The City of God: When the Lord of Our Longings Conquers The Night - Faith Lutheran Church and St. Stephen's Church Reno All Saints Day

John 11:32-44

Ever since being a little boy I have been perplexed by this weekend’s coupling of feasts -- Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day. As a New Yorker Nevada Day at the time was not on my radar, but if it was it may have added to my state of confusion. Starting with Halloween I remember being told by one demanding adult giver of treats, “Little boy, what is your trick and then I will give you a treat. No trick then no treat”.

As a very bashful child an invitation to perform was not something I cherished. I would have rather walked away from a treat than to do a trick. And I was ready to walk away. I did not have any tricks. I never associated a trick with a treat. As a precious child I just thought that Trick or Treating was a dumb name for dressing up. I knew little about the significance of the day. I just knew it was about collecting candy like Easter but Halloween was not religious. I recall being in a bit of a haze as a child dressing up and going out trick or treating.

As quick as the confusion of Halloween was over, then my little mind had to wrestle with All Saints and All Souls Day. All Saints was festive. All Souls was about remembering the dead. And the memory of the dead seemed to trump the festive memory of saints and their good works. I had no idea how to reconcile the confusion of tricks and treats to the light and celebration of All Saints and to All Souls with its bittersweet memories of death.

Come with me on a journey.

Fast-forward thirty years and I was in a chaplaincy program as part of my ministry formation to be a priest. As a Hospital Chaplain I was visiting a woman in the hospital suffering from terminal cancer and she was praying for a miracle. I humored her but I could not match her faith. As I look back now I am thinking I was hearing her say that she wanted God to perform a trick for her treat of good health. This lack of belief was a matter of grave concern for my Pastoral Supervisor who could not believe my disbelief. I likewise was aghast that people actually believed the miracle stories and somehow expected them to be performed today. I admit that I had been uncomfortable for praying for miracles or worse people who prayed feeling God did not answer when the miracle did not come.

This inner confusion as a child and spiritual/pastoral challenges that I have just described are amplified in our Gospel text. Last week we heard the story of Jesus healing Bartimaeus’ sight and this week he gave Lazarus his life back.

Do you believe that Jesus truly healed Bartimaeus or Lazarus?

Have you ever doubted Jesus the healer? What are our expectations of this healer?

Martha doubted Jesus. By asking about the stench of the corpse she was asking a very practical question. When Jesus says to Martha remove the stone is it the literal stone or the stoned resistance of Martha to the healing power of Jesus?

If I look back at my younger days as a pastor in the mid eighties working as a hospital chaplain there was a stone in my heart that impeded me from caring as Jesus would have ministered. The stone was erected by a pattern of experiences where miracles had not happened in my life and I was left with the brute reality of being unhealed. As a young man the tremor in my hands was the cause of much shame. I was teased by children in school and as a young workingman written up on a performance evaluation for being too nervous. I prayed always for my tremor to go away, but it did not. On a cognitive level I decoupled the unhealed tremor from my ministry and belief in God. Psychologists would say that I repressed the feelings and I failed to address them.

I stood in that NYC hospital room unable to pray with the woman who sought a miracle. I thought miracles were tricks where God says, what is it that you seek, say your prayers and offer your sacrifices and you will be remarkably healed. The sacrifice/prayer/miracle relationship made as little sense to me as trick or treat did as a kid. The treat had nothing to do with the trick. Everybody received a treat. I even received a treat for not doing a trick for gratefully the giver felt some shame on humiliating me as a child.

We can turn to Jesus and in observing and being moved by his tears transfer shame to Martha. I do not recommend this. The Gospel is not about merely cognitive beliefs but rather about where we find intimacy in our faith. Mary speaks from the heart and Jesus is weeping. Watch Jesus in the text. To whom does he turn but his Father? Jesus is the instrument of his Father’s glory of a new heaven and a new earth. Jesus is not just the great pastor or even the caring social worker. These are important jobs and we do express our care for humanity through these and any other job, but the glory of God goes much further than our good works.

Jesus points to the glory of God. He says thank you Father. In and through the glory of God miracles are possible. I suspect that like Martha we all too often miss the miracles before our very eyes. I would like to suggest that there is little difference between demanding a miracle and rejecting the very possibility of miracles. Rejection and expectation is about us not about the glory of God. The glory of God is something unexpected that if we are spiritually aware we will recognize in the ordinary days of our lives. The glory of God is all around us and sometimes we are aware enough to catch a glimpse when the stone in our heart is moved to let the light of God enter.

Stay with me on this journey.

In another hospital room in NYC six years later, after my pastoral experience in the other NYC hospital room, we were keeping an all night vigil with my dying mother. My mother, Catherine was in end stage Alzheimer’s. On that September 1992 day my mom had multiple seizures common in late stage Alzheimer’s. These seizures accelerate the onset of Alzheimer’s. In one day mom went from walking around the nursing home able to talk though making little sense to dying. Before the seizures she was able to enjoy visits from people she cared though she was unable to articulate their names. However, mom had never stopped communicating. She used her eyes and was never without giving her visitors the gift of an unexpected hug, touch or kiss. All this would change due to these seizures. It was as if the lights in her mind went completely out with the seizures.

The entire family gathered expecting that mom would die that night. It was a 48 hours vigil. We each took our turns at her bed saying our last words saying our good-byes to her. We had made peace with mom’s death before she died. Then at about 3am on the second evening of our vigil watch the doctors came by to say that our mother would probably not live to sunrise. At 4am my mom’s eyes opened. I was there with my sister Kathy. It was amazing! Mom began to speak just as we expected her to die. The doctors came in and they removed her oxygen mask.

Mom began to speak with total clarity. She thanked each of us for our care and wondered when she could go home. She not only awoke from this deep seizure sleep; but rather she awoke from the last four stages of Alzheimer’s. She was back at a place we had not seen in over a decade. She was alert and asking for friends by their names. Then within hours it all disappeared again and she lost this acute awareness. She did leave the hospital and returned to the nursing home but her Alzheimers worsened leaving her largely bedridden. It would take her several years until January 1997 before mom finally came to her peaceful death.

But on that September night in 1992 I am certain that we witnessed a miracle. It was not the miracle of a healing from mom’s Alzheimers, but it was unexpected and for her son and daughter present it revealed the glory of God. The doctors could not explain it. Some ventured a guess that the oxygen she received the last 48 hours had helped her brain. One diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is that there is a deprivation of oxygen to the brain. Upon hearing this I asked if the doctors could keep my mom on oxygen for the rest of her life. In this question I moved from the experience of the glory of God in a miracle to my human expectations and demands of God.

The glory of God is in our midst.

When the stone in our hearts shifts ever so slightly then the glory of God pours through like a great light revealing God on God’s terms not on our terms.

It has been my spiritual practice for some time now to reflect on all that I am grateful for and less lamenting. As a result I am constantly aware of the glory of God as it manifests itself in my life.

This week I saw the glory of God several times.

I saw the glory of God on Tuesday morning as St. Stephen’s Bread Ministry team took off in three cars to feed the homeless with the bread of life.

I saw the glory of God when as Street Priests Donna Murphy-Sharp, Bonnie Strader and I heard the story of a homeless man who had nothing gave his only winter scarf to the man who had less.

I saw the glory of God when I visited Bev Sharpe with Julia and Bob Stoddard. The glory of God was in the celebratory music Julia and Bob played as an expression of their faith in God and love for Bev. Judy Eisele who has faithfully fed Bev with the Eucharist has expressed the glory of God. I saw the glory of God when Domine, a nurse’s aide, at the Lifecare Center heard us singing Amazing Grace and came into the room to sing with us. There we were not only as an extension of St. Stephen’s Church but also as an extension of the entire Body of Christ praising God. I saw the glory of God in the peace of Bev’s eyes.

The glory of God is here as two different reformation traditions join in worship of one God.

Where did you see the glory of God this past week?

How has the glory of God been revealed to you through these pictures of people and momentos on this altar?

In today’s closing hymn you will hear these words: “Awake from your slumber, arise from your sleep a new day is dawning, the people of darkness have seen a great light, the Lord of our longing has conquered the night.”

On this festive feast of All Saints Day, let us pray that our eyes will be set on the City of God when the glory of God will be revealed in its full splendor. In the meantime in the city of Reno, this day, the King of Glory calls us to be people of compassion who see the glory of God in each other, seeing beyond each other’s human weaknesses.

As we let go of our demands for specific miracles the inner stones of our hearts that block out the light of God will shift. Then as People of the Light we will see a glimpse of the glory of God in one another.