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 Old Testament Reading: Haggai 2 1-9
The Gospel: Luke 20: 27-38 Our scriptures today give us recipes for hope in this life and the next. The Haggai scripture was written in an in-between time. The kingdom of Judah had been defeated and the Temple of Solomon destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Haggai the prophet is writing 66 years later in 520 BCE when King Darius was rebuilding the Temple, which would be completed in 515 BCE. One can imagine with both the remembrance, possibly a generation past of the old temple and kingdom and the time and effort it takes to build a new one, that people could become discouraged. But God is telling the people through Haggai to take courage. And what are they supposed to do with that courage? Work! “Work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts, according to the promise that I made you when you came out of Egypt. My spirit abides in you; do not fear.” God was referring back to when Moses led the people out of Egypt almost a thousand years before as evidence that God keeps his promises. God has the long view and certainly plays the long game and we too need to take courage and work. In Haggai’s time the work was literal work on the Temple but rebuilding a Temple is also having hope for a future where your faith, your kindom, and your very bodies are safe again. God not only reminds them to have courage but assures them that this new Temple, this new time in their lives, will be even better than before, “The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of Hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity.” The people were moving from a time of war and destruction to rebuilding and hope for the future. God is essentially telling them to keep the faith and that faith will be rewarded. And while it would be easy to think of this as a prosperity gospel where God will make them all rich, that is not what God meant by prosperity. There are many Hebrew words which get translated to the word prosperity. Shigshug which means general flourishing, shalom, which means peace, wholeness, and well-being, hatzlaha for success, tsalach - to push forward, and revaha for welfare and comfort. None of these words translate to being rich in the way we might think. Instead, they translate into working to achieve comfort, having one’s needs met, feeling complete and at peace. Rebuilding the temple and their lives makes their faith community whole again. For us, taking courage and working is not so much about a building - although we certainly have a beautiful church here that we work to maintain. No, instead we need to have the courage to do God’s work, first for ourselves and, when we can, in our community and beyond. For some of us, that courage might be pushing forward through challenging times of illness, loss, change, or poverty, knowing that God is with us, supporting us through the daily struggle, holding us up until we can again walk on our own. For others we are called to be God’s peace builders helping to give comfort and restore others to wholeness and well-being, to help them flourish again as all God’s children can and should. Peace builders also seek to work with all God’s children, those like them and those very different from them for the good of all. I have felt the call to be a peace builder in this challenging time. As such, I drafted a letter calling for peace and cooperation and sent it out to over 30 leaders of all different faith communities from Springfield to Pittsford. My idea was that the letter could start a conversation. Maybe I could work with other faith leaders to edit it and then we could send it as a letter to the editor to local newspapers. The letter goes like this: We are living in a time and a place where it is easier to blame our neighbor rather than work with them, to use drones to drop explosives rather than food, to look the other way, rather than help. But that is not what we are called to do. Our faith reminds us that “You shall love your neighbor as yourself “ (Leviticus 19:18). And the reality is that all humans are our neighbors no matter their shape, size, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, gender identity, economic status, ability, sexual orientation or religion, as we are an inter-connected web of life. If a neighbor has been turned into an enemy, which is happening all over the country and world, then we are reminded to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Imagine how much better this country and world would be if we could lead with love rather than hate? Love makes us pause when we feel wronged, to try to find the reason why and maybe consider if we had any part in the problem. Love encourages us to be patient and to forgive. Love makes us work harder to find common ground and to compromise. Love makes us speak with respect and kindness even when we disagree. Love allows us to see from another person’s perspective. If the love bar is too high, maybe we could start by remembering some of Robert Fulghum’s lessons in his iconic essay “All I ever needed to know I learned in Kindergarten”: “Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody.” There are enough resources on this beautiful planet to support all who live on it. We each have a part to play in making this country and world a more peaceful and cooperative place where everyone has at least the basics they need to survive, including a recognition of and respect for their dignity as a fellow human. It begins by thinking of everyone as our neighbor, despite our differences, and working towards peace and wholeness one neighborhood at a time. Please join us, This week Reverend Terry Hanley from Grace Church and I met with Rabbi Woll from the Rutland Area Jewish Center and she is on board. A Rutland area Catholic priest is also willing to sign it and this Tuesday, I will be meeting with the Rutland Area Interfaith Council to see if others will discuss this idea and possibly help edit it or sign on so we can get it out. It’s a beginning. We take courage and do God’s work by reaching out and showing love to our neighbors. And yet, we know that eventually, our time on this planet, in these bodies will end and we might be like the Sadducees questioning the resurrection and trying to trip Jesus up about it. After all, since they did not believe in the Resurrection, why did they ask Jesus a question about which of the seven brothers would get the wife they had all married while on earth? Jesus, the master of reframing the question, pointed out that the afterlife is nothing like life on earth. We are not going to a Heavenly Disney Land or resort complex, but begin anew as angelic living children of God. As the scripture reminds us, “Now he is God not of the dead but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” Death is a return to God, a oneness with God, after our time here on earth as courageous workers is complete. We join the cosmic dance of the universe where we dance with abandon and unity, blending our shalom, our peace and wholeness, seamlessly with God’s as we become one with the light of the world. Surely this is not death but life reimagined in a gloriously beautiful way. It is the Creator’s Breath of love that tells us not to fear, that gives us courage to do the work that needs to be done for ourselves, for our families, for our community and for the world. How wonderful would it be if we could think of it not as work but joining the beautiful, peaceful dance of life here on earth, which will prepare us for the transcendent, joyful, and enlightening cosmic dance of Heaven unburdened by the needs and cares of these bodies when our number is called. Shall we dance? Amen. Pastor Michelle Fountain
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11/2/2025 0 Comments November 2, 2025: Blessed are You The Gospel: Luke 6: 20-31
Today we celebrate All Saints Day but what or who is a saint? The early Christian definition was of a martyr who died defending his or her faith as many of the early disciples did. “Christian tradition holds that the first martyr was Saint Stephen, a follower of Jesus who was stoned to death a year after the Crucifixion. The first recorded veneration of a martyr was Saint Polycarp, a bishop who was burned to death around 156 CE. A letter written at the time describes how his followers scoured the ashes for his bones and gathered them up because they were "more valuable than precious stones." They buried these remains, called relics, at a site where they could visit them in celebration of the anniversary of his death. “ (EBSCO) We know that early Christians believed that the relics, often bones of a saint, were sacred and could bring good luck. They would often make pilgrimages to see and touch the relics of a saint praying for what they needed. Russ and I saw some of these relics in churches in Portugal last summer, but the ones we saw were now encased in glass, no touching. There was one very unique set of relics: The Chapel of Bones - in Evora. This interior chapel is made up of the bones and skulls of up to 6000 monks that cover the walls, create the arches etc. The monks who created the chapel wanted to remind the wealthy community of the 16th Century when it was built that our lives are finite. The sign above the door says, “We bones are here, waiting for yours.” Although honestly a bit overwhelming for me, I get their message and there is comfort in knowing that death is an ongoing and natural part of life. The Catholic Church still canonizes saints today in a long process that looks at a person’s life after they have died, and when warranted, declares it exceptionally holy and worthy of being called a saint. Pope Leo recently canonized the first millennial saint -Blessed Acutis, a teenager known for his devotion to the Eucharist and creating an online exhibition of Eucharistic miracles. He was born in Milan in 1991 and used his tech skills to evangelize online but sadly died of Leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15. But as I look around this sanctuary, I see a lot of living saints. In our Christian tradition, a saint is someone who is devoted to Jesus Christ and seeks to follow his teachings - I think we all qualify for that, at least on our good days. As Father Richard Rohr says, “Living in the communion of saints means that we can take ourselves very seriously (we are part of a Great Whole) and not take ourselves too seriously at all (we are just a part of the Great Whole) at the very same time.” We saints try our best to try to have what I call positive “be” attitudes: an attitude of gratitude for what we have and who we are - taking time to just “be” in that posture of devotion and thankfulness to God and the willingness to “be” a blessing to others in need. Sometimes that “be” attitude comes in the form of a prayer - “Holy One, Holy three, what do you want me to “be” today and for whom?” A “be” attitude is a humble one - as we offer ourselves as God’s legs, hands and mouth here on earth. To find what God wants from us, sometimes we need to take time to just “be”: to sit in contemplation and listen to how the Holy Spirit will move us. And when we saints listen and become God’s legs, hands, and mouths on earth, we are blessed as we help the poor, even if we aren’t poor at the moment. We are blessed as we help feed those who are hungry, even if we ourselves are not currently hungry. We are blessed as we listen to those who are weeping, maybe even letting them cry on our shoulders, so that they may laugh again. We are blessed when we come into this sanctuary or spend time in contemplation with God despite the fact that most of the people in this state, country, and world are not doing that right now or ever. Of course, Luke included the woes too. Woe to the rich, full and laughing because things change at times, don’t they? We have all had times of suffering and we will have them again. But the point is that if we have “be” attitudes of service and gratitude, we do not live in the woes, we learn from them and go back to “being.” This All Saints Day, we connect to our fellow saints - those people whose lives touched ours and allowed us to have “be” attitudes. They may have left our earthly presence, but they are still with us, living through us in our mannerisms, in our attitudes, and in the smiles of our memories. Remembrance of Saints James Finley said in his Turning to the Mystics Podcast that “When we die, we don’t go anywhere, but rather, we cross over into unmediated, infinite union with God. We cross over into loving God, with God’s own love for God, which is the Holy Spirit. We cross over into knowing God, with God’s own knowledge of God, which is Christ.” Let’s honor our recently departed saints, those who have left us in the last year to join that beautiful, infinite union with God. Pastor Michelle Fountain |
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