“In Christ, we have obtained an inheritance”, or as some translations say, “we have been made a heritage.” Part of what that means for us Christians is that when we gather for worship, when we pray, when we sing the songs of faith, when we share in the sacraments, there are always many more people here than can be seen with the untrained eye. They are the saints who have gone before. They are those who paved the way, those who persevered through thick and thin, those in whose debt we always stand. They are our ancestors in faith. And from them, through Christ, we have been made a heritage.
Our beautiful All Saints service brings this to mind so powerfully and poignantly each year. We read the names of our members who, in this year just past, have joined that great cloud of witnesses. And we lift up the names of those dear to us, precious family and friends, who have also gone on ahead to join that company. For some among us, the loss of those dear ones is still very recent, very near the surface, and will be quite palpable as we say or whisper their names this morning, here in the company of the faithful.
In the liturgy of the church throughout Latin America, there is a beautiful two-line litany that is repeated after the names of each newly departed saint is read: “Absent from the body; present with the Lord.” We Christians firmly believe that these saints, saints through their baptism, saints while no longer visible to us, are still very much present with us and always present with the Lord. They surround us with prayer. They encourage our hope. They have been described as our “cheering section”, always present through the love in our hearts, to comfort and assure us, to guide us and keep our feet in the path.
We just have to know to look for them, and listen for them. As Paul says, in his beautiful prayer we heard Dorothy and Linda Diane read earlier: “I pray that God may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation…so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which you are called, what are the riches of the glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of God’s power for us who believe…”
The saints of our congregation dreamed and hoped and endured many things, all for the sake of God and the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. We are their heritage. They are those who dreamed a church in the seaside outpost of Santa Monica in 1875. They are those who moved us to several locations to our present site here at 11th and Washington, each time raising the money to acquire the land and build the facilities.
They are those who gave generously of their time, and their knowledge, and their money and their hearts, so that we could be here today and worship God in this beautiful sanctuary and go forth in service and praise. We are their heritage.
They are those who pledged and tithed so that pastors could be paid and parsonages purchased. They are those who insisted that Christian educators and Youth Directors raise up the children and youth of this congregation to know and love and serve the Lord. We are their heritage.
They are those who sacrificed for God’s mission and witness in this community and around the world so that to this day we are known as a congregation who stands for something here and who always reaches out generously to serve God’s people in whatever need. We are their heritage.
I’ve been here long enough now to have several of them who haunt my dreams and my prayers, so that if, in any moment, I am tempted to slack off, or become discouraged, or think too small, or take any iota of this ministry and mission for granted—they speak up. You probably have your own list. Mine includes people like Zilda Jackson and Mildred Stewart and Roy Naylor and Ralph Hedges and Marilyn Adkins and Ed Nemick and Mary Burnett and Jack Okuda. They would no doubt resist the label “saint”, yet they are those in whom God entrusted the mission and ministry of the church of Jesus Christ to build it up and carry it forward and pass it on to you and me. We are their heritage.
As we lift up the names of those most recently admitted to that heavenly company, that great cloud of witnesses, we acknowledge by faith that they were not perfect, only faithful. They may not have even been “saints” by worldly standards, yet saints, nevertheless, in the eyes of their God. And they did not do everything for us, trusting us to carry God’s plan forward.
The power of evoking their memory this day, in the heart of our Stewardship Campaign, is the pointed admonition that if we are not also giving of our prayers, our presence, our gifts—including our money--and our service as fully and as faithfully as they, we are not living up to the heritage they have entrusted to us.
“In Christ, we have obtained an inheritance.” “In Christ, indeed we have been given our share in the heritage…chosen to be the people who would put their hopes in Christ.” Will we be faithful? Will we be worthy? Will we do our part, now in our generation, to carry forward all that they have entrusted to us?
There is nothing about the church we should ever take for granted—except that God is forever faithful and will continue to form saints who will carry the faith into each successive generation.
There’s a beautiful way in which All Saints Sunday puts everything about what we do and how we live into perspective, a long perspective that only God can fully comprehend, whose full trajectory only God can know. We’re not called to do it all. We’re simply asked to step up and do our part. As a learned rabbi once put it: “we are not obligated to complete the task; but neither are we free to withdraw from it.”
By the grace of God, we have been made a heritage, a holy people, marked in our baptism with the seal of the Holy Spirit, journeying forward toward redemption now as God’s own people, to the praise of God’s glory.
Let us be worthy.
Let us be faithful.
Let us be generous and true.
Let us be bold witnesses to the power and glory of God.
That one day we may join their heavenly company and sing their unending hymn:
“Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might. Heaven and earth are full of your glory.”
Amen.
©Patricia
Farris, 2007. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
"We Have Obtained An Inheritance"