AND, AND, By God, AND!

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!” The 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.”

All Saints Day asks us to hold opposites together.  It asks us to hold heaven and earth together... to hold death and life together… all at the very same time.  In our current world, where there are days I wonder if we could even manage to hold a glass of milk and an Oreo cookie together at the same time, that seems to be a very tall order.  But that is exactly what All Saints Day asks of us today.    

The lesson from Isaiah has my favorite image of heaven.  A beautiful table set with the very best food and drink.  Now that’s heaven!  The lesson from Revelation is a lovely vision of heaven as well.  A place were mourning and crying and pain are no more!  And in the Gospel, the dead are raised, even when it seems impossible... even after Lazarus had begun to “stinketh” as it says in the King James Version... God raises him from the dead.  So in heaven we’re assured that God will do the same for us as well!  

So these lessons ARE about where we go when we “fly away, sweet Jesus”…AND! AND! By God AND!… All Saints Days ALSO insists that we hold that together with living THIS LIFE!  Right HERE!  Right NOW!  That passage from Isaiah after all says that God will make that beautiful feast on THIS mountain… not just on THAT mountain “when I die, Hallelujah by and by!”  All Saints Day tells us we better get started setting that feast table right NOW!  Because THAT’S a feast for then... AND... it is just as much a feast for us to enjoy right HERE!  Right NOW!  

That lesson from Revelation talks about heaven… about “a land where joys will never end.”  But All Saints Day ALSO insists that the Holy City… that New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband…  That’s not JUST a city “on some bright morning when this life is over!”  All Saints Day insists it is JUST AS MUCH a city for NOW!  That place where every tear is wiped away… THAT’S a city for our HERE!  THAT’S a city for our NOW!

And in John’s Gospel, right before the bit of the story we read for today, Martha basically says to Jesus, “I know he’ll rise on some day in the sweet by and by.”  BUT THEN Jesus goes ahead and raises Lazarus right THERE… Right THEN to show Mary… to show Martha… to show you… to show me… to show this world... that Eternal Life isn’t JUST something we get on “God's celestial shore” but it is JUST AS MUCH about living the Abundant life we rise up to each morning, right HERE too!  All Saints Day insists that Eternal Life is not just about a life "when we fly away to glory" but it’s equally about living the eternal, abundant life we've been given... a life we’ve been given as a glorious and perfect gift... A gift that's been set into our hands by our overwhelmingly generous, outrageously loving God, RIGHT NOW!    

Our job, as people of faith, is to live our lives looking forward to the wonders of heaven, with it’s feasts and it’s mansions in a pain and tear free paradise... AND, AND, by God!  AND!  Our job, as people of faith is to live our lives working to create the very best representation of that feast filled, death fighting, tear wiping, pain soothing paradise right here on earth!  Even while the world STINKETH around us, we’re called to roll the stones away, unbind those who are bound up in any way and set them free!  Even on the days when our world doesn’t feel so much like a party, we’re being called to set the table and invite our neighbors for a feast!  Even on the days when the hatred, bigotry, and just plain evil of this world create WAY too many tears, we’re being called to wipe each other’s tears away and do all that we can to take away the world’s pain.  All Saints Day insists that even on the days that "stinketh" we're being called to "come out!" and and show the world how God created us to live!  

Today we celebrate the truth of God’s BOTH/AND!  Today we reject the world’s insistence that everything from people to politics, from heaven to earth, from Oreos to milk, must always be EITHER/OR.  Today we celebrate BOTH the promise of the life to come AND the gift of the life we share together now!  Today we look forward to that feast of rich food filled with marrow that is to come AND we come to THIS table NOW to keep that very same feast, snitching just a bit of bread from God’s table, and taking just a sip of wine from the cup until the day we will sit with God and all the Saints at the feast which never ends! 

On this All Saints day we look to that “sweet by and by” where we sit at that feast in heaven, where we live in the holy city and where we are raised from the dead on the last day… AND…AND… BY GOD AND!  We also roll back the stones that keep people from having life RIGHT NOW.  We unwind the bands that deprive our neighbors of their full dignity as humans, RIGHT NOW.  We wipe away the tears from our neighbor’s eyes, seeing in their eyes the eyes of Christ and we work to take away the pain of the world RIGHT NOW, so that ALL of creation might experience God's loving gift of LIFE, in heaven, AND… AND… by God, AND!  On earth!  Amen.