All Saints Sunday

By the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13
Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity
Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church

(The following is a transcript of the service audio, Nov. 3, 2024)

Welcome, everyone, especially those of you who have traveled far to be here for this special day. It's a special day because it's the Feast of All Saints. All Saints is one of the great feasts, one of the great celebrations in the calendar of the church. It's a day when we remember what makes us holy. What makes us holy, we say, is that God loves us. God's love is all it takes. And since God loves all of us, we're all saints, even if we don't feel like saints all the time. So it's a joyful, celebratory day, a day when we remember all those who are beloved of God, which means everybody.

One of the ways we will signal that is, at communion, we're going to have the children from downstairs lest they forget that they are beloved of God, or lest you forget it. They're going to come and gather around us at the table while we celebrate communion together. And we also remember, of course, those who we love but see no longer, who remain beloved of God. We remember the dead on All Saints. And so All Saints is a bittersweet Sunday. It's a day of celebration when we remember God's great love for all of us and in particular when we remember those we have loved and lost.

And so it's a fitting day for us to remember, in particular, the Reverend Professor Peter Gomes. In just a few minutes, we're going to have a ceremony here, an unveiling of the new panel and a blessing of that panel and a rededication of this pulpit to his memory. There'll be more of this downstairs after the service, but I just want to extend special thanks to the committee which helped make this happen. And to Paul Indelicato, the craftsman who made it for us. It's really beautiful, and I can't wait for you to see it.

We celebrate all that Peter was to this church today. All that he still is to this church today. And I know many of you, especially the ones who knew him best, also miss him today. That's All Saints. On the Feast of All Saints we feel holy and blessed and grateful and sad. Two years ago, this All Saints' Day, I missed this big celebration. I couldn't be here. It's one of my favorite days, but I had to be elsewhere. My mom at the time, as many of you know, was ailing. Sort of an understatement. She was dying of cancer, and she loved communion, and she especially loved communion when I was the priest, consecrating communion.

And we had just come out of the pandemic and so we'd only had I think a couple of communion services here. And in early October, my mom said to me, "I'm going to be there on All Saints' Day. I don't know how I'll make it, but I'll make it." And my mom loves fashion and she loves shopping, and so she bought a new outfit and new shoes. Those of you who remember, you might remember that even when she was dying, she always looked good when she came to church. But as the days approached, it was too much. She couldn't make it, and she called me and apologized to me because she wouldn't be able to be here.

And so instead of being here two years ago, this All Saints' Day my family and I went down. I can't look at Cammy, sorry. My family and I went down to Falmouth and we stayed with my mom, and we celebrated All Saints' Day there. And I'm glad we did. She died 11 days later. Today's a day when we remember the dead to one another, and I was thinking about, if I had to just capture my mom, how I would remember my mom to you on this All Saints' Day. And I want to tell you about having tea with my mom.

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As I said, she liked nice things, so she always had very nice Japanese porcelainware, Japanese pottery, and she always would only get the finest Japanese green tea. For those of you who know green tea, gyokuro, which is a shade-grown, very delicious tea, most expensive. That's what she had to have. And then she'd brew it up, and her mother had told her that when she was a child that the first cup of tea is the worst cup of tea. It wakes up the leaves. It's the second cup of tea, which is better.

And if you do this, you see it's greener, it's richer, it tastes better. And my mom would sit at tea with me with her fine Japanese porcelain and the best tea she could buy, and she would brew a pot of tea and she'd pour the first cup and the second cup and she'd take the first for herself and give me the better second cup. As much as she liked nice things, she liked nice things for her kids most of all.

One of the things my dad said after she died, and he said this to me several times since, I ask him how he's doing. They were married almost 51 years. I ask him how he's doing and he says, "I miss her and I don't ever want to stop missing her." This gospel scene from the Gospel of John, the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead, called forth out of the tomb, is one of the most well-known gospel stories. Familiar to those even who may not be as familiar with this place or this space, the raising of Lazarus from the dead there are interesting details about it. I've always wondered what happened to Lazarus after he was raised from the dead.

There's one legend that he became a bishop in Cyprus, and there's another that he went and became a bishop in Marseille. One of the most interesting is, the way the story is told in both cases, is that he lived for 30 more years and never smiled again. Another interesting thing about this story from the Gospel of John, the story of the raising of Lazarus, is it includes the shortest verse in the Bible. Verse 35 of John 11: "Jesus wept." "Jesus wept." This is a resurrection story. It's a story about the dead being raised, and insofar as it is a resurrection story, it also prefigures the Easter story in the most obvious ways but also in more dramatic ways than we might consider at first glance.

I mean, consider this. In the other three Gospels, the reason Jesus is arrested is because He goes into the temple and He overthrows the moneychangers' tables and He causes a big scene and He yells at everybody. And the religious authorities are kind of understandably offended by this, and that's when they start planning to have Him arrested. In the Gospel of John that happened at the beginning of the book. In the Gospel of John, this is the thing: the raising of Lazarus is the reason that the authorities decide they need to arrest Jesus. They say to each other, "If the Romans find out about Him, they are going to kill us all."

And indeed, tragically, a few decades later, the Romans did come and kill almost all of them. So this raising of the dead has political implications. Politics are at stake in this. It's obvious in the other Gospels when the tables are being overthrown that Jesus is saying something. He's taking a political stand. But the raising of the dead, the raising of this man, His friend, earlier in the Gospel of John, it talks about how much Jesus loved Lazarus, how much Jesus loved Mary and Martha. Him going to this family and raising this one man, Him weeping before the tomb, longing for Lazarus to come out, has political implications so dire that in the Gospel of John, this is the reason that Jesus must be arrested.

Why is that? And is that still true for us today? I think it all hinges on that line. The shortest verse in the Gospel, "Jesus wept." Jesus goes to this family He loves, He sees the one He loves who is gone, who is missing. He feels that longing. He misses him and He calls him forth out of the tomb. In the Easter story, Mary goes to the tomb. Jesus is missing. She weeps. The only other character in the Gospel of John to weep. She weeps like Jesus at the tomb. So what does that have to do with us?

What are the political implications of this, and the spiritual implications of this for us? To put a finer point on it, maybe, I could say, what do we weep for? In two days, we have an election. You all know that already. The outcome of this election matters. It's hard for me to conceive how consequential the outcome of this election will be, and you don't need me to tell you that. You know that already.

But I'll tell you another thing which I believe is true, which is that whatever we know Wednesday morning, whatever we don't know Wednesday morning, however delighted or despairing we are Wednesday morning, there will still be over 40,000 dead people in Gaza, in Lebanon. There will still be over 60,000 dead in the Sudan where genocide rages there. There will still be 50,000 people killed by guns in this country in the last 12 months. Whoever wins, whatever we know Wednesday morning, what's missing, we ask? Who are we missing?

Did you know that there are still 1,400 children who were separated from their families in 2018 who have not been reunited? Somebody's missing them. There are two million people in our prisons in this country, a quarter of the world's prison population in this country. They are missed. My dad said, "I don't ever want to stop missing." What is missing in this country? What is missing in this world? What do we Christians miss? I think what we miss is the Kingdom of God, the beloved community.

Jesus promised us that community of justice and goodness and mercy and love, the one that we glimpsed in His ministry so briefly. This is why Jesus weeping in this moment has political implications, because Jesus goes, He sees what's missing, He calls it forth. Mary goes to the empty tomb. She longs, she mourns for the one she is missing, and then He appears. The Christ appears to her. But what has yet to appear for us, for those of us who say we follow Jesus, what has yet to appear is that community of justice and mercy and goodness and love.

And that's why this is political because God help us, God help us if we stop missing those 40,000 dead in Gaza, or those 60,000 dead in the Sudan, or the 50,000 dead by guns, or the 1,400 children, or the two million in our prisons, or all the people who are loved and lost right now in our world today, God help us if we learn to stop missing them. I hope we don't ever stop, not until God's promises have been fulfilled. Like Mary, we who are Christians say that we have seen the risen Christ, but all that He promised us waits to be made real in this world.

It hurts to miss what you love. It hurts to miss the people you love, but missing, longing for what you love, that's what love does. And it's not the only thing love does. It does something else too. Or maybe many things. Every morning when I wake up, I get out the finest green tea, gyokuro, and I take out this nice Japanese porcelain, and I make two cups of tea. And I take the first for myself and I put the second on the windowsill next to the Celtic cross my mom wore every day of her life. And every week I stand before you and I wear vestments that my mom made with her hands.

And every month we gather at this table and we say communion with Japanese stoneware that my mom held in her home for decades. We miss Peter Gomes in this church. And thanks to the generosity of many in this community, every week now, preachers will come into this pulpit and his memory will be lifting them up, inspiring them as they preach the good word that Peter preached for 40 years to all those who wait like him and like us for the realization of God's Kingdom.

Today is All Saints' Day. Today we remember not only the dead. We remember all the promises that Jesus made to the world and that he gave to us to fulfill on this All Saints' Day. May we feel that deep longing, the deep longing for all those we love but see no longer, and also the deep longing for the justice that Christ has promised to us. And may it inspire us this day and always to call forth life from empty tombs.

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