Feast

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
November 7, 2021

All Saints

Don and I had been married about 2 years when we went to Colorado with Don’s parents to visit Grandma and Grandpa Stinnett.  A lot about that trip was a new experience for me.  For starters, there was the car trip itself.  I had never been on a two-day car trip before.  Then, there was farm life.  I grew up in the suburbs and in small cities.  Don’s grandparents were wheat farmers.  I will never forget Grandpa Stinnett’s voice-somewhere between disbelief and disdain, when he found out I had never ridden a horse.  “You are a city girl” were his exact words.  And then there were the meals.  My mom was a great cook, but she saved the really big meals for festive occasions.  Grandma Stinnett, on the other hand, was feeding men who worked in the field all day.  Every meal was a major food event that could have fed a football team.  Platters of chicken fried steak, bowls of mashed potatoes and vegetables, most of which were home grown, salads, breads, and dessert were on the table and while the selection varied from meal to meal, the quantity did not. I would run out of recipes in a week if I had to cook like that!  These meals were not for any particular celebration, although they were certainly prepared with plenty of love.  These meals had a purpose and that purpose was to nourish people to do the hard work of farming. 

Today is All Saints Day, one of the most beloved feast days in the Church.  We sing magnificent hymns, light candles as we remember our loved ones, and on this particular All Saints Day we hear what are, in my humble opinion, some of the greatest passages in all of Scripture.  On the day that we remember the lives of those who have gone before us, we hear God promise, in both Isaiah and Revelation, that the day will come when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and God will swallow up death forever.  I long for that day.  And before God destroys death, God “will make for all people a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well aged wines strained clear.”  God will prepare a banquet for us, not unlike the banquet Grandma Stinnett created over and over again that brought all the workers together-although minus the well-aged wine, at least when Grandma was watching.  On All Saints Day, we are reminded that at God’s banquet table, both the one at this altar and the one to come, we are joined with all those who have gone before us for the feast that gathers us and makes us one.

But for what purpose does God create this meal?  To show God’s love for us? To gather all of human kind together? As a great celebration of the new thing God is about to do?  Or to nourish us for the work ahead? 

Today’s gospel reading contains my favorite line in all of scripture. After Jesus has raised Lazarus from the dead, and after Martha worries about the stench when the stone is removed from the tomb, and after Lazarus has come stumbling out with his hands and feet bound and his face covered, Jesus says to the startled onlookers “Unbind him and let him go.” 

“Unbind him and let him go.”  Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead.  But until Lazarus has been unbound, he might have been able to stumble out of the tomb, but he can’t do much else.  In order to be fully free, Lazarus must be unbound.  And apparently, unbinding is not in Jesus’ job description.  Resurrection is Jesus’ job.  Unbinding is the work that belongs to Jesus’ followers. Unbinding is the work of resurrection people who can see the new thing God is doing in their midst.

Unwrapping Lazarus sounds simple enough.  But Mary and Martha are being asked to touch a man who was dead just a few moments ago, a man whose stench they feared.  And if they unbind Lazarus, what might they be unleashing?  The man had been dead.  Now he was alive.  What new power might he now have?  Will he be the same brother they once had?  But we know they swallow their fear and unbind their brother because in a few verses later, Mary and Martha give a dinner party for Jesus, and Lazarus is at the table.  Unbound.

Unbind him and let him go.  When we think about the great saints of the Church, and perhaps the saints of our own lives, we see people who heard Jesus say “I do the work of resurrection.  You do the work of resurrection people.”   Those people stepped out of their comfort zones in faith to do things they could never have done on their own. Resurrection things.  Mary said to the angel “Let it be with me according to your word.”  Peter, despite his many failings, stepped forward to be the rock on which Jesus would build the church.  Mother Teresa worked with the poorest of the poor in Calcutta.  The list goes on and on.  All of these people believed that Jesus does the work of resurrection and we do the work of resurrection people who believe God is doing something new in our midst.  But the work of resurrection people is not always, or often, easy.  Being resurrection people in a world that fears the stench of death is hard work, for which we need real nourishment.  Living as resurrection people in a world that is so divided about so many things is a challenge on a good day and requires strength for the journey.  And so God draws us together and feeds us with the holy meal, a foretaste of the meal Isaiah describes, to nourish us for the hard work ahead.  Resurrection work.  Does God feed us because God loves us?  Yes.  Does God feed us so we can see the new things God is doing in our midst?  Yes.  And does God nourish us so we have the strength for the work ahead?  Absolutely.

The Saints of the Church and the saints in our own lives are those who have challenged us to be more than we think we can be, face what we think we cannot face, to live more fully than we think we can bear, and to give more generously than we think possible.  The Saints of God call us to see the resurrection work God is doing in our midst, and to trust that God will nourish us, as God nourished them, to do the work of resurrection people.

Amen.