...Pledge letters for 2019 have been mailed out. If you have already responded--THANK YOU. Please turn in your pledge for 2019 in time for Thanksgiving Sunday service, Nov 18th. If you did not receive a pledge letter and wish to, please contact Mrs. Brenda Funderburg at bfun@me.com
...The Rev. Canon Gregg Riley will lead us in Holy Eucharist Sundays November 11th and 18th. We will have Morning Prayer Sunday, November 25th.
...Our 2018 Thanksgiving Service will be at 10am Sunday November 18th.
...The Tensas Community Thanksgiving service will be November 18th at First United Methodist at 5:30pm.
...Saint Joseph Orchestra Chamber Christmas Concert will be in our church Sunday, December 16th at 3pm. Please invite others to join us.
ALL SAINTS SUNDAY - B - 18
Today the church throughout
the world celebrates All Saint’s Day and All Faithful Departed as transferred
from Thursday and Friday. The collect for the day paints the wonderful image of
God knitting all the faithful together.
What God uses to bring us together in one
communion and fellowship is His Love. “Those who trust in him will understand
truth, the author of Hebrews writes, “and the faithful will abide with him in
love…”
Today we “sing a song of the
saints of God,” to borrow from the first verse of Hymn # 293. We remember in
our thoughts and prayers those who now rest from their earthly labors, as well
as those we call saints who walk as yet by faith - the Church triumphant and
the church militant.
What kind of person do you
think of when you use the word ‘saint” to describe them? My grandmother, on my
mother’s side always comes to my mind. She was like a second mother to me. I
spent many a happy day with her in her home in Mississippi when I was child. I
loved to go there.
She raised six children after having lost an
infant daughter. She never held a paying job. Her work was making a home for
her family, being a mother and a wife. I remember my mother telling me that she
almost died one Christmas Day when her dress caught fire as she stood too close
to an open fireplace warming herself.
Her hands, arms and face bore
the scars from that day as did my grandfather’s hands that picked her up and
carried her outside and rolled her in the snow to extinguish the flames. She
never complained. I can still hear her singing hymns as she did her housework
or prepared a meal.
If she had a vice it was her
love of chewing gum. I can still see her taking off her shoes after her daily
chores were done. Then she would sit down on the front porch swing and slowly
glide back and forth on a warm summer afternoon and fan herself with one of
those funeral home give-a ways.
I loved to sit and listen to
her tell family history and how things were when she was growing up. I never
heard her say a bad word about anyone. She was a faithful Christian who tired
to live her life according to God’s commandments and would blush if she heard
me refer to her as a saint. Grandmother was a friend of God and God was a
friend of hers.
Too often we think of saints
in terms of heroes and heroines of the early church, the ones we commemorate
throughout the year on the church’s calendar; the ones who sacrificed much and
in many cases gave their lives as a witness to their faith.
These are the early saints in
the traditional sense of the word, the virgins and the martyrs. I like to refer
to them as saints with a capitol “S. “ But as Hymn# 293 reminds us they were
just ordinary people, some were “doctors, some were queens, and another was a
shepherdess on the green.”
They were people you “can
meet in school, in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, in shops, or at
tea, as the song says. For the saints of God are just folk like you and me. It
is hard to think of ourselves as such, even with a small “s.” Besides the early church’s saints there are
those we have all known. Some are living still.
They are members of our
families, friends, and acquaintances. Those who have gone on to their greater
reward. We take time to remember before God today. They continue to live in our
hearts and our minds. We remember them in our prayers and they remember us
before God.
We don’t see our selves in
their company, yet we belong to this great cloud of witnesses and fellowship we
call the communion of saints both living and departed. It is not that they all
did anything extraordinary that admitted them into this fellowship, but because
they all had one thing in common - their faith, love, and trust in God. That is
what stood out, and stands out.
It made them and makes them
who they are - saints of God. They weren’t perfect. Their lives and their faith
were tested. Sometimes they questioned God. Their “saintliness,” however,
manifested itself with a faith that never wavered and the love and grace of God
that never failed them. They had and have an awareness that God is ever present
to them and they strive to make themselves present to Him.
They never complained about life. They had and
live with no regrets. They lived day in and day out in witness to their love
and devotion to God. They were faithful to the church, said their prayers,
praying for others as well as their own needs. They never hesitated to reach
out to those in need, never shied away from opportunities to serve.
Their lives have and continue
to have influence on our own. The world was and is a better place because they
lived. “They loved their lord, and his love made them strong.”
St. John’s Revelation speaks
of their home, our home in the New Jerusalem “where death will be no more,
mourning and crying and pain will be no more.” Where by God’s grace we will one
day be as they are, at home with God enjoying those ineffable joys and in the
greater company of all the saints in light.
Can you imagine sitting down
at table in the presence of the great heroes and heroines of the faith and with
all those we have known and loved in this life that have gone on before us.
Here the elect of God, the capitol “s” and the small “s” saints sit side by
side in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of Christ our Lord.
We may not see ourselves as
saints, or being worthy to be counted among their company, and we are not, but
through the merits of Him who died and rose again, and our faithful response to
God’s love, mercy and grace, we can as the hymn ends, “God helping, to be one
too.”
On this day we give thanks
for all the saints, those early saints and martyrs whose blood was the seed of
the church. We give thanks for those we have known as well as those who walk
among us still. We give thanks for their love, their witness to their faith,
love and trust in God, and for their influence on our lives that has brought us
to this place today. AMEN+
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