The energy and anticipation were palpable yesterday morning as the choir rehearsed and the liturgical ministers began to vest. We gathered on a hill overlooking the Kalamazoo River, that leads into Lake Michigan, that great inland sea. We gathered as All Saints’ Parish for the 156th celebration of All Saints’ Day.
We celebrated a rich history of prayer and service on that shoreline hill, a legacy we prayerfully seek to honor by the way we live today and the witness we bear to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We have recently been using the image of the “good road” to describe this journey we are on together as a parish, and that road is both inspiring and challenging.
All Saints’ Day marks the beginning of Native American Heritage Month, for example, a November observance in this country that started back in 1990. Modern Western society needs to retrieve at least part of this truly rich heritage of indigenous peoples for the sake of ecological healing in a world of climate chaos and for a healthier relationship with the land.
At the same time, we have started recently to confront more directly another part of this heritage, both as a country and as The Episcopal Church. I mean the painful legacy of residential boarding schools for indigenous children—this isn’t only part of our distant past; some of these schools just closed in our lifetimes.
Stories from these schools were in the news just a week ago when President Biden formally apologized for the government’s role in creating them. The collusion between church and state represented by these schools—this collaboration to erase the cultural traditions of an entire people—this is a gut-wrenching chapter in American religious history, our history.
Telling the truth and hearing the truth about this history is the only way to begin healing the trauma of that history. That kind of truth-telling is part of what it means to travel together on “Creator’s good road,” especially with the healing power of love.
Speaking the truth in love has always been the saintly work of God’s people. In John’s Gospel alone, this vital significance of the truth is mentioned no fewer than twenty-one times. Jesus is the “Word made flesh,” John says, “full of grace and truth” (1:14).
John’s Jesus himself declares that he is the “way, the truth, and the life” (14:6) and promises to send the “Spirit of truth” who will guide us into all truth (16:13) Because, John’s Jesus says, when you know the truth, the “truth will make you free” (8:32).
This healing and liberating power of God is on dramatic display in the familiar story from John assigned for the celebration of All Saints’ Day (11:32-44). Lazarus, a dear friend of Jesus, has died. Lazarus may well have been the closest friend Jesus had, and he was part of an intimate circle of friends that included the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, and a wider circle still of the village of Bethany, where they lived, just outside of Jerusalem.
So this family of friends, this village, gathers to grieve the loss of Lazarus. Jesus himself is so deeply moved that he begins to weep. Mary speaks some hard truth: If you had been here, she says to Jesus, Lazarus would not have died.
As many will recall, Jesus responded by raising Lazarus from the dead. But what many of us don’t often remember is that this moment is not the end of the story, perhaps not even the climax; notice what happens next. The dead man came out of the tomb, John says, and his hands and feet were bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus then said to them—to that family of friends, to that village—“Unbind him, and let him go.”
What a strange moment in this already dramatic story! It’s as if being raised from the dead is not enough, somehow not sufficient for embracing new life. Indeed, as he is walking out of his own tomb, John still refers to him as “the dead man.”
Unbind him, Jesus says, and let him go.
Lazarus is wrapped in a burial shroud—tightly wrapped. That’s how they embalmed a dead body in that society, securely bound by heavily spiced linens soaked in aromatic ointments.
I think John is imagining more here than only the burial shroud of a first-century Judean. John is likely urging his readers to consider that we—all of us—might still be clinging to death even in the midst of life; that we—all of us—might still be in death’s enchanting thrall even as we hope for life; that we human beings have trouble, often deadly trouble in letting go of death.
Whatever keeps us attached to a violent system, whatever binds us to hateful speech or traps us in spirals of bodily shame, whenever we are entangled or enticed by bitter resentments—even a burial shroud can seem appealing when soaked in sweet-smelling herbs—whatever prevents us from the fullness of life needs to fall away.
Unbind him, Jesus says, and let him go.
That is the moment of love’s healing power in this story, and that’s always the work of all the saints, to unbind—to release and to liberate, to let the captives go free from whatever form of death shackles them to the past.
“See,” God says, “I am making all things new.”
That’s a powerful declaration from the Revelation to John, which the lectionary assigned as well for our saintly celebration (21:1-6a). And it’s tempting to hear it as a moment of erasure, of wiping the slate clean, as if God is simply starting over and beginning entirely from scratch.
But no, our history matters. Our history that made us who we are and shaped our families and built our communities matters, and it’s not just simply thrown away.
And the indigenous history of the people we tried to erase on this continent—that history matters just as much as ours. Our shared history with them is not erased in John’s vision—it is remade with the healing power of God’s love.
That’s the good road to travel as God’s people, and yes, this road includes difficult, even heartbreaking moments of truth-telling. But this is not the road to nowhere; it actually does go somewhere, and the selection from the prophet Isaiah for All Saints’ Day says where exactly it leads (25:6-9).
The road leads, Isaiah says, to God’s “holy mountain,” a mountain where the burial shroud cast over all people is lifted, and where God—God!—wipes away the tears from every face—including, surely, the tears from the face of Jesus himself when he wept for his friend Lazarus.
Both Isaiah and John offer a remarkable vision of ever-widening circles of who counts as “God’s people”—an ever-expanding “Communion of Saints.” For both of these ancient writers, tears are wiped from all faces; no one is left out.
Personally, I needed that biblical reassurance this week, especially as the anxiety is running high about the election tomorrow. But here’s the thing: regardless of what happens, no matter who wins and what kind of future we think we might be facing in this country, the shared ministry of God’s people remains the same. As the Book of Common Prayer succinctly frames it, our work is always to promote justice, peace, and love—and that will not change.
In the historic carpenter gothic sanctuary on the corner of Grand and Hoffman Streets in Saugatuck, Michigan, we will continue that holy work and we will extend our Eucharistic fellowship outward, in ever-widening circles of God’s healing love.
And we will keep on doing this work together for another 156 years—or for however long God calls us to do it along this good road.
And what a wonderful day it was yesterday—to recall with song and flowers and food—that we are not alone on that road but accompanied by a vast communion of companion saints.
