *
of those who seek your face, O God of Jacob.
7 Lift up your heads, O gates;
lift them high, O everlasting doors; *
and the King of glory shall come in.
8 “Who is this King of glory?” *
“The Lord, strong and mighty,
the Lord, mighty in battle.”
9 Lift up your heads, O gates;
lift them high, O everlasting doors; *
and the King of glory shall come in.
10 “Who is he, this King of glory?” *
“The Lord of hosts,
he is the King of glory.”
A Reading from the Book of Revelation (21:1-6a)
I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
The Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to John (11:32-44)
When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 4The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
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TODAY’S HOMILY
by the Rev. Michael Kreutzer
The old saying has it that “the devil is in the details.” Maybe, as Gustave Flaubert asserted, God is in the details, too. Come to think of it, maybe our entire life is in the details.
We get up each day and go through our regular, morning routine. We arrive at work, get our things in order, check our schedules and emails, touch base with our co-workers, and settle into doing basically the same kind of things day after day. Once in a while there is something new or we look at the days or weeks ahead, but mostly we find ourselves immersed in the details: in the routine concerns and duties of our jobs.
The same is true for students. They wander into school in the morning and put their things in their lockers. They make their way to their first-period class, settle in, review what they have done, learn the new material for the day, take notes about their homework for that evening and the quiz to come later in the week. Then they go off to their second period class and do the same sort of things, and on and on. Most of their time is spent in the details: in their regular, daily routines.
But once in a while, we manage to step outside our narrow focus on the present and take a much broader view. Sometimes that is the result of a conscious choice. At others, it comes in response to a significant, sometimes jarring experience. And it is at times like these that we allow our mental cameras to zoom out; we put on a wide-angle lens to enable us to look at the bigger picture, to enable us to see how the routine, daily work that we do contributes, not only to the support of ourselves and of our families, but also to the good of the wider society as well. Or, as students, we catch a glimpse of the way that our regular, daily classwork is an integral part of our overall education: not only training us for a job or career, but also forming us to be informed and contributing citizens of a wider community.
Today we celebrate All Saints Day. And All Saints Day is a time for us to step back and take a look at the bigger, the broader picture: in fact, at the broadest picture of all. It is an invitation to envision mentally and emotionally and spiritually God’s ultimate plan for all people, indeed for all creation. And the scripture readings that we heard today open us up to that grand vista.
Up to this point in the book of Isaiah, the prophet has been confronting Israel with its unfaithfulness to the ways of God, but also asserting both God’s unfailing love for God’s people and God’s judgment against those other nations who persecute them. Isaiah’s words have come in response to the particular situations in which Israel finds itself. He is immersed in the details. But in today’s first reading, the prophet takes the broadest-of-all-possible views. He describes God’s ultimate plan for the world; and he does so using the image of a great banquet. But notice that this banquet is not for Israel alone. Instead, it is a feast that God will make “for all peoples”: for Israel’s enemies as well as for it and its friends. According to Isaiah’s vision, God will destroy:
“the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the LORD has spoken.”
The life of God’s kingdom, the life of the reign of God, is God’s intent, not just for Israel, but for all peoples.
A similar thing happens in our second reading, the one taken from the book of Revelation. At this point in the story, God has delivered those who are faithful to Jesus from their persecutors. But here, toward the end of the book, the author steps back to take a look at the bigger picture: to God’s ultimate plan.
“’See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples, [Notice that the word here is plural: “peoples.”]
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’
“And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’”
Again, God’s kingdom, the reign of God, is God’s intent for all peoples.
And in our gospel reading, while the raising of Lazarus is the story of the resuscitation of a single person, John uses it as a foreshadowing of the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of all people in him. Once again, God’s ultimate intent is life, not just for a chosen few, but for all people. That plan of God is the ultimate big picture of the scriptures.
All too often, adherents of different religions, including Judaism and Christianity, have adopted extremely narrow ways of thinking and have tried to picture the kingdom of God and God’s gift of eternal life as one that will be shared only by them and by people who think like them. But a broader view of the story told in the bible invites us to come to know and experience the infinitely generous and loving God of all creation: the one who made all people in God’s own image and likeness, the one whose gracious purpose is to bring all people, not just a chosen few, to the fullness of life.
All Saints Day is an occasion for us to step back from the details, from the ordinary routine of our daily lives, and to take in the vast landscape of God’s plan, of God’s intention for all creation. It invites us to enter for a time into God’s ultimate victory over death, when God will raise up all that God has made into the great and final resurrection, into the day when God will gather all people – of all faiths or none – into God’s unending banquet, into the day when God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).
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