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

Learning How to Knit

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)

My mother loved to knit. When I was a child, she would make beautiful mittens and sweaters and I’m told that, before my brother and I were born, she would knit argyle socks for my dad. Her work was even and serene-looking, the flashing of her needles was rhythmic and calming to watch. To sit with Mom while she was knitting was to experience the peace that passes understanding.

And I meant to be one too. A knitter that is. I wanted to learn to knit. Well, no, not exactly. I wasn't at all interested in LEARNING. What I wanted to do was to knit beautifully like my mom right then, right from the start. Yeah, right. As you can imagine, my first efforts were less than felicitous. My work was grubby and uneven; I was forever adding or dropping stitches. Worst of all would be when I’d discover an error long after the fact, and would have to unravel my work, rewind the yarn, and start over again. If you’ve ever knitted, you know how frustrating that is, to slip your work off the needles, and start tugging at the yarn. The stitches come out, row by row, your labor dissolving before your eyes, until you find your error. Then you pick the stitches back up again and move on. Meanwhile, the previously-knit yarn has become kinked in the shape of remembered stitches, and is harder to work with than ever before.

I’m tellin’ ya’ sometimes it’s enough to make you want to throw out the whole knitten-kaboodle.

And if I wasn’t so fascinated by it, I would have given it up right away. But even as a child, knitting intrigued me. Still does. I am intrigued by how something as linear as yarn becomes spatial by simple, repetitive movement of needles. I am fascinated by the texture created by different kinds of stitches. I am fascinated by the dependence of one stitch against another. Each stitch holds and is held by its neighbor, and because of that fact, the thing which is knitted is a curious combination of strength and vulnerability.

Kind of like the Church, you might say.

In the collect for All Saints’ Day, we praise God for the way in which God has knit together the elect in one communion and fellowship. The word, “elect” is simply a way of describing those people who say “yes” to God’s grace and love. The portion of Revelation we heard today speaks of the fulfillment of time when those who have said yes, who been sealed on their foreheads will be gathered together. Much is made of the number,144,000, by some within the Christian faith. But others of us believe this number simply represents wholeness and completion. 144,000 is derived by multiplying 12 times 12 times 1000. Twelve stands for the twelve tribes of Israel. 1000 represents a multitude. In other words, the gathering together of the twelve tribes of Israel signifies the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Israel -- a covenant made in real time, fulfilled in the fullness of time.

But then notice what else the visionary sees. In addition to the completion represented by the twelve tribes of Israel, there is an even larger body of people present before God. It is so large, we can’t even attach a symbolic number to it. These people come from every tribe and language and people and nation. In other words, in the fulfillment of time, all that was originally intended and created by God, and then unraveled by human waywardness, will be restored. And all the saints -- that means everyone -- will be united, knit together, in one communion and fellowship.

And All Saints Day is the feast day in which we remember that. I use the word “remember” advisedly, paradoxical though it is to remember the future. Normally, we remember the past. To remember some future reality is kind of like remembering what the sweater is going to look like before you even buy the yarn. Which, when you think about it, is exactly what a knitter does. As saints of God, we are made free to act as God acts. We are free to knit as God knits, imperfect though our work is. In Scripture, from beginning to end, we are given a vision of creation and a vision of completion, and because of that, we are made free to respond to God and to one another in the meantime.

What I mean by that is this: We remember the vision of completion God has in store for the fullness of time; a completion to which we are assured we belong. And because that remembrance frees us from despair, we are made free to respond in love to a despairing world -- a world that threatens to unravel from too much tension, where we all too often run out of yarn, so to speak, before the project is finished; a world which is flawed with human error and willfulness; a world in which we must hold and be held by each other like stitches in a sweater -- a reality which makes us both strong and vulnerable. In freedom ourselves to make errors, we are called to remember and re-member, the way a knitter joins a sleeve to a body or a thumb to a mitten. We are asked to be co-creators with God, living out of a remembered vision.

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for all who truly love you; through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

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The Trouble With Saints

By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean

Lutheran pastor Frank Senn recalls that in a scene in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, shortly before Father Zossima dies, the aged monk gathers his fellow monks and friends into his cell for a final conversation.

As a child he had owned a book with beautiful pictures, entitled A Hundred and Four Stories from the Old Testament and New Testament. From this book he had learned to read, and as an old man he still keeps it on his shelf. Father Z remembers many stories from his book as well as the lives of other holy men and women: stories about Job and Esther and Jonah, the parables of Jesus, the conversion of Paul, the lives of Saints Alexi and Mary of Egypt. Some of these sacred tales, like the story of Job, Father cannot read "without tears." Like a bright spark amid darkness, these accounts lodge indelibly in his memory.

In these stories of God's people, the monk says, "one beheld God's glory." He advises that the priests should gather the children for an hour a week and read these stories to them. "The priest will reach people's hearts with these simple tales," he tells his brothers. People need the word of Christ, he said, but "what good is the word of Christ without an example?"

Pastor Senn goes on to write: We don't have only teachings in the New Testament without examples. We don't have only abstract virtues; we have the lives of the saints who exemplified the virtues of God's kingdom.

The saints are not merely good-deed doers. They show us a pattern of holiness -a way of belonging to God-which takes a lifetime to cultivate. A way of belonging to God which culminates in the life of the world to come.

In this sermon Jesus preaches on a hillside along the Sea of Galilee, Matthew writes that Our Lord uses a collection of sayings to make one radical statement: A new way to live, God's way, is possible.

We know that Matthew, a tax collector, left a life of deceit and fraud in order to follow Jesus. He knows that what Jesus is talking about is possible. The virtues of meekness, mercy, purity of heart, generosity, and peacemaking can be cultivated, can become a habit. They are not cosmic givens, over which you and I have no control. With Christ, we can develop this kind of life and make it a pattern of holiness, a way of belonging to God. Our baptismal faith is not a series of acts and deeds, it is a lifestyle.

A seminarian once asked me this provocative question: Do we come to church seeking a new way to live, or are we more likely seeking justification for the way we live now and will probably always live? I said, "yes." Not because I see it in you, but because I see it in me. I want to feel the support of Christ in my life, but that can become an obstacle to change.

Our Lord offers us a new way of living, a life worth cultivating. I leave you with Eugene Peterson's version of Today's Gospel, what he thinks Jesus was saying on that hillside.

"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then will you allow the Holy One to embrace you.

"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are - no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourself the proud owner of everything that cannot be bought.

"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.

"You're blessed when you get your inside world-your mind and heart-put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

"You're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That's when you discover who you really are, and your place in God's family.

"You're blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God's kingdom.

"Finally, count yourself blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit you. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens-give a cheer, even!-for though they don't like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble."

This kind of trouble flows from baptism. It is the kind of trouble saints stir up. May we work our way deeper into holiness. A great cloud of examples surrounds us, always.