Hebrews 12:1-3

Today, the Universal Church will be gathering to commemorate All Saints Day. This is the yearly remembrance of those who have gone before us, and it is a time for remembering and celebration of those lives and what they have meant to us.

It isn’t easy to trace the origins of this feast, but many would agree that the celebration started around the 5th century in Italy and grew. Before the Reformation, this feast focused on those saints declared such by the Church. These were men and women that, through a long process, were named saints and given a particular day on which the Church recognized them. Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglicans still follow this practice today.

All Saints Day survived the Reformation period and was celebrated in many Anglican and Lutheran Churches in Europe. However, for many Reformation Churches, of which we are one, transformed this day for not only those men and women declared saints by the Church but for all of those who have gone before us as we would consider all believers as saints and therefore worthy of remembrance.

There is often confusion about reverence for saints. Christians do not worship saints but rather use saints, and their images, as a way to help them focus their prayers. People will often ask saints to intervene, much like we would invite friends and others to pray for us. I guess some would call this worship, but I do not. Asking for prayers is a very normal request, so why would this not extend those on the other side.

So how does one become a saint? I would typically say that first, one must die, but there are living saints as well. Mother Theresa, for example. I would say that she was a living saint for all the work that she did in India and around the world. The Roman Catholic Church has officially declared her a saint, but she was revered long before she died. In my way of thinking, saints are those who do the will of God and, if you have heard me for any length of time, you know what that is; love God, love neighbor, care for the poor, and those less fortunate.

We need more saints in our world today!

I also want to speak for a minute about grief and loss. Many of you have lost loved ones this past year and have been experiencing the grief associated with that loss. But we have all experienced a loss that most of the time goes unrecognized. Our lives have been radically different since this pandemic began some seven months ago. We have not been able to gather completely as a community for worship and fellowship. Easter Services were canceled, and it looks like the same will happen with Christmas Services.

 We are heading into the season when we would typically gather with family and friends and, although we might be able to gather in smaller numbers than usual, things will not be the same. This is a loss as painful as the loss of a loved one. It would help if you allowed yourself to grieve this loss. Talk to each other about it. Support those struggling with this grief or with those who are unsure of how to express this grief. We have all experienced this loss, not only of the more than 200,000 who have died because of this pandemic but because of what we have all lost. Take time to grieve; it’s okay.

Let us now turn our attention toward the Scripture passage from Hebrews, specifically the first verse “since we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses” and what I believe this means.

What does it mean to be surrounded by a cloud of witnesses in relation to All Saints Day?

I have spoken before about the Celtic idea of the think places. These are places where the distance between this world and the next is very thin. Some say that the Isle of Iona off Scotland’s coast is a thin place as well as the Island of Lindisfarne off England’s coast. Historically these were places of pilgrimage and attracted hundreds if not thousands of people each year.

Thin places are those places where we encounter God not in some far-off sort of way but in a real, personal, intimate way. The Celtic Christians were deeply connected to the natural world and believed that every aspect of life was infused with the divine. Historically the Celts believed that thin places were locations like I have just mentioned or times of the year when the veil that separates the world and the spiritual realm diminished, and we could encounter those gone before us. Today there is a belief that these thin places are becoming more common or that we are becoming more aware of them.

After my father died, my brothers and I began the process of cleaning out the house. This was not an easy task, as any of you who have done this well know. Each weekend we would all come together and tackle a little bit at a time. In the basement of the house was my father’s workshop. My father and I spent many hours there, working on projects and spending time together. One Saturday, while I was packing up the last of the tools, I felt relatively low, this was the only house I had ever really lived in, and my connection was ending. While packing up the tools, I felt a presence in the room with me, and I felt a hand on my shoulder as if to say it will be okay. For me, that was a thin place.

Many of us grew up with the image of heaven being on some far-off cloud where everyone dressed in white and sat around all day playing the harp. Now I am not saying that is a bad thing, just not very realistic. The experience I just shared from the basement and many others prove that those who have gone before us are not all that far away. For me, they are here with us just in another dimension, we interact with them, but we cannot see them. So, we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses.

I find great comfort in knowing that those who have gone before me are still here with me and not on some far-off cloud somewhere. I find it reassuring that at times I can feel their presence through a word, a song, thought, or other time in my life. It helps me to know that I am not alone and that there are physically not present with me; spiritually, they are here.

Today as we think about those gone before us, be open to the idea that they are here, right here with us, and find some comfort in the fact.

Amen.

Matthew 18:21-35

It was a beautiful fall day, not unlike today. It was my first year of seminary, and I was sitting in class trying to stay awake as the professor droned on about something. My mind was wandering to so many things, this being my first year of seminary and all. Class ended, and we were dismissed. I recall walking out of the building, the warm sun hitting my face, and noticed that the campus was still, not many students around. Usually, the place was a buzz of activity at this time of the morning but not this morning.

I walked to the parking lot and got in my car. I turned on the radio expecting to hear the usual laughter and banter that was morning radio but instead, I heard what sounded like War of the Worlds. It was September 11, 2001. I drove back to the seminary campus and ran across the parking lot and into the building where I was living and up three flights of stairs. My fellow seminarians had all gathered on the common room, and the television was on. As I sat down, in utter disbelief, the first of the towers came down. Our lives as ministers and our lives as Americans would never be the same again.

I am sure we all have stories like that, stories of remembrance of where we were when we first heard our country is under attack. As we sit here this morning, perhaps, we remember what we felt on that morning 19 years ago. What emotions did we feel? What did we do? Did we stand as if frozen in time? Did we call loved ones? Did we cry? Did we pray? Did we get angry?

This morning we heard the story of the Unmerciful Servant from the Gospel of Matthew. This story begins with Peter’s question about forgiveness and how many times we are to forgive someone who sins against us. Peter says to Jesus, “Should we forgive up to seven times?” Peter thought he was super spiritual by using the number seven, but Jesus replied, “Not seven but seventy-seven times.” Seventy times seven is 490, and this must have come as a shock to Peter. Jesus never wasted a word, so there must be a meaning to what he is saying here.

Hebrew is alphanumeric, which means that every word has a numerical value. Words that share the same numeric value are often connected somehow, and these connections frequently communicate deeper spiritual insights. And is this indeed the case here.

490 is the numerical value of the biblical Hebrew word “Tamim,” which means to “complete,” “perfect,” or “finished.” A person who can’t forgive will always live an imperfect and incomplete life that lacks a real understanding of the “finished” gracious work of the cross. 490 is also the value of the Hebrew phrase, “Let your heart be perfect” (1 Kings 8:61). Forgiving helps to make us complete and is key to perfecting our hearts.

Forgiveness is essential to the life as a Christian.

As you know, we are called to “love our neighbor,” and we are also called to “love our enemies.” Jesus tells us in the Gospel that “loving those who love us back is easy,” and this is very true it is easy to love those who love us back, but how about those who do not love us back? How about those who we do not like? How about those that perpetrate heinous acts of terrorism against our neighbors and us? It’s not easy, but for us, its where the rubber meets the road.

I think there is a lot of confusion about the nature of forgiveness, just like there is confusion about the idea of love. Before, I have told you that we have to love everyone, but we do not have to like them. Jesus calls us to love because we are loved, loved by God. We are called to love because each of us is created in God’s image and likeness, but Jesus is silent on liking people. Love and like and two vastly different emotions. We are required; actually, we are commanded to love just as we are commanded to forgive.

As I just said, there is confusion about this concept of forgiveness; Jesus is telling us that we have to forgive someone 490 times if they sin against us. It sounds as if Jesus is telling us that we have roll over and take whatever someone wants to doll out against us. Well, that is not truly the case. Just like there is a difference between like and love, there is a difference between forgiveness and forgetting.

It is true that Jesus commands that we forgive, but Jesus does not say we have to forget. Jesus commands that we forgive, but Jesus does not say that we cannot seek justice for what has been done against us. Last week Jesus told us that if someone sins against us, we are to seek reconciliation with them, and if that is impossible, we are to treat them as a pagan or a tax collector. We are to seek justice, but justice begins with forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not for the person that has sinned against us; forgiveness is for us. When we withhold forgiveness, we are giving over a portion of ourselves to the person that has harmed us. When we withhold forgiveness, we give those who have injured us the power of a part of our lives. When we offer forgiveness, we regain control, and we take back the power that the other person has over us, and we begin the healing process.

But remember, forgives does not mean we forget. We do not forget what the person has done. We do not forget the pain they have caused. We do not give up the right to seek justice for what has been done. Forgiveness does not mean we have to ever have anything to do with them again. Forgiveness means we take back the power, and we begin to heal.

Another negative result of withholding forgiveness is that the anger we feel from being hurt and fester and turn from righteous anger. This anger wants to see justice done, to destructive anger that wants vengeance for what has been done against us. Justice is healthy, but vengeance is not.

But the goal of forgiveness is to restore us to love. Sure, we can choose to be angry and withhold forgives, and there are somethings that we may never be able to forgive others for, but what we do with that anger is the difference between love and hate.

I did not know anyone that was killed on that horrific day in September of 2001. I do know people who died as a result of that day. Several people I served with in Army have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan due to the events of that day. I can choose, as so many have to turn my feelings of anger toward everyone who is Muslim or everyone who looks different than I do. Or, I can choose to turn that anger into justice and understanding, which places me on the road to love.

I was honored to participate in the 9/11 service of remembrance organized by the Quincy Fire Department. This is an annual gathering designed to remind us of what we lost on that day, friends, neighbors, and loved ones. We remember not to rekindle those feelings of anger from those days. We remember the lives that were lost, and we promise to be better people.

It was not religion that flew those planes into the towers in New York. It was not religion that flew that plane into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. It was not religion that drove those on that plane that crashed in that field in Pennsylvania. Hatred is what did that. Hatred against people they did not even know.

But we saw something else on that day; we saw love. Love was the reason those firefighters ran into those buildings when everyone else was running out. Love was why the police and EMT’s ran into those buildings when everyone else was running out. Love was why the people on Flight 93 stormed the cockpit and forced that plane to crash into the field in Pennsylvania rather than it’s intended target. It may not have seemed like it at the time, but it was love that did all of that, and love won the day because love always wins!

I want to end with a quote from an article written on September 15, 2001, by the novelist Ian Mcewan that appeared in the Guardian Newspaper called “Only love and then oblivion. Love was all they had to set against their murderers”.

“A San Francisco husband slept through his wife’s call from the World Trade Centre. The tower was burning around her, and she was speaking on her mobile phone. She left her last message to him on the answering machine. A TV station played it to us, while it showed the husband standing there listening. Somehow, he was able to bear hearing it again. We heard her tell him through her sobbing that there was no escape for her. The building was on fire, and there was no way down the stairs. She was calling to say goodbye. There was really only one thing for her to say, those three words that all the terrible art, the worst pop songs, and movies, the most seductive lies, can somehow never cheapen. I love you.

She said it over and again before the line went dead. And that is what they were all saying down their phones, from the hijacked planes and the burning towers. There is only love, and then oblivion. Love was all they had to set against the hatred of their murderers.”

Forgiveness is not easy. Love is not easy, but it is all we have.

Amen