Sermon for November 5, 2006

FOR ALL THE SAINTS

By

Rev. Dr. Harvey c. Martz

Scripture: Psalm 116:15

 15 Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones.

Last Tuesday we celebrated two things. We celebrated as Protestant Christians the day that Catholic monk Martin Luther nailed to the door of a church in Wittenberg, his 95 theses, his 95 objections to the abuses he saw being practiced by church leaders. He did not mean to form a new church; he was trying to reform and renew his church from the inside.

His act of boldness and courage occurred on the eve of All Saints Day in 1517. That day was called All Hallow’s Evening which we have shortened over the centuries to “Hallowe’en”.

What is more important for us in our memory as community of Christ is the day of November 1 which has been designated for hundreds of years as the day that we honor and remember the leaders, the role models, the examples of faith and love in our life together. The day we remember the saints.

Saints are not perfect people. They are ones in whose lives we have been able to see God at work. We remind each other each year of the little girl in the children’s sermon when the minister asked if the kids knew what a saint was, she looked around her at the stained glass windows and said, “Those are the people the light shines through”. They are. They are the people whom God’s light shines through.

We have taken this first Sunday in November each year to remember those who have let God’s light shine through and who are no longer with us in this world. We have pictures and names to share in this service and even if you did not turn in the name of a loved one or friend on this list, there are others you will name and remember in your heart. This is the time to do that and to remember how brief and fragile life is and how we get just one day at a time.

I am sharing a poem about that as we give thanks for the lives of these persons we honor and remember today.

When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.[1]

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