All Saints' Sunday
Isaiah 25:6-9
Revelation 21:16
Mark 12:28-34
We could hear her voice floating all the way down the Sunday School wing of the church.
§“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong.”§
It was the first day of Sunday School, “Promotion Sunday” as we called it, and I was there early, as my father had somehow been roped into being the Sunday School Superintendent. §Yes, Jesus loves me.§ I stood there, trying to figure out where it coming from. §Yes, Jesus loves me.§ I had the sinking feeling that it was coming from my new classroom. §Yes, Jesus loves me, for the Bible tells me so.”§ I followed the voice down the hall until there was no doubt who the mystical singer was: Ms. Ginger, my new teacher. “Oh no,” I thought, “I’m being stuck with a singing teacher! This is going to be a long year!”
My father, who was walking by about this time and saw me standing at the doorway trying to figure out a way to escape before I was seen, dutifully shoved me into the classroom. I stood there, §Yes, Jesus loves me.§ We made eye contact. §Yes, Jesus loves me.§ I looked for an escape route. She just smiled, and kept singing. §Yes, Jesus loves me, for the Bible tells me so.§ She wouldn’t stop singing, she just kept setting up the chairs, and putting out the Bibles. She sang and set up, smiled and gestured for me to help out. I looked around to make sure that no one would see me hanging out with this sort of person, and begrudgingly began to start helping. She kept singing, §Yes, Jesus loves me.§ , or huming §hmmmmmm§. This went on for about ten minutes until, well, all I can say is that it infected me. I found myself humming along with her.
You never would have guessed that her husband had just left her, or that her son had run away from home. I didn’t know that until much later. The rest of the students came in, Ms. Ginger kept singing and smiling and gesturing until everyone had arrived and we were all singing or humming along, §Yes, Jesus loves me, for the Bible tells me so.§
That year, Courtney’s father died, Marshall’s parents divorced and my best friend moved away. That year, Ms. Ginger, our in-house saint, sang to us God’s love song through it all.
Today is All Saints’ Sunday, the day that we turn our ear to the lives of the Saints’ and allow God’s love song to infect us. As far as I can tell, that’s what a Saint is. A Saint is not someone who is perfect, or sinless, someone who shows us how bad we are by virtue of how good they are. We’ve got no use for a Saint like that. Saints are those people who through their brokenness allow God’s love song to reverberate through them. In the midst of their sinfulness, in the face of the world’s pain, a Saint is someone who has gotten God’s love song caught in their head and can’t get it out. They just sing it everywhere they go, until all the world is singing along.
Like Saint Isaiah in our Old Testament lesson this morning. Isaiah is singing God’s love song to Israel even in the face of hell on earth. They are in exile, slaves in someone else’s kingdom, and God’s promises to them at this point seem like useless religious jargon. The promised land is a distant memory and the Messiah is nowhere to be found. All seems lost.
Then, against the constant discord of hopelessness that has been droning on in the background of Israel’s life for so long now, Isaiah begins humming a new song.
“On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. 7And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever. 8Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.”
It seems as though God has put a love song to Israel on Isaiah’s heart, stuck the melody of hope and love within Isaiah’s head, and he can’t help but sing it. God’s love song rings so beautifully, so mellifluously, that is reaches into the darkest times of pain and shatters the discord of hopelessness.
§Yes, Jesus loves me.§
Saint John’s Revelation is set to the same tune. Saint John is in exile, Christians are being persecuted for following Christ, the leaders of the church are being martyred and the faith seems all but doomed. Then, from a jail cell on a desert Island, God sings to the church again through Saint John.
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; 4he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more”
These words of hope and comfort sung by Saint John to the familiar beat of God’s love song to the world overcome the cacophony of hopelessness and allows those around to dance anew.
§Yes, Jesus loves me.§
Listening to our Gospel lesson this morning we hear the familiar beat continue. The scribe comes up to Jesus, questions what is the most important commandment? Jesus replies with an ancient love song called the Shema. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” The Scribe listens to God Incarnate sing this familiar ditty, until the scribe, himself, begins to hum along. “you are right, loving God and the world are the most important” says the scribe. “Now you’re catching on.” Sings Jesus.
§Yes, Jesus loves me.§
Listen to the song of the Saints. Their very lives sing God’s love song to the world. Like Saint John Wesley, who against the backdrop of a stagnant Anglican church sang of a God that refused to leave us in brokenness, but who loved us into perfection. Now there are 12 million Methodists singing along. Or Saint Martin Luther King, Jr., who sang of God’s dream to the world for equality until segregation was brought down and we began our long uphill trek to peace, now there are 300 million Americans who live in a different world. Listen to the song of Saint Greg Jenkes, who is leading us as a conference in singing a song of life to the Orphans in Zimbabwe, who’s only song this far have been set to the tune of people’s dying breath due to AIDS, children’s cries for parent’s lost and the constant clatter of gunfire. Greg started three years ago singing a new song in that land, and now there are 10,000 orphans being fed, 2,000 children being offered medical care, and 1,500 more who are in school, all singing a new song of hope and love.
Listen to the song of the Saints, for they are singing a song of life that is able to bring hope to the hopeless, life to the dying, and love to the unloveable. Listen to the song of the Saints, for through them, God is singing a love song to the world that is so beautiful, that upon hearing it the blind see, the lame walk, and the dead dance. Listen to the song of the saints, until you find yourself walking along with them, humming that tune that the world is dying to hear,
§"Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me, for the Saints have told me so."§
