All Saints' Triduum: Other Observances of Easter

 All Saints' Day B, November 1, 2024
Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6a John 11:32-44

Lectionary Link

All Hallowtide includes the Triduum of All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day.

As Easter centers upon the resurrection of Christ as he was known in his various re-appearances after his death, the All Saints' Triduum centers upon what the resurrection means for famous followers of Christ, and for the lesser known souls who are the local saints in our own lives.

In this Triduum, we deal with the same issue that is engaged in the resurrection of Jesus: Can we believe in the perpetual continuity of identity in time of the human person?

The issue of personal identity in time, involves identity and difference.  How is it that I am the same person now than I was when I was an infant?  I am the same person but continually different with the accumulation of states of becoming.  My older self is a different self than my younger self yet I remain the same person.

When we ponder a post-death state, what can we know about us having older selves in our afterlives, and ones in continuity with the same persons that we are now?

Without have any exact empirical evidence of what the afterlife is like, we resort to the afterlife of the community which survives the deceased proving that in life and death we remain communal.

The known afterlife of Jesus is how Jesus has been retained within the lives of so many people for so many years.  It is uncanny how the memory of Jesus can be retained and passed onto so many people for so many years.  Our experience of the Risen Christ is known through his being so memorably borne in so many individual experiences.  It is quite amazing that the countless number of experiences of the Risen Christ are so radically diverse and different, one wonders how they can be categorically clarified as deriving from the Risen Christ.

It is an amazing social, cultural, and historical phenomenon that so many persons have claimed relationships with the Risen Christ in so many ways, times, and places.

The effects of these relationships with the Risen Christ have resulted in the creation of diverse communities of persons who have lived out what they referred to as their relationship with the Risen Christ.

Some of these in-Christed persons who arose in very local situations, became widely known because their manner of life gained attention.  Just as the original disciples deeply missed Jesus after he was gone and so they retained his memory, the saints of the church made impressions in their own times and in such profound ways that they created a corporate memory of their lives which became widespread.  In the history of the church, the memories of these saints have been retained in written record, stories, and legends.  There have been times in the history of the church when the church leaders have made Jesus so holy and unapproachable to lay persons, but available and accessible primarily to the clergy that the vast number of laity depended upon the mediation of the clergy for access to Christ, via the sacraments.

In this situation, the famous saints, and local saints were regarded to be more accessible to lay persons.  In the age of hagiographies, the writings about the saints and the piety of personal connection with them filled this need of people to have accessibility to holy people who were conduits to the Christ.  The devotion to and veneration to saints became a common practice.  St. Mary grew in prominence as a favorite and accessible mothering and intercessory saint for many Christians.  She retains that role for many Christians today.

The hagiographies were coupled with an entire system of establishing a "canonical" sainthood.  The official church practiced a process of "quality" control regarding whether a saint had the official sanction of the church.  One can appreciate that religious charlatans to deceive the masses regarding saints, their stories, and relics have always been an issue to deal with.

Anglicanism formed in the time of the Enlightenment and the Reformation.  Among Anglicans, some have followed the rather severe Calvinist tendency to dispense with the saints and their intercessory roles, because, after all, anyone can go directly to Jesus without the need of mediation by Blessed Mary, the saints, or the priests.  More broadly, Anglicans have accepted that the belief in the Communion of Saints, that we confess with the historic church in the Nicene Creed, is not an empty confession.  Rather, the Communion of Saints is the continual application of our belief in the resurrection of Christ, locally adapted in time and place in the lives of people who know themselves to be in Christ, and Christ in them.

The Triduum, the three days of All Hallows' Eve, All Saints', and All Souls, are anthropologically sound because they are real about the grief that we feel in missing the important people of our lives when they are no longer accessible to seeing, hearing, and touching.  It is not good grief resolution to pretend that the people we lost were not and are not continuing factors in our lives.

Why would we think it just fine to have hero hall of fames in every area of life, and then think it as detrimental to the life of the church, as if, the people who loved Christ the best would want their lives to be in competition with devotion of Christ?

In sports, it is common to have Halls of Fame, not just for the greatest athletes who were best known in professional sports in our country; but also for state, city, and town athletes who made their impressions with their athletic feats.

In a similar reasonable way, in the Church we have All Saints' Day and All Souls Day.  People do not live with great saints, but people do live with influential Christ-filled souls who impact our lives in significant ways.  Some of those souls may go on to be known widely and when such significant people died, it is faithfully consistent with our belief in the resurrection to assume that they live on in the continuing unseen family of faith.  If we talk to people whom we love when they live and ask them for help and favors, blessings, and good wishes, there is no reason to think that such communication should cease after they have gone.  And there is no reason to believe that any communication within the Communion of Christ, would be a diminution of the supreme place which Christ plays within our lives.

Let us today accept the anthropological soundness of the All Saints' Triduum.  Let us embrace it as "good grief" in response to beloved people whom we have lost to death, and let us offer thanksgiving and appreciation, for them being in the "apostolic" succession of bringing Christliness to our lives.

Let us embrace the good grief of the All Saints' Triduum today.  Amen.

Sunday School, November 3, 2024 24 Pentecost B 26, All Saints' Sunday

  Sunday School, November 3, 2024  24 Pentecost B 26, All Saints' Sunday

Themes:

All laws are not equal in importance.  For example, it is more important not to kill than not to jay walk, even though both laws have special use. 

A religious man wanted to hear from Jesus about which laws of the 601 laws were the most important.  Jesus said, “Love God and love your neighbor as yourselves.”

If we work to please God and do what is fair to our neighbors all of the time, then we will be keeping the most important laws.

Some time we might like to replace religious laws for the more important laws.  For example, if some people made an animal sacrifice to keep a religious law, would that stand in place of having to tell the truth?

If we come to church because we think that it is a religious law for us, do we think that we can lie and steal because we have gone to church?

The practice of less important laws cannot replace the practice of the greatest laws.

The saints are those who became famous models for us because they were successful at keeping the law to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  If that is what we are doing in our lives, then we are learning how to be saints too.

Sermon

  Today is All Saints Sunday and in our lessons from Holy Scripture we have read about read about the law.  We read the charge that Moses gave to the children of Israel.  He told them that when they went into the Promised Land, that the Law was to be the crucial identity of their lives.  Today, we believe with the advent of the T-shirt, clothes became the billboard for textual messages of all sorts.  In our day, a T-shirt allows a person to literally wear their language.  But what is our relationship to the text that we wear.  What textual message could I wear that I could live up to?  My T-shirt could read, “I am a gray and balding older man.”  Well, that would be true.

  Long before textual T-shirts, the people of the Hebrew and Jewish faith have worn their texts.  Part of the prayer costume for Jews includes phylacteries.  These are leather boxes with the text of the Torah written within them.  They are strapped around the head and on the wrist.  They literally are the worn text of the Torah and they fulfilled this command of Moses:   “Bind the words of the commandments as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead.”  In a very symbolic way the writing of the commandments worn on the hand and the forehead state the principle that the commandment cannot remain a dead letter upon the page; the commandments has to take control of one’s thought life and the commandments have to be internalized into our hands, into our actions and body language.

  What can happen instead of the Torah living in our minds and in our actions?  We can replace justice and fairness by devising a series of religious ritual behaviors to stand in place of actually doing justice.  So, it became a practice to make the religious sacrifices of the prescribed animals and that kind of religious behavior was done, while the orphans and the widows went without food.  So prescribe religious ritual behavior became a substitute for living a life of justice, compassion and care.  Ritual behavior is easier than justice.  It is very messy business to try to bring justice to everyone.  Clergy are happy with ritual behavior; the ancient priests of Israel could get some of the best cuts of meat for their own tables with the prescribed animal sacrifices.  Clergy can fund the church and their jobs with prescribe obligatory religious and ritual behavior; okay so you’re not perfect and justice is not realized in society, but just come, give your tithe, make your confession, receive your absolution and go to Mass, and you get a clean slate.

 

 On All Saints Day, we confess Jesus to be the Saint of Saints.  Jesus is the Law of all Laws.  When one speaks in generalizations about faith communities, one would say that the Torah or the Law is central to Judaism.  But what is central to Christianity is Jesus Christ.  In Jesus Christ, the message of God does not come on stone tablets as written laws; in Jesus Christ, God comes as embracing the entire personhood.  What is greater?  Writing or Personhood?  Even though language and writing are what make human beings the unique creature, the appearance of God in a human being bespeaks a belief that human beings can only access that which is greater than human life, through human life.  Our belief in Jesus Christ is a belief that God does not just communicate through writing on stone tablets; God embraces the entire human experience as a way for us to know and celebrate the fact that being human, also means recognizing that life involves a recognition of life that is more than human.  It is the more than human life of God that comes to us in the Jesus Christ.

And what it reveals to us is that in a world of time, we are always invited to be More than we are right now.  We are always invited to surpass ourselves in excellence.  Believing in God means that we believe in the immensity of the quantity of future occasions of existence and those future occasions invite us to further invention, further creativity, further excellence.

  The future will likely change the details of human law of the past.  Why?  Because love always requires the details and strategies of love to be worked out in new situations.  We write laws and will continue to writer laws in new situations because love and justice are not fixed states of what can ever be permanently attained.  Practicing love and justice is never completed; we have to keep at it again and again.  As much as the founders of our country believed in their laws that “all people were created equal” they were blinded to achieve that in their actions as long as they accepted tacitly the practice of slavery and the subjugation of women.  Our founders preached a beautiful law and justice but at the same time, they did not fully realize law as a full completion of the work of justice.

  This never finished work of love and justice is perhaps the chief reason that Jesus settled for the summary of all of the law into just two laws; love God and love your neighbor as yourself.  St. Paul did a similar reduction when he said that love fulfills the law.

  Does this mean that love and law are opposed to each other?  Of course not.  Law is the strategy that love and justice need to be actually practiced.  We write laws as approximations of what good and just living means in actual practice.  And how do we know?  Well, you ask people; and people will tell you when they think something is fair or just in how they are treated. 

  All of the written laws can be reduced to love because love is not just having the law written as text on a T-shirt.  Love is not placing little boxes of Torah on your forehead and hand.  Love is when my hands perform deeds of kinds; love is when my thought think thoughts of kindness.  When our body language performs and acts deeds of love and kindness, then we become living law.  We become the law of love and justice.

  And who is it who was the perfect example in life of law and justice?  It was Jesus Christ.  He was the living law.  He was God’s law in Person.  He was love and justice personified.  And on All Saints Sunday, who do we call saints?  We call saints those who embodied love and justice in their very deeds.  These were not people who gave us legal texts on how we should live; they were people who showed how to live by the example of their lives.  They were “living laws.”

  So on All Saints Sunday, we are invited to personify the law and the justice of Christ.  We can be articulate and brilliant in legal reasoning, but law is most effective when we see it in practice.  Children are perhaps the most impressionable when they cannot speak and when they cannot read.  So in the first three years of their lives they are formed mostly by the people who model what it is to be human for them.  Parents and mentors are the living law for the impressionable children.

  But we never lose our childlike impressionability; we forever have this need to be impressed.  And what are we most impressed by?  By the living practice of love and kindness.  We are impressed when we experience justice and fairness.

  All Saints Sunday is a time to celebrate those who lived love and justice with their lives.  It is a time for us to embrace what is saintly in life.  It is time for us to internalize love and justice and let love and justice be lived through every word and deed of our lives.

  Today, we sing the song of the saints of God, and we pray, “God help me to be one too.  God help me to be love and kindness in word and deeds.”  Amen.

 

Intergenerational Family Service with Holy Eucharist

November 3, 2024: The Twenty-Fourth Sunday and All Saints' Sunday

Gathering Songs: When the Saints; O Come Let Us Adore Him, Jesus Stand Among Us; God Is So Good

Liturgist: Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

People: And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and for ever.  Amen.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Song: When The Saints Go Marching In

When the saints go marching in, when the saints go marching in.  Lord I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in.

When the girls go marching in…..

When the boys go marching in….

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People:            And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your gift that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service: Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Litany Phrase: Alleluia (chanted)

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Alleluia

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Alleluia

O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Alleluia

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Alleluia

A reading from the book of Deuteronomy

Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People: Thanks be to God

   

Liturgist: Let us read together from Psalm 119

5  Oh, that my ways were made so direct * that I might keep your statutes!

6  Then I should not be put to shame, * when I regard all your commandments.

7  I will thank you with an unfeigned heart, * when I have learned your righteous judgments.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God! (chanted)

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

Thanks be to God!

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark

People:            Glory to you, Lord Christ.

One of the scribes came near and heard the Saducees disputing with one another, and seeing that Jesus answered them well, he asked him, "Which commandment is the first of all?" Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." Then the scribe said to him, "You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that 'he is one, and besides him there is no other'; and 'to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,' and 'to love one's neighbor as oneself,'--this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." After that no one dared to ask him any question.

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People:            Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Sermon:  Fr. Phil

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy. (chanted)

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Liturgist:         The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

People:            And also with you.

Song during the preparation of the Altar and the receiving of an offering.

Song for the Offertory: O Come, Let Us Adore Him (Renew # 1)

O come, let us adore him; O come, let us adore him; O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

We’ll give him all the glory.  We’ll give him all the glory; we’ll give him all the glory, Christ the Lord.

For he alone is worthy.  For he alone is worthy.  For he alone is worthy, Christ the Lord.

We’ll praise his name forever.  We’ll praise his name forever.  We’ll praise his name forever, Christ the Lord.

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of heaven.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.  Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

All may gather around the altar

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

The Prayer continues with these words

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ.  May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory

 is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. Amen.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,

Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant:       Alleluia! Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia!

Words of Administration

Communion Song:  Jesus Stand Among Us (Renew # 237)

1-Jesus, stand among us in your risen power; let this time of worship be a hallowed hour.

2-Breathe the Holy Spirit into every heart; bid the fears and sorrows from each soul depart.

Post-Communion Prayer

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

    and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song: God is So Good (# 31 in  All the Best)

1-God is so good, God is so good, God is so good, He’s so good to me.

2-He cares for me, He cares for me, He cares for me, He’s so good to me.

3-I’ll do His will, I’ll do his will, I’ll do his will, He so good to me.

4-He is my Lord, He is my Lord, He is my Lord, He’s so good to me.

Dismissal:   

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ. 

People: Thanks be to God! 

Saints and Souls in a Community of Beloved

All Saints' Day B, October 31, 2021
Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6a John 11:32-44

Lectionary Link

The past and the present is absolute. Why? Because nothing can change that the past happened and the present is happening.

We may argue endlessly about why we happened and how we happened but that we happened cannot be denied.


We are like a brick in the wall of reality; the one brick cannot be removed from the wall of reality. On All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' and All Souls' days, we reinforce the reality that we and all people really existed and exist.


And that seems quite obvious, so what is the point?

Our existence is qualified by many factors. Like existing with and for whom? Like how did we live our lives with others? Like will our lives be like many of the lives of others before us, forgotten like most people who have existed in human history? And if we are forgotten and unknown by people of the future and if accessible records of our existence are extinguished, what happens to forgotten or unknown people?

So, we can be people very insecure in our mortality. And what do people insecure about their mortality do? They might want the drug of immortality called fame or glory. If I can be famous then I can create my own everlasting life in a way so that the memory of me might be registered by contemporary and future people.



The gist of All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' and All Souls' today centers upon how we sanctify the human need for fame, glory, recognition, and esteem. What is the best way to access personal esteem? How do we baptize the energy of wanting fame and glory?


It centers upon the difference between fame and excellence of the virtuous kind.

There are lots of famous people in history; many remembered people of whom have been deemed infamous: the Caesars, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and many more.

The great contribution of America to fame is Hollywood fame; glamor marketing value fame summarized in the proverbial Andy Warhol’s, "fifteen minutes of fame," for everyone. Today we have the tabloid effect; no publicity is regarded to be bad, just as long as one dominates the headlines for one’s constant fame.



How do we deal with the "wanting to be known and remembered" impulses of human life? How do we do this without being trapped in the psychologically determined state of narcissism?

I believe the Gospel secret to these questions has to do with the ultimate spotlight of fame and esteem which can be shone upon anyone. It involves the events and the continuous occasion of knowing that we are loved by God.



The events of heavenly fame occurred in the baptism of Jesus and on the Mount of the Transfiguration when the heavenly voice said, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased." This signified the coming out of Jesus as the saintliest of all the saints. This signified an event which could be known in the lives of every person who comes to the moment of deep familial identity: "You are my beloved son, my beloved daughter, with you I am well pleased."



This is the baptismal reality which we promote in the church for every person.



So, what do we do with this baptismal event? We accept ourselves as beloved and do so without getting what is called a "messiah" complex. It seems as though many of the vocal broadcasted preachers and other public figure blowhards get the "messiah complex," without truly understanding the blessed esteem of being beloved by God.



If coming to this occasion of knowing that one is loved by the greatest Being of all is the "saint-making" event of our lives. How do we live saintly lives? We become prism personalities refracting the beloving of God by letting others know that they are beloved with this same "God is love" energy of life. Easier said than done; why? This "God is love" energy has to have endless strategies within many situations to all of the people in our worlds.



The saints of All Saints' Day are the people who refracted the loving energy of God in such impactful ways that the memory of their lives went beyond their regions and their time. Why? Because we as a human community need living examples of how to live well, and how to refract the love of God in different ways in a multitude of settings. The saints are reminders to us that we need to be at the work of expressing strategies of love to reach the people in our lives whom God has brought to us to declare to: You are God's beloved child; and God is pleased with you. God did not make a mistake with your existence."



The Souls of All Souls' Day are the people who have been beloved in our lives and who helped to share with us that we too are beloved. And today is a great day of celebrating our connection with a beloved community of people who left us such a legacy, as a reminder that we are to be a living beloved community, who are still in the business of declaring the chief event in life for anyone is to know that one is beloved by God. If we have this spotlighting event, then it is enough.



But it didn’t always seem to be enough. Why? Become in the harshness of life and the cruelty of some imperfect nurture, we have been malformed about our own belovedness. This is why we need the saints and local mentoring souls to let us know a human love that can bring us to the big event of knowing that God in a profound way is a loving heavenly parent. The saints and mentoring souls in our lives help lead us to knowing ourselves as God’s beloved people in a community of the beloved.



So, why have All Saints' and All Souls' Days? With medical care, good health practice, and cosmetics, we try to preserve longevity of life or at least the appearance of healthy life. And what does death teach us? It teaches us that we will fail. And what do we do with this failure? We preserve the memories and the contributions of people as part of our community lore for as long as we can. We create our canonized saints as our Hall of Fame, and we have our own little hall of fames of our local family heroes. But we know that we who try to preserve the memories of others,  will also die.



And when all preservation has failed, which it surely will; we will have the ultimate act of faith, namely, to commit ultimate preservation to the active and profound memory of God, who better than Artificial Intelligence with endless terabytes of memory, can preserve with divine memorial units the reconstituted continuity of our existence into the future, something which we call in our faith, resurrection life.



All Saints and All Souls day, really are just another reason for us to say: Alleluia, Christ is Risen, the Lord is Risen, Indeed. Alleluia. They are days of being a part of the preservation of the belovedness that God has bestowed upon each person, now and forever.



We thank God for giving us the great succession of saints and souls, who like Jesus, accepted their status of the beloved of God. Let us accept today our ultimate fame and glory as being beloved by God. And as we sing the song of the saints of God, lets also pray: "God help me to be one too." Let us go forth and be and share this endless beloved community of Christ. Amen.

Saints Be Praised Not Neglected

All Saints' Day  B,  November 1, 2015 
Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9  Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6a     John 11:32-44


What is your own experience with All Saints' Day?  People who have been raised in different Christian traditions have had various pieties regarding the saints.  Churches which do not use the creed and confess a belief in the Communion of Saints tend to neglect the saints.  They have been taught that devotion to the saints is an unnecessary distraction from devotion to Christ.  Why would want to pray to a saint for an intercessory need, when one can go directly to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit?

I suspect that the cult of saints and the subsequent writings of hagiographies or the written biographies and legends of the saints came about partly because of the effort to bring the Christian message of the Gospel to so called "pagan" cultures which had practices of ancestor veneration and worship.  The cult of saints became more widespread as the church of the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages became essentially a church with a feudal like structure.  In this structure, the clergy mediated religion on behalf of the lowly baptized lay people, the Christian serfs in feudal Christian societies.  The clergy said the prayers in a foreign liturgical language, Latin while the lay people were spectators who were not educated enough for full participation in the liturgy.  It developed that lay people only received communion once a year at Easter because Jesus had become such a perfect King of Heaven that he could only be approached and received on a regular basis by the completely patriarchal clergy.  In this milieu one can understand how there would arise populist psychical correction in gaining of access to a sense of God's sublime care.  The rise of devotion to the saints and to the Ever Blessed Mary became the popular practice.  Saints were more culturally accessible in local areas; they served as totemic identities for local places almost like the professional football teams serve as local identities for cities and geographical regions today.  The rise of the Virgin Mary to a place of being a co-Redemptrix as well as the veneration of female saints meant that there was a feminine balancing of a thoroughly patriarchal church hierarchy and society.  At least in the heavenly realm saintly women had broken through the "glass ceiling" and so women and men could literally look up to holy women.

What happened in the Reformation was largely due to what was happening in Europe in what is called the Enlightenment.  With the break down of the feudal structure, the assertion of national identities and the re-discovery of the individual who needed to experience individual salvation instead of just a passive assimilation into a group salvation situation, the exclusive mediation of Catholic Clergy on behalf of lay people was brought into question. There were also abuses because of the corruption of too much power residing in the hands of the clergy.  The Reformation  notion of individual salvation empowered individuals to pray in their own languages; it empowered them to go directly to God and bypass the clergy and also by pass the intercessions of their long regarded guardian saints.  With the Reformation many Protestants threw out the saints as no longer being relevant to their everyday lives.

The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox retained the practiced relevance of the saints within their daily lives, especially the relevance of the Ever Blessed Virgin Mary, for whom is expressed a veneration second to none.

I remember growing up as a completely "saint-deprived" Baptist.  I was a bit jealous of my Roman Catholic friends.  They got to ride in cars with those cool figurines of St. Mary, St. Joseph and St. Christopher on the dash boards of their cars.  And back in the 1950's most boys did not wear necklaces; except Catholic boys could wear a necklace with a St. Christopher medal on it.  Catholic moms wanted to make sure their children had the protective intercessions of St. Christopher.  Too bad, that in post-Vatican II catholicism, St. Christopher was "decanonized" as he was not a real historical saint.  Yet even today St. Christopher medals persist; so one cannot discount the placebo effect of even legendary saints.

Today, with this history of the saints, we attempt to appropriate some meanings for us for All Saints' Day as people who still confess a belief in the Communion of Saints.

A 19th century Hasidic rabbi said that "People are God's language."  Long before the 19th century the writer of the Gospel of John wrote, "In the beginning was the Word.....and the Word became flesh and dwelled among."

All Saints' day is about how people have been God's language to us in the very best way.  God  as Word did not limit Word becoming flesh just in the life of Jesus.  God as Word has continually become made flesh in the lives of people who have lived, spoke and wrote the example of how to live this life best.

The most poignant human experience is the deep love of people and then losing the people whom we love through death.  We lose heroes who have had a wide reaching impact upon the well being of many people.  We lose people who are known only to us and a small circle of people.  We can fear that the loss of people will also mean the loss of the good which their lives perpetuated for us and for our world.  There is a natural human reaction to fear the loss of the legacy of goodness and greatness.  Just as in sports and in every area of life there is a human tendency to vote people into halls of fame, the communion of saints is a hall of fame that perhaps has been the proto-type of all halls of fame.  The reason that there are halls of fame is because we want to preserve the record of the highest standards.

The first persons to enter the Christian Hall of fame after Jesus were the early martyrs.  Deacon St. Stephen and James, the Just of Jerusalem and brother of the Lord.  The martyrs became saints through the witness of their lives when they chose identity with Jesus rather than denying him in public.  The first New Testament writing was the first letter of Paul to a church in Thessalonica. In this age the Christians felt so threatened that they really believed that the end of world could happen at anytime.  Paul wrote to the members of the church who worried about their loved ones who had died before the return of the Lord.

In the history of the church, as it became clear that the world was not ending, Christians had to accept that they would be around and that they needed view their mission as no longer being preparation for the end the world as they knew it; they had to prepare to settle in for the very long run.  The mission had to become institutions for the perpetuation of the message of the Gospel.  The Hall of Fame of Christian saints represents the success of the institutionalization of the Gospel.  The Christian Hall of Fame grew because Time did not end and the number of Christians grew and the number of heroic Christians grew.  The Communion of Saints is like long term banking account; the more members who have entered it the more the benefits have accrued.  The Communion of Saints is like a standing Endowment Fund for all Christian of the future.  The witness of their lives are gifts to us which keep on giving.  Their lives are worthy to remember because we as human beings only advance in excellence when we follow our highest insights.  The saints are those who have given us examples in their lives of highest ideals.

One of the things which happened in Christian practice is what I might call a pride of eternal life and a resurrection pride resulting in a discounting of the grief that occurs because of the experience of death.  It's almost as if someone mourns too long or too profoundly that one is viewed as one who does not have the appropriate amount of faith in the resurrection and in eternal life.  Christians have often regarded themselves as being superior to those in other cultures who they saw to be practicing ancestor worship and even treating their ancestors as those who still lingered upon this earth.

I would suggest that both the resurrection of Christ and the veneration of the saints is related to the human experience of grief.  I believe that the post-resurrection appearances of Christ to certain disciples were connected to the profound grief and loss which his friends experienced at his death.  I do not believe his disciples were prepared for his death; I think that what they had experienced of Jesus made them believe that he was deathless.  So when Jesus died, it caught them off guard.  They lived in shocked disbelief about his death.  With the death of Jesus would the values of the life of Jesus also die?  The death of Jesus was so profound that the deep grief was answered with the power of God to give Jesus an afterlife in the life of his friends.  And Jesus reappeared to his disciples to teach this world about the fact that death was a transition to another kind of life.

The Risen Christ was born into the lives of many people in many times and places.  Jesus instantiated the life of God for humanity in first century Palestine.  But the Risen Christ has been made available in the lives of people throughout the world.  The life of Christ has been lived very well in the lives of the saints and so the life of Christ became more accessible to people who have lived after Jesus in different times.  With the life of the saints we celebrate the fact that the life of the Risen Christ has become more diverse than just the life of Jesus of Nazareth in his thirty plus years upon earth.

I think it is wrong to divide the family of Christ in thinking that the saints would promote themselves over Christ, or to think that Jesus would be jealous of how people relate to the good lives of the saints.  It is very logical to believe that because the church has remained for such a long time that saintliness is one of the reason for the staying power of the church.  The church has remained for so long because the Risen Christ has significantly inspired people to live saintly lives.

It is very natural for us to celebrate saintly lives for several reasons.  First, it allows us to acknowledge that significance of their lives.  It allow us to be honest about our grief at the loss of the lives of people who have touched our lives with the very best witness.  It is correct and necessary for us to celebrate the lives of saints as a way to practice the faith of the resurrection.  You are alive here and now, and I feel completely confident in asking you to pray for me early and often.  If we believe in the continuing life of the saints and the significant departed souls of our own lives, why would we treat them as dead and insignificant by avoiding to ask them to pray for us.  The saints and the holy dear people are not people who compete with our devotion to Christ; they are gifts of God to us to help us in our love and devotion of God.

But finally, we cannot let all holiness and godliness remain contained in Jesus and the saints; the reason that we have the cloud of witnesses of the saints is so that we ourselves might progress in being saintly as well.  Sainthood, or holiness is not something Jesus kept to himself.  It is not something that is limited to the official saints of the Church; holiness is how you and I respond to the life of God in our lives.  And no one can be a saint like you can.  Only you can be the saint given the uniqueness of your life circumstances.  And there are people who need us to be saints for them in making the life of Risen Christ known again in our world.

Today, let us be thankful that the Most High Saint Jesus, shared saintliness with all people through the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Let us be thankful for the saints who have taken the gift of holiness of Jesus and made it evident in their lives as a blessed witness to us.  And finally, let us receive the gift of holiness in our lives as we endeavor to allow the Risen Christ to be known in and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Sunday School, November 1, 2015 All Saints' Sunday, Cycle B

Sunday School, November 1, 2015    All Saints’ Sunday, B

Themes

You might invite the children to wear their Halloween Costumes to Sunday School

The loss of community participation in three events, All Saints’ Eve, All Saints’ Day and All Souls Day means that Halloween is basically a secular ritual of costumes and candy, not an Eve or Vigil of preparation for All Saints’ Day.  All Souls’ Day is like an after thought for Halloween and All Saints’ Day except in cultures where the Dia de los Muertos is an important event to celebrate connections with departed loved ones. Hispanic cultures have a more active tradition of observing all three days.

Children tend to wear costumes of princesses or super heroes.  This is a perfect lead in to discuss the notion of heroes.  Use the notion of the Hall of Fame.  Nearly every sport and every area of life has a way of honoring people who excel in a certain field.

The Church has a tradition of having a Hall of Fame of important Christians.  The Christian Hall of Fame are the Saints of the Church.  Saints are the people who are remembered because they followed the life and teachings of Jesus Christ the best.  They did this in such excellent ways that people remembered them and continued to tell their stories about the good things which they did in their lives.  All Saints’ Day is a Feast Day when we celebrate all of the great people in our Christian Hall of Fame.

Some people who are heroes have become well known all around the world, but there are other people who have been important people in our own lives.  Teachers, coaches, grandparents have been local heroes for us.  All Souls’ Day is a day for the local heroes of our lives.  We remember them.  We express our faith in the resurrection by acknowledging that they are still alive with God. 

So teach the meaning of world wide saints but also local and personal saints, the people who have helped to teach us about Christ, but who are no longer with us.

The final message is each child is to understand their own baptismal calling to be a saint.  It does not mean that we have to be famous, it means that we have do our very best to follow Jesus Christ.

A Sermon for All Saints’ Day

Joe Montana, Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, and Reggie Jackson?  What do these people have in common?  Yes, they were athletes, professional athletes, good professional athletes.  They were so good that they were put in a special place after they were too old to play their sports.  Do you know where we put them?  We put them in a place called the Hall of Fame.  Sports writers study all of the records and they vote on who goes into the Hall of Fame.

  Did you know that the church has its own Hall of Fame?  It is called the Communion of Saints.  The Communion of Saints is a big group of people who all share something in common.  They all love Jesus Christ, and some of them are alive and some of them have died.  Some of them are really famous good people and others are not very famous at all.  But they all share their love of Jesus Christ. 

  If you want everyone to be a good baseball player do you say, “Okay everyone, if you want to be really good at baseball, you need to play baseball like Father Phil?”  Is Father Phil a good baseball player?  Does he even play baseball?  I can play baseball but you don’t want to copy how I play baseball.  You want to copy a really good baseball player.  This is why we have the Hall of Fame so that we can have really high standards and models to learn how to be the best we can at baseball.

  In the church, we have some famous Christians called saints.  These famous people are Christians who have been really good at loving God and their neighbors and they were so good that people said we need to remember them because they have set a very good example for us.  And so we call these people saints and we celebrate them on All Saints’ Day.  This is why we have Halloween.  To remember that some very good people have died and they set a good example for us.  We want to keep their example alive and so we put them in the Christian Hall of Fame of Saints to remind us of how good we too need to be.

  Another reason we have All Saints’ Day is remember that the resurrection of Jesus reminds us that God preserves our lives after we die.  The lives of the saints and the lives of people who have died have been preserved by God, and ours will be preserved too when we die.

  So we have this Communion of Saints.  A group of people who are preserved by God in life and death and this gives us hope.  It means we don’t have to live with the fear of death, because we will always be a part of the Communion of Saints.

  Let us give thanks to God for the famous Christians called saints.  Let us give thanks too for the important saints in our lives, our grandparents, teachers and parents and the people who help us live our lives with love and kindness.

   And let us not forget this: Each one of us is a saint too, because we have been given a special relationship with Jesus Christ.  And we are saints, too, because we follow Jesus Christ.  So, turn to your neighbor and call your neighbor a saint.  Amen.

St. John the Divine Episcopal Church

17740 Peak Avenue, Morgan Hill, CA 95037

Family Service with Holy Eucharist

November 1, 2015: All Saints’ Sunday

Gathering Songs:

When the Saints Go Marching In; O, Come Let Us Adore Him, Onward Christian Soldiers

Liturgist: Blessed be God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

People: And blessed be God’s kingdom, now and forever.  Amen.

Liturgist:  Oh God, Our hearts are open to you.

And you know us and we can hide nothing from you.

Prepare our hearts and our minds to love you and worship you.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Song: When the Saints Go Marching In

When the saints go marching in, when the saints go marching in.  Lord I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in.

When the girls go marching in…..

When the boys go marching in….

Liturgist:         The Lord be with you.

People: And also with you.

Liturgist:  Let us pray

Almighty God, you have joined together your chosen people into one family of people who enjoy a special friendship as we are gathered as the body of Christ on earth today; Give us grace so to follow the great heroes in good living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen

Litany of Praise: Alleluia

O God, you are Great!  Alleluia

O God, you have made us! Alleluia

O God, you have made yourself known to us!  Alleluia

O God, you have provided us with us a Savior!  Alleluia

O God, you have given us a Christian family!  Alleluia

O God, you have forgiven our sins!  Alleluia

O God, you brought your Son Jesus back from the dead!  Alleluia

A Reading from the Wisdom of Solomon

Those who trust in him will understand truth, and the faithful will abide with him in love, because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones, and he watches over his elect.

Liturgist: The Word of the Lord

People:  Thanks be to God

A Reading from Psalm 24

The earth is the LORD'S and all that is in it, * the world and all who dwell therein.

For it is he who founded it upon the seas * and made it firm upon the rivers of the deep.

Litany Phrase: Thanks be to God!

Litanist:

For the good earth, for our food and clothing. Thanks be to God!

For our families and friends. Thanks be to God!

For the talents and gifts that you have given to us. Thanks be to God!

For this day of worship. Thanks be to God!

For health and for a good night’s sleep. Thanks be to God!

For work and for play. Thanks be to God!

For teaching and for learning. Thanks be to God!

For the happy events of our lives. Thanks be to God!

For the celebration of the birthdays and anniversaries of our friends and parish family.

   Thanks be to God!

Liturgist:         The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John

People: Glory to you, Lord Christ.

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see." Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!" But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"  Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days." Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."

Liturgist:         The Gospel of the Lord.

People: Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Lesson – Fr. Cooke: 

                                        

Children’s Creed

We did not make ourselves, so we believe that God the Father is the maker of the world.

Since God is so great and we are so small,

We believe God came into our world and was born as Jesus, son of the Virgin Mary.

We need God’s help and we believe that God saved us by the life, death and

     resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is present with us now as the Holy Spirit.

We believe that we are baptized into God’s family the Church where everyone is

     welcome.

We believe that Christ is kind and fair.

We believe that we have a future in knowing Jesus Christ.

And since we all must die, we believe that God will preserve us forever.  Amen.

Litany Phrase: Christ, have mercy.

For fighting and war to cease in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For peace on earth and good will towards all. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety of all who travel. Christ, have mercy.

For jobs for all who need them. Christ, have mercy.

For care of those who are growing old. Christ, have mercy.

For the safety, health and nutrition of all the children in our world. Christ, have mercy.

For the well-being of our families and friends. Christ, have mercy.

For the good health of those we know to be ill. Christ, have mercy.

For the remembrance of those who have died. Christ, have mercy.

For the forgiveness of all of our sins. Christ, have mercy.

Youth Liturgist:          The Peace of the Lord be always with you.

People:                        And also with you.

 Song for the Offertory: O Come, Let Us Adore Him (Renew # 1)

O come, let us adore him; O come, let us adore him; O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord.

We’ll give him all the glory.  We’ll give him all the glory; we’ll give him all the glory, Christ the Lord.

For he alone is worthy.  For he alone is worthy.  For he alone is worthy, Christ the Lord.

We’ll praise his name forever.  We’ll praise his name forever.  We’ll praise his name forever, Christ the Lord.

Doxology

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him, all creatures here below.

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Prologue to the Eucharist

Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, for to them belong the kingdom of God.”

All become members of a family by birth or adoption.

Baptism is a celebration of birth into the family of God.

A family meal gathers and sustains each human family.

The Holy Eucharist is the special meal that Jesus gave to his friends to keep us together as the family of Christ.

The Lord be with you

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

It is very good and right to give thanks, because God made us, Jesus redeemed us and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts.  Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all of the world that we see and don’t see, we forever sing this hymn of praise:

Holy, Holy, Holy (Intoned)

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of Power and Might.  Heav’n and earth are full of your glory.

Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. 

Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the Highest.

(All may gather around the altar)

Our grateful praise we offer to you God, our Creator;

You have made us in your image

And you gave us many men and women of faith to help us to live by faith:

Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael.

And then you gave us your Son, Jesus, born of Mary, nurtured by Joseph

And he called us to be sons and daughters of God.

Your Son called us to live better lives and he gave us this Holy Meal so that when we eat

  the bread and drink the wine, we can  know that the Presence of Christ is as near to us as  

  this food and drink  that becomes a part of us.

The Prayer continues with these words

And so, Father, we bring you these gifts of bread and wine. Bless and sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord. Bless and sanctify us by your Holy Spirit so that we may love God and our neighbor.

On the night when Jesus was betrayed he took bread, said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his friends, and said, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."

After supper, Jesus took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said, "Drink this, all of you. This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me."

Father, we now celebrate the memorial of your Son. When we eat this holy Meal of Bread and Wine, we are telling the entire world about the life, death and resurrection of Christ and that his presence will be with us in our future.

Let this holy meal keep us together as friends who share a special relationship because of your Son Jesus Christ.  May we forever live with praise to God to whom we belong as sons and daughters.

By Christ, and with Christ, and in Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit all honor and glory

 is yours, Almighty Father, now and for ever. AMEN.

And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we now sing,

Our Father: (Renew # 180, West Indian Lord’s Prayer)

Our Father who art in heaven:  Hallowed be thy name.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done: Hallowed be thy name.

Done on earth as it is in heaven: Hallowed be thy name.

Give us this day our daily bread: Hallowed be thy name.

And forgive us all our debts: Hallowed be thy name.

As we forgive our debtors: Hallowed be thy name.

Lead us not into temptation: Hallowed be thy name.

But deliver us from evil: Hallowed be thy name.

Thine is the kingdom, power, and glory: Hallowed be thy name.

Forever and ever: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Amen, amen, amen, amen: Hallowed be thy name.

Breaking of the Bread

Celebrant:        Alleluia, Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.

People:            Therefore let us keep the feast.  Alleluia.

Words of Administration

Communion Song:  Jesus Stand Among Us (Renew # 237)

1-Jesus, stand among us in your risen power; let this time of worship be a hallowed hour.

2-Breathe the Holy Spirit into every heart; bid the fears and sorrows from each soul depart.

Post-Communion Prayer

Everlasting God, we have gathered for the meal that Jesus asked us to keep;

We have remembered his words of blessing on the bread and the wine.

And His Presence has been known to us.

We have remembered that we are sons and daughters of God and brothers

    and sisters in Christ.

Send us forth now into our everyday lives remembering that the blessing in the

     bread and wine spreads into each time, place and person in our lives,

As we are ever blessed by you, O Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Closing Song: Onward Christian Soldiers (Blue Hymnal # 562)

Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before.  Christ the royal master, leads against the foe; forward into battle, see, his banners go.

   Refrain: Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with cross of Jesus going on before.

Onward, then ye people, join our happy throng; blend with ours your voices in the triumph song: glory, laud, and honor, unto Christ the King; this through countless ages we with angels sing.  Refrain

Dismissal

Liturgist: Let us go forth in the Name of Christ.

People: Thanks be to God!