Ephesians 1:11-23
All Saints Day: October 31, 2010
How many times do the authors of our scriptures list names, give genealogies, and remind people of faith of their ancestors? The lectionary often graciously leaves them out so poor, unsuspecting liturgists don’t have to read them, but there are tons of verses, even chapters full of hard to pronounce names. Over and over the bible reminds the reader that we are connected to all the ancestors of our faith. We are to remember on whose shoulders we stand. We are to remember who they were, what they did, and why it was important. We are to remember the unique things about them. Why list them if each name is not supposed to evoke something in the listener? The lists of names are important.
Even Jesus – even Jesus stands on the shoulders of those who went before him. The very first words of Matthew’s gospel – of his testimony to the good news – are: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of Abraham and David.” Then it goes on to list (for 16 verses!) the names of Jesus’ faith ancestors. For Matthew, the good news of Jesus begins with those on whose shoulders Jesus stood. He did not appear in a vacuum, he was born into a family and a faith community that had been shaped by people for hundreds of generations. And for Matthew, clearly Jesus was going to be shaped by them as well.
Remembering on whose shoulders we stand: not a minor thing in our faith.
Why is this so important to the biblical writers? Why is it important to us? Because in God we are one; fully connected to each other, the living, the dead and the generations to come. When we forget this, we become less than whole – as individuals and the community. Without each other, we are incomplete. Each person reveals in their lives some of who God is and what God is doing in the world. Each person has one piece of the puzzle. Each person contributes to the world in unique ways and if that’s missing, something is lacking.
For this reason, death threatens wholeness. When someone passes on, if the unique thing about them is forgotten, there is something lacking in the world because of that loss. The first step in keeping that piece of the puzzle intact is to remember – to remember what their piece was.
Paul, throughout his letters, uses the image of the Body of Christ, and I think it is a really helpful one. He talks about the church being the body of Christ. It’s a powerful, provocative image. Listen to what the author of Ephesians says at the end of our passage this morning: “The Church, which is Christ’s body, is the fullness of Christ who fills everything.” That’s an incredibly bold claim: The church is the fullness of Christ – the Church is the living Christ. We’re not just “like” Christ, we are Christ when we are the church – when we are the whole body; when each of the pieces are present.
And in this body, Paul says, each has a part…each one of us has a way that we reveal Christ/God. Some are hands because they reveal how God heals; some are feet, revealing how God walks with us during difficult times; some are eyes, showing us how God looks on us with compassion. The list goes on and on – it is infinite, in fact. Something about each living creature gives us a unique window to God.
And so, when someone dies, that window disappears. Or to use Paul’s metaphor, that part of the body is lost; it breaks off. And if there were no resurrection, the body would just progressively diminish over time. God would be less and less evident in this world – we would know less and less of God. But there is resurrection. The community – the church – is always resurrecting the body – the body is regenerating itself. How does it do this? The community’s job is to identify what part is lost when someone dies and then regenerate that piece by remembering, emulating and filling in. The community figures out how to keep that key, unique thing about someone alive.
In short, the community’s job is nothing less than participating in the resurrection. We regenerate the body by first remembering, again and again, those people we know who have died – remembering what piece they were. Then, through our actions and lives, we try to carry on that life so that through us, they remain a part of the body of Christ. The body is rebuilt when we, as the community, remember on whose shoulders we stand.
Jesus is of course the quintessential example of this for Christians. He was a unique revelation of God. We are to constantly remember what he did and who he was – as best as we can piece that together – so that even though he died, what he did, who he was, the truth he spoke might live on in our actions. But we are all made in God’s image, and so it is true for each person who dies. We are to remember them and carry on those parts of their lives that reflected God’s image.
The author of Ephesians knew this. It’s helpful to know that he was writing to non-Jewish followers of Jesus: Gentiles. And they were far from Jerusalem, in geography and culture – Jerusalem: the locus of the birthplace of Christianity. Given this distance, at best they were forgetting, or at worst consciously dismissing, the church’s Jewish-Christian roots. They were distancing themselves from their spiritual forebears, the first generation Jewish-Christian believers, and from their roots, the Hebrew Scriptures. The author is teaching these gentiles about the central importance of the church’s foundation, which is not only Jesus but also the prophets and apostles and all of the Jewish faithful.
Very early on in Ephesians, the author reminds the people on whose shoulders they stand, beginning with Jesus: “In Christ we have obtained an inheritance,” he says. Jesus revealed something unique of God, and it did not die with him, because through the resurrection we are inheritors of who he was – we stand firmly on his shoulders and continue to reveal the God he showed us; through our actions and our words.
But that doesn’t happen in a vacuum. All the people who came after Jesus and before us were keeping the body alive. They stood on Jesus’ shoulders, and Jesus stood on the shoulders of all those who revealed God before him: prophets, kings; wandering Arameans. All of these people – all of the faithful throughout history – they are the saints. And remembering the saints has been an important part of the church’s practices since the beginning of Christianity. Remembering – re-membering – putting the body back together over and over – is the resurrection.
We are all saints in some way. We sometimes think of saints as perfect; but that’s not what the early Christians meant. Saints were simply the faithful – the followers. And they were plenty imperfect. When the author of Ephesians says, “I have heard of your love of the saints,” he means, in part, those wonderful disciples who messed up SO many times when they were with Jesus. Those disciples who deserted Jesus in the end.
We are not perfect: not every part of our lives reveals the goodness of God. We are, as so many have pointed out, both saint and sinner. But isn’t this what we want; someone recently said to me, “it’s better to have a mix of saint and sinner than 10 saints and 10 sinners.” I rejoice in the fact that when I meet someone and look for God in them, I’m guaranteed to find something. Remembering the Saints, listing the names, describing the genealogy is remembering the faithful parts of the lives of those on whose shoulders we stand. Remembering their unique “thing” – their unique way of living out God’s call – no matter how imperfect they were.
One of my saints is my grandmother. And here’s the thing about my grandmother: She was no saint! She taught me most swear words that I know – she was an alcoholic – she smoked. She was not a saint – except she is, to me. Her life changed mine – period. And there were things about her – unique things I have found in no one else – that helped me understand God’s compassion and the joy of creation. Nanny not only loved me, she made me feel like no matter what I thought about myself, no matter what others thought about me, I was a good person. Nanny was also hilarious. She LOVED to laugh – and as a serious little kid, her laughter and humor saved me sometimes. When I was feeling rejected by my peers, I would go to her house and we would play cards until the wee hours of the morning, laughing so hard that at least once the neighbor called the police to complain. She taught me nothing less than the spiritual importance of joy in our lives.
When I remember her – which I always do at times like this – it reminds me of what I want to pass on to Lydia of her. She is one of my saints, and I feel some responsibility for keeping her spirit alive, for keeping her as a part of the body of Christ, because the body of Christ needs her spirit of love and humor. Without it, we will be diminished. I believe that.
Who is your saint? What is it about them that you can’t let die – for your sake and for the sake of the body of Christ? What did they and their life reveal about God that you wouldn’t have seen elsewhere? How can you pass that on? How can you make your life a reflection of those saintly aspects of their life?
With that person’s name in your mind and heart, if you feel moved you may come forward during this time of silence, light a candle and place it in one of the trays of sand.
