November 4, 2007, All Saints Sunday & Feast of All Souls
The Rev. James Richardson
Interim Rector
Wisdom 3: 1-9
Psalm 150
1 Corinthians 15: 50-58
John 5: 24-27


Before you sit down this morning, please turn around and look at the words on the wall. Please repeat after me:
“All Souls are mine saith the Lord.”
Ok, now you can have a seat. Those words come from the prophet Ezekiel. And while we don’t hear Ezekiel this morning, let me suggest those words permeate all of the biblical lessons for today, and permeate everything we are doing here today, and really everything about All Souls Parish. “All Souls are mine saith the Lord.” Today is your feast day, All Souls Parish. Today is your Sunday, the day to celebrate the blessings God gives us, and the day to reflect on what those words mean. Happy feast day, All Souls! “All Souls are mine saith the Lord.”

When I came to this parish in July, I began doing one of the things interims are supposed to do. I searched for your vision and mission statement. Now, I know there are some very carefully crafted words at the bottom of your service program the Vestry adopted and polished over the years. But that was not what I was looking for. Those words describe how you do church, and set forth the core values of this congregation, and I highly commend them to you. But I was looking for something else.

I was looking for the words that capture why you are here – why does All Souls Parish exist? What does God have in mind for this place? Can it be summed up in a few words? To find out I even did things like hand out index cards to Vestry members and ask them to write down what they thought the mission statement is. And then it hit me one morning sitting right here. The words were smack in front of me, up there on the wall: “All Souls are mine saith the Lord.” That is what this church is about.

The reason I wanted to come to this parish is you have a reputation for being diverse and inclusive of all manner of people, especially those who have been treated like outcasts by the church. Your inclusiveness is encapsulated in the words “All Souls are mine.” No one can be an outsider to this church because no one is an outsider to the Lord. “All Souls are mine.”

Yet that is also your challenge – to be never satisfied that you have quite lived up to those words. That is your mission – to find ways to open the doors and raise the roof so that truly “all souls” will find a home, a place of refuge, a place to be in this church. “All Souls are mine” is your true calling, your true mission statement – and I might add, they are in the first sentence of your parish profile just completed as you search for a new permanent rector.

“All Souls are mine” also encapsulates the biblical lessons we hear today. From the book of Wisdom: “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God.” From Paul: “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” And from Jesus in the Gospel of John: “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

There are at least two ways of reading this gospel lesson. One is to see it as a limit on God. You could read it as saying anyone who has the ability to “hear my word” and “believe” is rewarded with eternal life. Those without that ability are pluck out of luck.

The other way to read it is as a proclamation of the power of God – that it is not our ability, but the ability of God the creator, through the person of Jesus, to find a way to be heard by everyone – by every soul – each in their own language, each in a way they can hear. The classic definition of the word “believe” is not about the intellect, but about relationship. So let me suggest that Jesus is telling us that no one is beyond the reach of his whisper and beyond the reach of a relationship with the creator.

This business about “All Souls are mine” is really more than about finding a church home. It is about finding a home with God, or to turn this around, it is about finding out what is already a fact – that each of us has a home with God because each of us is God’s cherished treasure. Not even death can separate us from the extravagant, boundless love of God, and that is why on this, your feast day, we proclaim that “All Souls are mine,” especially those who are departed from us in this life but who we will see in the next.

Jesus tells us over and over, do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Death has no power over us. Jesus says: “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” That is a tall assertion to make – but go with this awhile. On this day we remember those who are just over the horizon from our view.

We are also doing something to remember those we love – Toni Borgfeldt constructed an “oferenda” in the side chapel, in the finest Latin American tradition, and I would invite you to bring mementoes of your loved ones to decorate our ofrenda during the month of November. In a little while, the children of our parish will bring their own “oferendas” and place them in the side chapel.

The real boundary of death is the boundary that tricks us into thinking that all there is to this life is what we see each day. There is a great cloud of witnesses here to tell us on this All Souls day that there is another way to live, a way to live without the borders of fear and death. “In the eyes of the foolish,” the Book of Wisdom proclaims, “they seemed to have died.” But, as Paul says, in the eyes of God, they are “imperishable.”

One of the reasons we come together in a short while to celebrate Holy Communion is to connect not just with each other but all those we love who are with us but just over the horizon. They are sharing in this bread and wine at our communion. All of this should raise for us a challenge about how we live our life in this world before we reach the next. What if you really live your life knowing that death is just another phase of growing, another step along the way of being human?

What if you know inside – really know – that the promise of eternal life is not a reward for the few, but another way of living for the many? For you and for me? How will you live your life now if you know – really know – that death cannot hold you? You might see that everything about your life now has an infinite connection to everyone, and everything else on this planet. If all of us could see that we are connected we might – just might – share our life without fear. That, my friends, is a life worth living, and so on this, your parish feast day, be glad and rejoice, for “All Souls are mine saith the Lord.”

Amen