Family Reunion

November 6, 2005 (The Sunday after All Saints Day)

by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

• Ecclesiasticus 44:1-10,13-14
• Psalm 149
• Revelation 7:2-4,9-17
• Matthew 5:1-12

(From The Lectionary Page)

The third Sunday of every August is family reunion Sunday for the Sommer family. We missed it this year. Had we gone, we would have won the prize for having traveled the greatest distance. Of course, had we not moved to Kansas City, we would still have won the prize for having traveled the greatest distance. It’s a day filled with tradition. The VFW hall in Munger, MI is rented and the entire Sommer clan descends for a potluck party. New members -- babies and spouses -- are welcomed, deaths are noted and grieved. There are games for the kids. Someone points out that an air conditioned hall would be more comfortable next year and everyone nods. Then someone else points out that an air conditioned hall would be more expensive and everyone nods. Old stories are retold. And Rick, the family genealogist, unfurls his computer-generated family tree on five banquet tables set up end-to-end along one wall. Family members fill in the missing vital statistics -- birthdates, marriages, death, burial sites, and so on. A few family skeletons get uncloseted every so often, shocking some and causing others to say, "Oh now I get it." It's family on a grand scale, people connected by blood and marriage. There are people you look forward to seeing each year, and there are others who are hard to be civil to, much less love. Pretty much like anyone's family.

Pretty much, in fact, like the church.

That's what today is, actually. All Saints Sunday is a great big yearly family reunion celebrated in churches throughout the world. This day recognizes that all of us are related to each other by blood -- the blood of Christ shed for us -- and by marriage (the Church traditionally is imagined to be the Bride of Christ.) It's a day in which we welcome new members -- in our case, Genevie Mariah Triplett who is being baptized today, reborn by water and the Spirit into the Christian family. It's a day in which we remember and honor those who have gone before us, who live on in our memories, and with whom we believe we will be reunited in the fullness of time. On this day, we retell an old story, the same one we tell each time we celebrate Holy Eucharist, of the night in which Christ was handed over to suffering and death. We even have a genealogy of sorts. We heard a reference to it in our second lesson today, where John of Patmos relates his vision in which he saw a great multitude that no would could count from every tribe and language and people and nation standing before the throne of God. It's a family tree so big and complex that even Master Genealogist for Windows Version 4C couldn't handle it. And yet God -- the true Master Genealogist -- knows each of us so intimately that the very hairs on our heads are numbered.

Our family is huge. There are some we love so dearly that we have pictures or medals or statues of them: Mary, the mother of Jesus. Francis, the protector of animals. Michael the archangel, patron of police officers. My own personal favorite is Jude, the patron of lost causes, on whose feast day I was baptized. We also have those who, frankly, we have a hard time loving. Some of you might put St. Paul in this category, though I confess I kinda like him. And then there are the rest of us, a far greater number whom no one among us can count, who will never make it onto a calendar, but who -- living and dead alike -- are linked together for all eternity by the common bond of baptism.

Our number grows by one today: Genevie Mariah Triplett will receive the Sacrament of Baptism this morning; and all of us will renew our baptismal vows. For her, as for all of us, it will be her lifelong joy and challenge to put these vows into concrete action in daily life. But before any of us can DO a single vow, we need to be clear about who and what we are called to BE. What characteristics or virtues are foundational for a lifetime of living into our baptismal vows?

Jesus spells it out in the Sermon on the Mount which is our gospel for today. A life of ordinary sainthood is marked by poverty of spirit, by the capacity to feel pain and sorrow, and by genuine humility. This is a life without pretension, a life where we KNOW that we are not in charge; that we need God's presence and God's unending love for us. Furthermore, a life of ordinary sainthood is marked by a longing for righteousness, by the capacity for knowing how much we all need mercy, by a commitment to make peace a local and personal reality, in imitation of the one who embodied God's mercy, who was indeed the Prince of Peace. What's the catch? These virtues which undergird our baptismal ministry, which define a life of ordinary sainthood, come at a price. In some parts of the world, notably the Sudan, to be a Christian is to be in mortal danger. Here in the western world, to be an ordinary saint is simply countercultural, counterintuitive. After all, none of these virtues is exactly a shortcut to worldly success. And yet Jesus calls blessed those whose lives are marked by these characteristics.

Genevie doesn’t have a clue yet about any of this, but she’ll learn as she goes, just as we all do. One thing's for sure. She’s not in it all by herself. None of us is. We are all part of the communion of saints, linked together in Christ in a sort of holy DNA. The good news for Genevie, as for all of us, is that ordinary sainthood is not some unattainable goal fit only for the super-humanly good. Sainthood, as one writer put it, is not about human goodness at all. Sainthood is rather about our willingness to be open to the goodness of God. Now, and for all eternity.