SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF ALL SAINTS
4 NOVEMBER 2007

 

 

 

"These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." (Rev.9:14)

 

 

On Friday, All Souls Day, a day on which we commemorate the dead, I attended a funeral. The deceased had lived an extraordinarily long life, a life during which she had given birth to untold numbers of children, and nurtured them in the faith. She was mother to generations of bishops, priests and deacons, lay men and women --- catechists, acolytes, altar guild directors and directresses, wardens and vestry members, lay readers, chalice bearers and an assortment of pew warmers. They all had risen up, as we read in the Book of Proverbs, and called their mother blessed. Of a venerable age, she was expected to live for many more years, but she had, for the past decade or so, begun to suffer from a disease Dr. Stone described as "schisms rent asunder, and heresies distressed." Yes, on Friday, the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, one hundred and forty-two years old, gave up the ghost, and like Caesar in the Forum, she suffered death at the hands of those who professed to love her. When I witnessed the assassination at diocesan convention, my mind scrambled over several decades to recover the words memorized in my high school freshman English class, which seemed remarkably descriptive of Friday's death:

 

For Brutus, as you know, was Caesar's angel.
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar lov'd him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,
Quite vanquish'd him: then burst his mighty heart.

 

While others stood agape at the side of the corpse, our little hearty band headed west from Johnstown to this sacred space to celebrate what has become a time-honored tradition, our annual Requiem Mass. Calvary never disappoints. The sonorous voice of the bass soloist, singing the sublime words set to music by Faure, was redemptive. Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, In die illa tremenda: quando coeli movendi sunt et terra. A few hours earlier, I felt that heaven and earth had indeed been shaken, but these words reminded me that we would indeed be freed from eternal death. This truth was underscored in the proper preface later in the service: "For to thy faithful people, Lord, life is changed, not ended." And it occurred to me that if we believe this of our mortal bodies, it should be no less true of Christ's own Body, the Church. Dr. Stone's great hymn, "The Church's one foundation," has a verse which was, for good or ill, suppressed from all the hymnals in which it is found:

The Church shall never perish! Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain and cherish is with her to the end;
Though there be those that hate her, and false sons in her pale,
Against or foe or traitor she ever shall prevail.

 

On this, the Sunday within the Octave of All Saints, our mood shifts from funerals to festivity. Today is the day we sing a song of the saints of God, faithful and brave and true, and to add to the fun, we will make seven new saints today through the sacrament of Baptism. Listen to the words from the Revelation to St. John the Divine: "Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from? (I don't like ending sentences in prepositions, and prefer the old version, "Whence have they come?") "I said to him, "Sir, you are the one that knows." Then he said to me, "These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

 

The Book of Revelation provided hope to the persecuted church near the end of the first century. In the vision of Chapter 7, the faithful who have been marked with a seal on their foreheads will be protected during the coming tribulation. This vast multitude depicted in our passage includes those who are robed in white and who carry palm branches as symbols of victory. They join the angels in worshipping the living God. They are the ones who have come out of the great ordeal in which many suffered or were persecuted for their faith. Now they have been made pure in the Blood of the Lamb sacrificed for their salvation. They will no longer suffer or experience hunger or thirst or pain or suffering or crying.

 

This passage reminds us that saints earn their halos, their crowns, or their palms of victory. It is because they have suffered, been through an ordeal, that they earn the right to be in the holy presence worshipping the living God. Sebastian was pierced with arrows, Perpetua and her companions were mauled by beasts, Stephen was stoned to death. In our own age, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pastor and theologian, was hanged in a German prison, Janani Luwum, archbishop of Uganda, was killed by Idi Amin's henchmen, and Martin Luther King was felled by a sniper's bullet. (All three of them, by the way, are depicted on the west façade of Westminster Abbey with other 20th century martyrs.) Perhaps we who seldom if ever suffer for our faith don't quite get it. In fact, it would appear that we don't want to suffer, be inconvenienced, or make sacrifices in any way.

 

I have a confession to make. A month ago, I had never heard of Hannah Montana. Now she seems to be popping up everywhere. I have learned that she is all the rage among teenage girls, and that people are willing to pay dearly for Hannah Montana tickets. About two weeks ago, watching the Today Show, I was shocked and amazed (and very little shocks or amazes me any more!) at a mother who was irate because the tickets she had procured for her daughter and her friends she described as "nosebleed" seats ---- way up in the bleachers, for which she had plunked down --- read my lips --- seventeen hundred dollars apiece. What is wrong with this picture? Am I out to lunch or is something terribly out of whack here when it comes to imparting values to our children? If we allow a 13-year-old to believe that she is entitled to $1700 tickets, for her and her entourage, what will she think is her due at 21, or 40? Please pray for her husband.

 

But I digress. I guess what I am trying to say is that most of us will never be martyred or canonized or receive a biographical sketch in Lesser Feasts and Fasts. But we are saints. We are the hagioi, the "saints" to whom St Paul addresses his letters. And if we are to take our sainthood seriously, we must remember that we, too, must undergo ordeals. Ordeals, tribulations, squabbles, disagreements, even persecutions (I will spare you some of the names we were called at Convention) have always been part and parcel of the Christian experience, not alien to it. It is up to us to take on these challenges, and like the saints in St. John's vision in Revelation, come out of those ordeals tried, tested and washed in the blood of the lamb. At Calvary we know who we are and Whose we are, and are more than equal to the task, and we are grateful that today, we recruit new members of this church, clothed in white, to assist us in our witness; Evan and Lance, and Lucia, Elena, Nathaniel, Benjamin and Ian.

 

The times ahead may well be arduous; they may be painful and unpleasant. But at our altars, where all, not some, are welcome in the name of Christ, we will receive manna for the journey through this unforeseen wilderness.

 

I read a statement the other day from a parish of this diocese ­ a statement of the faith as they understood it. And one of the things they said was that they believe in the plain meaning of scriptures as common people understand it. Just a few days ago, Archbishop Desmond Tutu stood in this very pulpit and talked about the fact that Christ died for all --- including, he said, George Bush, and Arabs, and Palestinians and gays and lesbiansWhat is difficult about all? But there are certain people who seem hell-bent to change "all" to "some." As for me and my house, we will serve our God and all of God's children.

 

We have ahead of us a difficult time. But we are equal to the task because we're nurtured in the sacraments, grounded in the faith and in our fellowship embrace one another. And as the apostle, Paul, says, "We greet each other with an holy kiss." This is the challenges ahead of us and I am certain that we will rise to the occasion, and that Calvary will continue to be a beacon, an oasis, a place of refuge, "a shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home."

 

Let us pray:

These are they who have contended, for their Savior's honor long,
Wrestling on till life was ended, following not the sinful throng,
These, who well the fight sustained, triumph by the Lamb have gained. AMEN.
The Hymnal 1982, 286