Is Now and Ever Will Be

The cemetery is close enough so that we could walk in procession from the church right to the grave for burial, and then back again to the church for a fellowship meal.

Our kids grew up not thinking that any of this was the least bit odd or spooky.

They learned the connections between us and the generations past.

And, they look ahead to what new things we can yet do because of what other generations have passed to us in the name of the Lord Jesus, since that congregation began in 1796.

I think also of another church, one of the very first in Pennsylvania, which was built in the 1640's, Gloria Dei in Philadelphia.

We have visited there with catechetical groups and others.

Following European customs, not only are there graves right outside the church building, but the aisles of the church are paved with the gravestones of some of the pastors and other leaders of that church in its first years.

Yes, their gravestones are the paving of the aisles.

Here at St. Mark's we are surrounded on this All Saints Day by the banners which we have added in each of the past 19 years.

They hold the names of the freshly-minted saints such as Case and Greycen whom we have added in the past two weeks and the long-experienced saints who have moved on to the church triumphant.

We name the saints of the past generation and the saints of this very day.

We learn that each of us is called by the Lord Jesus to be a saint not just when we die, but also right now in the midst of life.

Each of us is to be a saint, a person who lives in two different worlds at the same time.

--We know that our primary citizenship is in heaven, as Paul reminds us in Philippians 3:20.

--We know a second citizenship in this nation and world, wherein we are to live here and now in ways that will be congruent with the ways we will live in heaven.

We don't have to hold so tightly to things of this world, because we know there is more to come later.

We are able to understand and receive this world as a great gift entrusted to us.

Our eye may be on God's final future for us, but at the same time we are thoroughly involved in the present.

We chart our lives by Jesus the Morning Star (2 Peter 1:19, Revelation 2:28, 22:16) even while we walk on solid earth.

We're talking about two worlds at the same time.

This is laid out for us in the verbs used in the Beatitudes, which we hear as today's Gospel.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”

We notice the tenses of the verbs:

--theirs is...they will be.

--present tense for one and future for the other.

Last week we dragged out that fancy term proleptic eschatology and we put it to use again today.

The kingdom of heaven is now already here in anticipation, and it will be complete in God's good time.

Perhaps there could be an interchangeability of the verbs in those two beatitudes:

--the poor in spirit will be in the kingdom of heaven.

--those who mourn are comforted even now.

Those who know that we cannot make it on our own, the ones who are justified by faith, the poor in spirit, those who mourn the brokenness of their own lives and of the world...

the saints... hear this day that the rule of God is beginning to break in even now, and will finally be successful.

They hear also that their sorrows are not permanent, that they will finally be put right, and that the process of doing this begins right now.

Is...and will be are kept together.

On these past two Sundays we have been celebrating this joining of is and will be.

“The kingdom of God has come near to you, says Jesus.

It comes to Case and Greycen in Holy Baptism, and to all of us who remember our Baptisms and hear again its promise with joy; it is underway, and we are a part of it.

In a visit to the Cloisters Museum in NYC some years ago I noticed a lintel from a 12^th century doorway.

Carved into it is a procession of people.

Some of them are dressed as Bible-times characters, waving palm branches as they follow Jesus.

But there are also other people in that procession dressed like the contemporaries of the one who carved that lintel.

The message is clear: Jesus' destination is also the destination for all those additional people...and us!

One of my favorite spots in our stained glass windows is the procession of the saints in the third window on the south side.

We can't really tell how many figures there are in that wonderful white gleaming crowd.

It represents the church of all times and places, the people who are responding to the gifts and call of the Lord Jesus.

They move on down the way, and invite us to join with them.

Think how we act this out in the liturgy.

On these past two Sundays Case and Greycen have been welcomed in Holy Baptism, and their first activity as members was to move in procession down the center aisle sharing God's peace.

And they come in procession also to the communion rail for blessing, in anticipation of the feast of heaven.

Then they went in procession once more out the door and to a week and also a lifetime of living and serving, until next Sunday and also until the eternal Sunday.

We are on the way, in that great company of past and present, enlivened by Christ's future:

With Martyrs such as Hus, Justin, Polycarp, and mass of new martyrs in Iraq, Syria, Ethiopia, Sudan, and a number of other places.

With Pastors such as Ambrose, Gregory the Great, Henry Muhlenberg from centuries past, and James Nestingen, Robert Jensen, Amy Schiffren these days

With Missionaries such as Boniface in Germany, Heyer in India, Nommensen in Indonesia, Patrick in Ireland; as well as with current servants of the Word in Ethiopia, Liberia, and dozens of other places.

With renewers of the church such as Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin ...and others in our own times such as Mother Teresa, John XXIII, Eugene Brand, and Mel Wentzel.

With renewers of society such as Elizabeth of Hungary, ML King, and Florence Nightengale from the past, and Shirley Hill of our own number here.

The list could go on and on, as long as there are people who are willing to hear the news of Jesus with joy, and respond to it; as long as there are persons who thankfully grasp the future as they hear and confess Jesus and his Resurrection.

Let's name a representative sampling of them now in sung prayer, the Litany of the Saints in your bulletin.

Thanks be to God for them all; those from the past, those from the present, all of them enlivened by God's future. Amen.

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.