The liturgy setting moved from Call Us Home to Dancing at the Harvest. The Call to Worship starts with the Ray Makeever's Come Let Us Worship God. The repeated "Welcome everyone ... to the love of God" took on special significance on this All Saints Sunday.
The altar decoration was significant as well. Besides the banners, which are newly contributed, white material was draped for this Sunday and remembrances and photos were added by members to recall the saints in their lives. Many had some deeply holy stories attached to those who contributed the objects.
Highlighted were 5 photographs that Ron added which brought back corporate memories of dear members of the congregation who had passed.
What brings people together at worship?
Today's Gospel starts to answer that question. Last year All Saints Sunday followed shortly after Creator's memorial service for my mother. Pastor Ray preached, among many topics this year, about the Beatitudes and the very Lutheran understanding that we are all sinners and saints. "We rightfully receive both the blessings and the woes Jesus speaks about in to the disciples." We receive the woes when there is self-satisfied, self-contentedness and the position that we have no need beyond what we can physically receive from the world we live in.Jesus promises blessings to those in the world who are in situations where they may be perceived as weak or are wrapped up in life events an individual would not, by choice, find themselves in.
What I felt last year I have been able to process a bit more and I would add something to Pastor Ray's observation in this year's sermon.
On the last All Saints Sunday the Gospel lesson was about Lazarus and helped me understand that the resuscitation of the physical body is not the central fact around the power of Jesus over death. The resuscitation of Lazarus is not, in itself, a sign of eternal life. What I do or don't believe about Jesus and death was not a factor in my mother's, or father's, eternal life any more than Martha's belief affected the resuscitation of Lazarus.
If this had been the point of John's Gospel the story Lazarus being alive would have emphasized far more, Lazarus might act beyond coming out of the tomb or speak, perhaps praising Jesus and proclaiming the power of God. Instead what happens is presented as incomplete, without that particular, expected and triumphant ending.
Last year Pastor Ray described the crowd Jesus addressed to complete what happened to Lazarus as a character. When Jesus said, "Untie him and let him go" Pastor Ray preached that Jesus recognized community was needed to complete this miracle. I realized last year how much I needed a community at that moment of vulnerability. At times I felt strong companionship and at other times immense isolation.
This year I had moved from personal grief to finding I was wrapped up in community grief. All the remembrances at the altar helped me remember how important this circle of members were and are to me. Last year the Gospel focused me on what the unbinding of feet and hands really meant and how we let a person go. This year I remembered all the love-soaked grief I felt for all the community represented at the altar that was shared by the rest of the congregation. It was all about ways to not let go.
So this year it was not a simple sinner-saint connection with the communion of saints. They felt much more immediately present. The apprehension of God's time versus man's time was palpable. The Beatitudes opened up for me in a new way. Rather than a moral statement standing in some sort of judgement about who is worthy and who isn't, it was about everyone who was invited to the kingdom of heaven and all life's blessings.
The Gospel continued with Jesus' familiar "turn the other cheek" when someone slaps you and "do not withhold your shirt" Matthew shows us a little more detail about the words of the Lord than Luke did in this instance. Luke speaks of someone that might smite, or hit, us. Matthew adds that if someone should hit us on the ‘right cheek’, then we are to offer him our other, or left, cheek as well. What is the significance of the right cheek? Most people are right handed. If you are facing someone and they strike you, which side of the face will they hit you on? It would be on the ‘left cheek’. To strike someone on the right cheek seems to indicate a ‘backhand’ slap, which is largely a sign of contempt and disrespect.
Pastor Ray preached what the Lord is teaching here is that if someone misuses us, if they disrespect us, if they treat us with scorn, we are not supposed to strike back at them and avenge ourselves but rather make them respect us by not allowing them to hit the left cheek again.
I have heard this before together with giving the shirt meant you would be naked and that would bring shame to the person who took the cloak. Pastor Ray preached this as a third way or responding to evil rather than resisting evil by ignoring it or by violence. This fits in with the non-violent protests of many who are attempting to achieve current political change but I am not sure that this reaction would be entirely done out of love or would be comparable to a prayer that Jesus advocates. In any case, to live this out now you would need to come up with something new since the right cheek, left cheek does not have the same meaning in today's world.
Choir sang again today. We sang Find Us Faithful during Offering as people who had not already done so brought their picture and memories to the altar.
All in all I considered it a special All Saints Sunday worship service.
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