November 1 is All Saints’ Day. Although it is one of the seven principal feasts of the Christian calendar, it is easily forgotten because it isn’t usually on a Sunday. Some denominations, wary of abuses that can occur in the veneration of saints, don’t even regard it as a holiday. The result is that most American Christians have lost a specific day to remember, celebrate, and thank God for those who have gone before them in the faith.
A number of years ago, I had the chance to visit one of the catacombs at Rome. In the coolness and quiet, deep underground, I came face-to-face with something startling: There were places of worship next to the graves of Christians. Believers would gather at the tombs to celebrate the Eucharist from time to time as a statement that the dead were still members of the Church, that Christ was victor over death, and that the resurrection was coming.
The Church is the only society on earth that never loses members. Those who have gone before us in the faith are no less a part of the body of Christ than we are. There is only one body, and it contains the Christians of all ages and times. We need moments to remember this when our view of Christianity starts to get too narrow, too influenced by America or the 21st Century. The saints from ages past worshiped differently than we do and would be rightly shocked at aspects of the American church. We also need moments to remember the entire body of Christ—the body that includes people from all over the globe and spans thousands of years—when we feel isolated or alone. We are, in the language of Hebrews 12, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Joined together with them, we are a part of a great body, united across time and space in the Messiah.
All Saints’ Day is a moment to remember these things. It is a moment to grieve for the temporal loss of those who have gone before us in the faith, to remember them in thanksgiving before God, and to celebrate what God will do with them in the resurrection. Even though they are in the presence of the Lord, they are (like us) waiting for the resurrection of the dead, when we will all be joined together in our resurrected bodies in the unveiled presence of God himself.
In Christ,
Steven+
Scripture Reflections
Our Gospel lesson on Sunday (Lk. 17:11-19) is a beautiful example of the importance of thankfulness in the Christian life. We know it is important to be thankful, but perhaps we don’t know how important it really is…
In Luke 17, Jesus cleansed 10 lepers. The Greek verb is specific—they were freed from leprosy through a cleansing that occurred in their bodies.
One leper returned to thank Jesus, and Jesus asked, “Where are the others?” He then looked at the one, and pronounced, “Your faith has saved you. It has made you well, body and soul.” Again, the Greek verb is specific. 10 were cleansed; only 1 was saved and made whole. Why was that one saved? His faith. What did his faith look like, in action?
Thanksgiving.
We think thanksgiving is important in the same sense that we think manners are important, but thanksgiving is more than good manners—it is faith, at its root. The lack of faith in our lives shows up as ungrateful covetousness (we need something else to be happy), and faith shows up as patient thanksgiving (we are simply grateful for what God has already done).
Distrust—the lack of faith—is impatient, dissatisfied, always wanting something we don’t yet have. Faith is content, grateful for what we have been given, willing to wait for whatever else God would do. The lack of faith assumes God can’t be trusted; it assumes we know better. Faith assumes that God is good; it assumes he will do what we need, when we need it.
In Romans 1, Paul describes the refusal to “honor God or give thanks to him” as the moment when humanity descends into idolatry and then all other evil. In other words, ingratitude is the first sin, the one that all others flow from, the first step of “no faith in God.”
Thankfulness is the primal posture of the one who has faith; ingratitude and its accompanying covetousness is the primal posture of the one who doesn’t.
May we be people (and may we be a church) who grow continually in the practice of thanksgiving!
In Christ,
Steven+
Scripture Reflections
On Sunday, we heard the disciples say to Jesus (in Lk. 17), “Increase our faith!” My guess is that most of us, at some point or another, have thought or prayed the same thing. Our faith in God can feel very weak, at times.
Jesus’ response is strange. “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you.’” I don’t know what is weirder—the fact that only a smidgeon of faith is needed, or the idea that anyone would want a mulberry tree to be planted in the sea. Suffice to say that Jesus’ response leaves us with more questions than answers.
But what follows in Luke 17 is critical, because Jesus immediately clarifies what matters more than the amount of faith we have. Or perhaps a better way of saying it is that he clarifies what it means to have a little grain of faith that grows.
In verses 7-10, Jesus tells his disciples that what matters most is their willingness to obey God. We are unworthy servants, and God wants us to just say “yes” to him. In other words, he cares more about the willingness to submit to him than he does to how strongly we feel our faith. Or, again, perhaps a better way of saying it is that we grow in faith by submitting to him. Obedience is the way to grow in faith.
But Jesus isn’t done, because immediately after this, we see an object lesson. Jesus cleanses 10 lepers, and one returns to give thanks to him (Lk. 17:11-19). Jesus looks at the one who returned in gratitude, and says, “Ten were cleansed, but only one worshiped and gave thanks; your faith has saved you.” In other words, our faith is exercised in thanksgiving and adoration—it grows that way. Giving thanks to God for what he has done is more important than how big our faith feels.
Obedience and thanksgiving. They are more important than how strong our faith feels; they are the means of our faith growing. They are the muscular exercises of faith, the way that it increases in us. We want to feel deep faith first, and then respond in obedience and thanksgiving. But Jesus says, in effect, “If you have a mustard seed of faith, then submit to God’s word and give thanks. In doing so, you will find yourself made whole by the faith growing in you.”
In Christ,
Steven+